Chris B wrote:
> When you say "all over the place" you may be able to access a few sites,
> but
> when newbies do a Google and discover thousands of sites containing
> materials most of which just inexplicably don't work and can't readily be
> made to work then it's likely to have a very negative effect on their
> impression of the software.

	One possibility is to have POV-Ray detect somewhat that the syntax
being used may be the old one, and have it fail with an explicit
explanation so that they can go to the official docs.

	Frankly, though, I have difficult imagining that someone who's never
used POV-Ray before wouldn't at least take a glance at the official
docs. There _are_ some great tutorials out there, but I'm not sure I saw
more than a few that are accessible to complete newbies.

> Well yes. Hope springs eternal :-) But reality depends upon people who hope
> that they will show an aptitude for developing a fantastic new computer
> language (when they've probably never done that before) realising their

	Well, if they've never coded POV-Ray, then they'll be learning a new
language regardless. And frankly, the current SDL sucks as a language.

	I guess your concern is more the people who _do_ know POV-Ray from before.

> Also, this misses the point a bit in that you can create up-to-date
> tutorials
> but they'll be competing for prominance in Google with a greater number of
> better established, but out of date tutorials that don't contain any
> indication
> that they may be out of date.

	Actually, I'd suspect the opposite. Not sure how Google page rank
works, but if there are only a few pages out there about POV-Ray 4, then
they'll each get more hits and are more likely to show up on top on Google.

	I know your concerns, but I think it's a fallacy _never_ to change the
SDL. Maintaining backward compatibility will always be a limiting factor
in development. It'll be a pain to add drastically new features (such as
a custom shading language), while trying to make those new features
compatible with the old SDL. And has been pointed out elsewhere,
backward compatibility has been broken in the past as well.

-- 
If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?


                    /\  /\               /\  /
                   /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

Post a reply to this message