Christopher James Huff wrote:

> Oops, looks like I forgot to include this link:
> http://www.povray.org/3.5-status.html
> "Third, our most recent musings about POV-Ray 4 lean towards a major
> reworking of the POV Scene Description Language. This means that POV 4
> may not be fully backwards compatible with old scenes. If that is the
> case, we will plan to provide an official conversion utility that will
> convert old scenes into the new syntax, or provide some other means of
> importing old scenes."

Exactly. :) Thanks for looking it up.
 
> > Can I make a macro that would calculate a macro that I would pass it in
> > a parameter?
> Not currently. But this has little to do with anything being
> "precalculated", POV just assumes you want the result of a macro call
> instead of the macro identifier, similar problems exist with splines and
> functions. It should be possible to implement with a little parser work.

Well, as people have pointed out, there are some workarounds for it...
but that's precisely what I offered to avoid: workarounds and kludges.
:)
 
> > I would say that scalar is merely a 1-dimensional vector.
> Well, not in the mathematical sense, but probably so practically. Are
> you suggesting some way of specifying the number of components of a
> vector?

That's one possibility. A vector could be a class the instances of which
know their component number, or there are other ways.

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> Rick [Kitty5] <ric### [at] kitty5com> wrote:
> : I think a sphere was provided as an example, replace sphere above with 20mb
> : mesh and it suddenly doesn't sound such a bad idea, however impractical it
> : may be
>   Bad example, as povray already does it with meshes.

Okay, replace it with Tree include file which builds a tree out of a few
thousand of POV primitives. Render 10000 copies of that without
referencing of some sort.

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> > Can I make a macro that would calculate a macro that I would pass it in
> > a parameter?
> sure. you only need #include, #macro, #fopen and #write directives. So it should
> work when those directives started in POV (3.0 ? 2.0 ?).

... and that is exactly the reason why I started all this - of course
you can do anything at all if you're inventive and have commitment. But
wouldn't it be better if invention and commitment went into creative
work, rather than designing workarounds?

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> > Well... What "it"? Implementing these principles in software design? It
> > can be done, if my current pet project, the Quill, is any indication.
> Good, then show us how by making your own patch when 3.5 comes out and you
> can get your hands on the source-code, OK?

Are you sure it even could be done as a patch? Implementing these
features is possible... implementing them as "patch" would be quite
difficult. :)
 
> > It seems that this is the most frequent misunderstanding so far:
> > thinking that I was complaining on features.
 
> If everybody understood what you wrote as such, then it's your own fault for
> badly wording things. For example, this "we" can be taken as being quite
> haughty on your part, and might be seen as implying "Behold, I am the wise
> one, do what I say, because it is better than your meager toilings of the
> past". Or something to that effect. :)

I have little control over what others "might see" - it's their own
choice. What I wrote, I wrote. If it's dismissed only because someone
thought it was "haughty" - okay.

I can only repeat that "I am the wise one" bullshit was not in my
intentions.
 
> > Wouldn't a lubricated machine
> > run better than dry gears?
> Not if the dry gears were coated with teflon or something. ;)

It's like supplying an automobile engine with all the electronic
ignition and extra valves and such - but you still are stuch with the
same old and awkward piston-and-crankshaft architecture, if you allow me
a metaphor...

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On Tue, 15 Jan 2002 09:27:41 +0200, Eugene Arenhaus <eug### [at] avalon-netcoil>
wrote:
> Are you sure it even could be done as a patch?

AFAIK parsing functions are not connected with rendering functions for objects,
initializing functions for data etc. Have you checked this ?

> Implementing these
> features is possible... implementing them as "patch" would be quite
> difficult. :)

Writing new parser without changing other stuff is
IMO no more difficult than organizing MegaPOV by Nathan and/or
IMO no more difficult than adding shader by Vahour.
Somehow Chris Huff started with new syntax.
 
ABX

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> IMO no more difficult than organizing MegaPOV by Nathan and/or

*ahem*

-- 
#local R=<7084844682857967,0787982,826975826580>;#macro L(P)concat(#while(P)chr(
mod(P,100)),#local P=P/100;#end"")#end background{rgb 1}text{ttf L(R.x)L(R.y)0,0
translate<-.8,0,-1>}text{ttf L(R.x)L(R.z)0,0translate<-1.6,-.75,-1>}sphere{z/9e3
4/26/2001finish{reflection 1}}//ron.parker@povray.org My opinions, nobody else's

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Ron Parker wrote:

> *ahem*

Would you prefer et. al. ?

-- 
Ken Tyler

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On 15 Jan 2002 08:41:26 -0500, Ron Parker <ron### [at] povrayorg> wrote:
> > IMO no more difficult than organizing MegaPOV by Nathan and/or
>
> *ahem*

and/or creating of UVPov, SuperPatch, MultiPatch etc.

(enough?)

ABX

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In article <3C43D729.26CCEBFB@avalon-net.co.il>,
 Eugene Arenhaus <eug### [at] avalon-netcoil> wrote:

> That's one possibility. A vector could be a class the instances of which
> know their component number, or there are other ways.

In CSDL there are currently these types:
scalar: double-precision floating point number.

3D vector: double-precision FP vector. Only 3D because various math 
functions will rely on 3D points, if you need more you should use arrays 
of scalars.

string: Just a basic string storage type, a String object to manipulate 
them will be provided.

stream: I/O, as with strings, specialized objects using streams will be 
provided.

object: Well, the object type.

function: Functions, with parameters and return values passed by 
reference.

I also plan to have two kinds of arrays: a more compact kind which 
stores one type, and an expanded kind which can store any type.

-- 
 -- 
Christopher James Huff <chr### [at] maccom>

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In article <50o74ukkqp96oo8qhkmihqmkom7g04u7tu@4ax.com>,
 W?odzimierz ABX Skiba <abx### [at] babilonorg> wrote:

> AFAIK parsing functions are not connected with rendering functions 
> for objects, initializing functions for data etc. Have you checked 
> this ?

Since POV 4.0 hasn't even been started yet, he would have some 
difficulty doing so...
Keep in mind: POV 4.0 is supposed to be a rewrite from the ground up, 
mainly to do the things he is talking about, reorganizing the code and 
scene description language to a more sensible structure.


> Writing new parser without changing other stuff is
> IMO no more difficult than organizing MegaPOV by Nathan and/or

That used the existing parser.


> IMO no more difficult than adding shader by Vahour.

I think that used an existing parser, which he added to POV.


> Somehow Chris Huff started with new syntax.

I'm writing an entirely new interpreter, but I'm not writing a POV 
patch...CSDL is a 3rd party utility, though it will be capable of 
running command-line programs like POV-Ray and will have a scene 
description library that can output POV script.

To integrate the language as tightly with the renderer as he is 
suggesting would require a rewrite...which is probably why he is making 
it a "POV4 design proposal".
Since the POV-Team isn't going to officially partcipate in these 
discussion for a while, you shouldn't expect much there, but of course 
that's no reason not to refine the ideas for when the time comes.

-- 
 -- 
Christopher James Huff <chr### [at] maccom>

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