Christopher James Huff wrote:
> In article <41d98ce0$1@news.povray.org>,
>  Bernd Fuhrmann <Sil### [at] gmxde> wrote:
> 
> 
>>What should be thought of is this: There are a lot of good programming 
>>languages out there: C/C++, Java, Pascal/Delphi, JavaScript, XML, 
>>Scheme, Prolog, PHP, and so on. Why does POVRay need to have it's very 
>>own programming language that is compatible to none of the existing 
>>ones? The only thing that POVRay needs to do is this (simplified):
> 
> Simplicity. None of those really cut it.

If you say so. Are you quite sure of what you're talking? Some of those 
languages are very powerful, especially for large projects.

>>So one has to ask: How can I get all that date in a clean and easy way 
>>from all kinds of different sources to the renderer? What sources might 
>>that be?
> 
> Primarily hand-written scene files. XML is basically useless for that, 
> those other languages are usually just very awkward, and require 
> knowledge of a complex programming language. The existing SDL is 
> limited, but it's also simple. People can do substantial things while 
> knowing very little about programming.

But they can't do advanced things as easy as they could if there existed 
some default front-end for one of those programming lanugages mentioned 
above. So there should be an alternative for those who want to do the 
more advanced stuff.

> Then there's maintenance issues...keeping up with updates to the 
> language, changing the language if the developers take it in a direction 
> that makes it less useful to POV-Ray, etc. Plus debugging someone else's 
> code base.

Programming languages don't change that much. Last change of C++ was in 
2001, I guess, and that was just a minor issue. Ok, C++ is complex. You 
might consider the use of any other programming language. They are well 
defined and if there are substantial changes you might stick to the old 
version for a while. You might even use external compilers so the POVRay 
team can concentrate on the raytracer.

> For someone with experience in those languages, learning the POV-Ray SDL 
> shouldn't be a challenge, but the POV language will be better at what it 
> needs to do.

It's not learning POVRay SDL but getting complex work done with it. I 
can tell you that it is not motivating if you are just experienced 
enough to know that the code you are writing will not be maintainable.

>>Cool. Where do I have to go to join development team? #4 doesn't seem to 
>>be under development. Or is it? Couldn't find any info, any invitation, 
>>anything.
> 
> That was probably because you weren't invited. POV 4 isn't even 
> partially released yet, but that you can't see it doesn't mean there 
> hasn't been any design or code written. You can write and distribute 
> modifications as allowed by the license, but you'll have to work with 
> 3.6 for now.

So there would be another POVRay modification. I don't have the time for 
this. I would have to redesign half of the program. This is useless 
since I would have to spend so much time and in the end noone would use 
my version (except me). All the advanced features of the next version 
and it's bugfixes would not be in my version. Therefore this is pointless.

Regards,
Bernd Fuhrmann

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