Nieminen Mika wrote in message <6isnom$f7d$2@oz.aussie.org>...
>Mark Arrasmith (arr### [at] mathtwsuedu) wrote:
>: Also, is there any plan to make POVRay cross platform with its GUI?
>
>  As long as there is always a little command line version available!
>  I don't want guis growing the file size where it's not necessary.


IMHO, PovRay should be cut in two parts :

-  A highly portable PovRay Engine (PRE) :
When possible (most plateforms), it would be a DLL / Shared Library. On
others, static library.
It would enable easy and better integration with front-ends (shells,
modelers, texture editors, render farms, etc), for preview and final
rendering.

From version 3.0 code, at first look, it's seems not very hard work
(definition of officials APIs for calling PRE and setting callbacks for
handling POV_BANNER & Co, POV_DISPLAY_Xxxx, POV_SYSTEM).
In fact, I've already compile for personnal tests an unofficial PovRay
engine DLL for Win32...
A second look and the bad news is, today, PovRay 3.0 code isn't thread-safe
(many globals variables) !
Perhaps a welcomed next major version (4.0?) rewritten code will help this
particular point.

PRE development is obviously the POV-Team main focus, and should continue to
be.
An open (plugin-able) engine would be better...

- PovRay Shell(s), calling the PRE APIs :
An obvious and portable one (except for MacOS!?) is a little command line
shell. Any PovRay distribution should (and already) include this shell (even
if a GUI shell exist).
More sophisticated shells could be with GUI, like the Windows or MacOS
today's one.

With officials PRE APIs, more shells would be available than today. Most
plateform-specific, some cross plateform.
With same officials PRE APIs, more high front-ends could use PovRay.
Directly.

Just some suggestions for the future of PovRay developpment...

Thanks for reading.
And sorry for poor english...

Phil.

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