So, an interesting idea occurred to me. POV-Ray uses an existing IDE 
framework for it's Windows version.

I wonder, then, what it would be like to put the VStudio shell on 
POV-Ray. I've been kind of playing with the isolated shell, and it's 
rather flexible. It would give those of us who are familiar with the IDE 
a means of working with POV-Ray that feels familiar.

This is by no means a "lets make this official", but more of a, "I'm 
trying this as an experiment, so lets see how this goes."

My thoughts are this:

* Having a project type that would allow the user to gather .inc files 
together with the scene file.

* Being able to use VS2010's templates, and auto-complete suggestions to 
take some of the functionality of the insert menu. kind of like you can 
type sw<tab><tab> and it pops a template in the code, you fill in some 
blanks, and you're done!

* The tooltips and such for parameters, etc.

* Possible to use debug engine for debugging parser macros?

* Using configuration settings to set command-line options for the 
render engine.

* Ability to dock the preview window

* Using error list/output windows.

... etc. It may be a monster learning curve for me, and it may never 
come to fruition, but it could be interesting.

-- 
~Mike

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