On Wed, 13 Mar 2002 13:27:23 +0300, "Vadim Sytnikov" <syt### [at] rucom> wrote:
> "Thorsten Froehlich" <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:
> > ...if you don't see it you never looked into the POV-Ray source
> > code nor the concept of these directives.
>
> If a language has an explicit pre-processing stage, then there is something
> wrong with the language itself.

I think there is not so much SDLs to compare but I think many of programing
languages has some kind of parser directives. My native platform is 4GL by
Progress and there are preprocesor directives. They all start with &
character. I don't think that they looked to POV-Ray becouse POV-Ray is older.
I don't think POV-Team looked at Progress either. Perhaps there is general
rule for preprocesors.

> My point is that POV-Ray must not expose that to the user
> and hopefully get rid of such internal subdivision as well.

But that's the case: internall subdivision is required becouse all #directives
can appear in any place while scene description parts have clearly described
order. As I said I like it. I like tools which represents internal behaviour
becouse it gives more control (at least feeling of it).

> You may want to read
> ftp://ftp.ru.com/pub/gamos/povpro/povpro.txt go get a better idea of that.

Very interesting reading. Have you any experience how your improvements appear
nowadays ? I mean are they considered in modern compilers ? Have you
experimented with them on 3.1 or megapov sources ? Perhaps you can share some
your ideas during beta-testing of 3.5 with two compilators.

> I would be happy to discuss everything with you, or anybody
> else, then.

I'm still really interested with "what was more elegant in PolyRay" question.
For example could you "translate" one sample source from current 3.5 package
with various scene components and directives if possible (of course excluding
not portable things)?

ABX

Post a reply to this message