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Hi all,

I recently had a discussion about the .pov files and the action the user 
does when he modifies / creates such a file.

Well, as of the documentation it's a scene-describing-language.
That's IMHO kind of markup language (please correct me).
Though, it's no programming language, such as C, C++, or Pascal, is it?

You do normally say, I'm coding on a new projekt (i.e. a word processor, 
written in C).... so you're programming on that word processor (the program 
you want to have at the end).
But now, imagin, you want to make a new picture, created using the POV-Ray 
tool. What do you say here? Are you programming a new picture? (what do you 
say in HTML?) is it programming? isn't it?

Well, I'm completely confused and I'd like to get some opinions from you,

Have many thanks,
Christian Parpart.
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Christian Parpart <cpa### [at] surakwarenet> wrote:
> Well, as of the documentation it's a scene-describing-language.
> That's IMHO kind of markup language (please correct me).
> Though, it's no programming language, such as C, C++, or Pascal, is it?

  No, it's not a markup language. It's a scripting language.
  By all means the POV-Ray SDL is a programming language (eg. it's
Turing-strong).

  Of course the POV-Ray SDL has basically two parts: The scene description
part and the scripting part. Roughly speaking, any command starting with #
is a scripting command (although there are exceptions to this, eg. #default).
  The scripting commands are used to create scene description. The scene
description is what creates the scene.
  If you are not using scripting commands at all, then it might not be
considered "programming" because you are simply describing the scene,
without making any script which generates the scene.
  However, for example my signature is a good example of programming with
the POV-Ray SDL.

> (what do you 
> say in HTML?) is it programming? isn't it?

  No, you don't program HTML because HTML is not a programming language.

-- 
#macro N(D)#if(D>99)cylinder{M()#local D=div(D,104);M().5,2pigment{rgb M()}}
N(D)#end#end#macro M()<mod(D,13)-6mod(div(D,13)8)-3,10>#end blob{
N(11117333955)N(4254934330)N(3900569407)N(7382340)N(3358)N(970)}//  - Warp -

Post a reply to this message

In article <3d359736@news.povray.org>, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> 
wrote:

> Christian Parpart <cpa### [at] surakwarenet> wrote:
> > Well, as of the documentation it's a scene-describing-language.
> > That's IMHO kind of markup language (please correct me).
> > Though, it's no programming language, such as C, C++, or Pascal, is it?
> 
>   No, it's not a markup language. It's a scripting language.

Well, I would consider it a hybrid. It definitely has some 
characteristics of a markup language, you could make a complete scene 
without using anything resembling a programming command, but as you 
said, it is Turing-strong.
I would say it is a programming language just as much as C, C++, Ruby, 
Perl, Python, etc. (I consider "scripting languages" to be a subset of 
programming languages) However, it was created by extending a markup 
language, and can be used as just an ordinary markup/description 
language if you want.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <chr### [at] maccom>
POV-Ray TAG e-mail: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
TAG web site: http://tag.povray.org/

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