POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : Status of Moray? : Re: New SDL for POVRay Server Time
15 Jul 2025 07:23:25 EDT (-0400)
  Re: New SDL for POVRay  
From: Alain
Date: 29 Sep 2007 10:12:05
Message: <46fe5d35@news.povray.org>
William Tracy nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2007/09/28 21:41:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Tim Attwood wrote:
>> 1) An optional "environment {}" command section where
>> the command line options for a scene can be placed within
>> the scene file (like the COBOL environment section).
>> One objection I've read on this is that letting the
>> environment (image size, animation options, etc.) be set
>> from inside the scene file breaks compatibility with the old
>> system, but it would be easy to get around that by just
> 
> The real objection seems to be that this would make it harder to
> separate the front end and back end of the program, and make it harder
> to do things like distributed renders.
> 
>> 3) Binary reading from files.
> 
> Hmm, could be useful for parsing oddball 3D formats in POV code.
> 
> At the very least, it would be nice to have more flexibility in reading
> ASCII files. I would like to be able to parse files that are not
> comma-delimited. :-) Any thoughts on supporting a scanf-style syntax?
> 
>> 4) Post processing of images. This could fall under something
>> like a post_process{} section.  One thing that might be nice
>> here would be the ability to directly produce animation files in a
>> couple of formats.
> 
> That would be cool.
> 
>> 5) Allow the linking of external libraries, so that POV can
>> access custom programming routines from various languages. 
> 
> I'm of two minds on this.
> 
> This would be *very* useful. If there's something that you can't do in
> SDL, you can add it. :-)
> 
> On the other hand, it becomes possible to write malicious POV files. How
> would you like to download a scene file and have it erase all your files
> when you try to render it? Not good.
> 
> That's a tough one, because it's not a technological problem so much as
> a social one. :-(
> 
> - --
> William Tracy
> afi### [at] gmailcom -- wtr### [at] calpolyedu
> 
> You know you've been raytracing too long when someone shows you a
> photograph of their new rough-slate kitchen floor and you say "nice
> normals".
>     -- Tom Melly
>
That last point can be elliminated by strictly enforcing I/O restrictions for 
ANY external addon. An external module/addon/plugin could be strictly forbiden 
to erase any file, modify any file that don't share the same base name as the 
current scene, create any file outside the default write permition.
Going further, strictly forbide any I/O operation to any external library.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
You know you've been raytracing too long when your personal correspondence to 
friends starts out with #Dear Linda =
Ken Tyler


Post a reply to this message

Copyright 2003-2023 Persistence of Vision Raytracer Pty. Ltd.