In article <39a01465@news.povray.org>, "Thorsten Froehlich" 
<tho### [at] trfde> wrote:

> Well, this is obviously not a feature of object oriented languages 
> only. 

I didn't say it was. But it would pretty much be necessary in order to 
add object-oriented capabilities. And once you add the features to make 
POV modular(binding of variables and macros to objects), it seems a 
small step to make it object-oriented(having copies of objects inherit 
the members).


> I agree that there hsould be some way to store data of 
> different types more easily, but I am not sure if C++/Java style 
> syntax would really be the most appropriate and easy to learn.

In my examples, I wasn't basing my syntax on C++/Java...the only 
similarity I can see is using the dot operator to access members, 
something that POV  already does.


> As said before, there are programming languages that fit the language 
> model of POV-Ray much better than C/C++/Java.

Your previous example didn't look very much like POV...and I am not 
talking about using the C/C++/Java model of objects.


> What is wrong with:
> 
> object
> {
>     PlainLensFlare
>     scale 5
>     translate < 5, 1, 6>
>     color < 1, 0, 0.5>
> }

How would you declare this? I used member macros to set variables in my 
example, because I don't see any easy way to set them automatically with 
this type of syntax. Would POV just look at each declaration, and look 
for a matching parameter for it? So if you have a float, a vector, and 
an object, POV would expect the first parameter to be a float, the 
second to be a vector, and the third to be an object?
Basically, how do you declare the syntax?
I couldn't come up with a good and simple solution, so I skipped that 
problem completely. :-)


> My major problem with it is that is obvious in all discussions about 
> an object oriented POV scene description language is that people who 
> are familiar with C/C++/Java seem be caught in the thinking that 
> every language should look this way. to quote the old Apple slogan 
> "Think Different"!
> In particular, I think the low level capabilities of C/C++/Java are 
> in the way of creating a simple and easy to learn object oriented 
> extension to the POV language.  As a matter of fact, due to the 
> completely different nature of C/C++/Java and POV, nobody having to 
> learn it would benefit from existing C/C++/Java documentation, books, 
> etc if he/she does not know any of them before.

I agree, which is why I am not basing my syntax ideas on C/C++/Java. 
Actually, I don't know of any language that does it this way, with 
objects being variables, only one "object" type, and objects inheriting 
from other objects, not from types. It seems a pretty simple and 
flexible idea, though, I would be very surprised if there isn't any 
language that does things this way.
And like I said before, the only real similarity I can see in the syntax 
is the dot operator, which is already used in POV and seems to be easy 
to understand.


> Well, I would say it would parse slower because certain access to 
> internal data structures of POV-Ray would surely take some time. 

If you were just doing a benchmark of parsing speed, it would be slower. 
But it could also allow doing things in ways that would be faster in the 
end, as well as being much easier to write and maintain.


> A more abstract language could hide these complex tasks behind the 
> POV scene language and use the many benefits of a hardwired access of 
> C++ (in POV-Ray 4.0) rather than doing it in small steps in the 
> interpreted POV scene language!

Are you suggesting a new POV language? Not a bad idea, in my opinion, 
but certainly not a popular one.

-- 
Christopher James Huff
Personal: chr### [at] maccom, http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg, http://tag.povray.org/

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