Le 02/01/2012 15:12, MiB a écrit :
> Hi,


Hi, Just some personal opinions & hints.

> However, a quick survey reveals POV-Ray itself is not written in a contemporary
> object-oriented style; a lot of pointers to structs are handed around, functions
> manipulating data structures are on a global level and not members of classes.
> 
> I assume this is due to the C language heritage handed down from the olden DKB
> Trace days.
> 
> Are there any plans or maybe even actual activity to redesign/refactor POV-Ray
> into a class based design?

IMHO, main issue for 3.7 was licensing and parallel rendering on SMP. I
heard there is plan for a rewrite as 4.0, once 3.7 is out.

> I am aware, this is no trivial work, and there may be
> reasons why a class redesign my be shunned here (worries about compatibility,
> performance, to mention a few). I am asking to reconsider these worries, if any.
> 
> 
> I am convinced, the POV-Ray development would profit a lot by introducing a
> class based design, maybe it would also be a good idea to start with an UML
> architectural model before attempting any code changes in this direction.

A long time ago, I tried to push the SDL into a more conformant UML
approach. If you like fancy uml diagrams in French, have a look at
http://jgrimbert.free.fr/crayon.pdf

Fig 1.1 was for povray, and removing some containers (like texture; at
least at the storage level for the scene, if not from the SDL), you
could end up with something along Fig 1.4 on page 21.

Classes are described in Fig 4.1 on page 38. Even deeper model in 4.2 &
4.3 are currently missing some solution for pattern which need access to
the object they might be applied to.

I'm a bit radical on that: no backward compatibility.
(which is bad, as I enjoyed too being able to run old scene in modern
process)

> A
> fresh wind in POV-Ray development may result. Correct me if I am wrong, but
> POV-Ray seems to be stagnant for years already.
> 

If you can fix the issue #217 (using +C to continue an animation-render
with some existing frames already done), I would be delighted. I have no
clue why it fails. (seems like a cache of something... I just get lost)

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