On Sat, 17 Apr 2010 20:58:09 +0200, clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:

> Am 17.04.2010 20:01, schrieb Stephen Klebs:
>>> Surely it wouldn't be hard to patch a text-to-spline
>>> function into pov's code?
>>
>> That wouldn't be as simple as it sounds though. Different fonts -  
>> TrueType,
>> OpenType, Postscript, etc. - use different flavors of splines.
>
> Given that POV-Ray only supports TrueType fonts anyway, we'd be talking  
> about a single spline type only.
>
> While you do advocate Bezier splines (cubic I suppose), that's not  
> necessarily a contradiction: TrueType uses quadratic B-splines, which  
> can just as well be expressed in terms of cubic Bezier splines.
>
> And speaking of it, PostScript happens to use cubic Bezier splines  
> "natively", while OpenType comes in two flavors, which "concidentally"  
> use the same underlying representation as TrueType and PostScript,  
> respectively.
>
> So I guess there's no reason why POV-Ray shouldn't grow some feature to  
> automatically generate splines from fonts.
>
> And yes, you're right: POV-Ray is definitely in lack of consistency  
> regarding support of spline types:
>
> - b_spline is only available in sphere_sweep
> - quadratic_spline is available everywhere /except/ in sphere_sweep
> - natural_spline is only available in spline
>
> And last not least, allowing to use predefined splines in sphere_sweep,  
> prism and lathe would be pretty neat I think (with sphere_sweep  
> obviously neding either a 4D spline or an additional 1D-spline to  
> represent radius).
>
> What's really missing in POV-Ray is an internal framework for  
> consolidating all the spline-based stuff.

I really think this should be considered for PovRay 4

-- 
-Nekar Xenos-

"The spoon is not real"

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