Am 12.12.2015 um 09:32 schrieb Le_Forgeron:

> [cutting the very good list of expectations]
> 
> Just beware of the NIH syndrome.

There's really nothing to beware there; if I could find a language out
there that does suit POV-Ray's needs, I'd probably be the first to go
for it; if nothing else, it would save us all the work of defining the
new SDL in the first place; a pre-existing parser to just plug into
POV-Ray would save a lot of work, too.

Also, if a few modifications to an existing language would get us there
(e.g. bolting some additional syntax for vector and colour data types to
the language), that's what I'd do.

But I won't sacrifice what I consider essential requirements, just to be
able to re-use existing components.


> Do we want to look at it like an interpreted or a compiled language,
> it might be irrelevant for the speed, but in the approach provided to
> the new users.

"We" as the developers definitely want to look /at it/ like a compiled
language, because that's what will give us the best performance in the
parsing of complex scenes.

As for whether the language is to /look like/ an interpreted or compiled
language to the user, you tell me what the difference is and I tell you
what we want. Except for dynamic creation of executable code at
execution time, I can think of nothing that would clearly delineate
interpreted languages from compiled ones.

If you ask whether we want a strongly or weakly typed language, then I'd
say that we want the language to generally be weakly typed, because
that's easier to use; but we probably also want strongly typed elements,
so that we get an early failure if someone mistypes a property name of
e.g. a geometric primitive, or tries to use e.g. a geometric primitive
where a texture is expected.

> Do we want to write our own parser, or can it be left to an existing one
>  ?

We certainly don't /want/ to write our own parser, because we have
enough other work to do, but if we have to (because the language does
not exist yet, or there's no open source parser for it yet, or no
embedded parser targeting an existing portable VM, or none that is
modular enough to be used as such), that's what we /will/ do out of
necessity.


> If it was one of boost library, would it still be povray ?

If boost contained a library providing a suitable embedded language, I'm
sure we'd already be halfway through integrating it into POV-Ray.

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