Patrick Elliott <sha### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> In article <web.43c02225d1a8490fe4dd611c0@news.povray.org>, nomail@nomail
> says...
> > Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> > >   You lost me with the "XML" part. I couldn't follow your logic.
> >
> > Is POV-Ray rendering engine or is it script based rendering software?
> > Rendering engine should input data from other tools and XML is easy to
> > parse and generate. There is no use for editor in rendering engine. That
> > should be different program.
> >
> We have been through this before. XML may be easy to generate or parse,
> but its a) inefficient compared to the existing SDL, which means parsing
> would take longer, and b) in many cases SDL uses macros and loops to
> generate multiple objects, trace surface and perform other complex tasks
> that are supported by "languages", not "documents". XML is a "document"
> format, not a script language. The only instance I know of where XML is
> even used for scripts involves using the XML to define secondary things,
> then placing the real language portion in a CDATA block. In other words,
> even the people that developed XML realized the difference between
> documents and imbedded script, which can't be converted to XML.
>
> So, you have lost me with that too. I am not sure what everyone's
> fascination with XML is, but it smacks of the old hammer and nail
> fallacy, which says, "To someone that does nothing but use a hammer to
> pound nails, everything starts to look like a nail."
>
> --
> void main () {

>     call functional_code()
>   else
>     call crash_windows();
> }

It seems clear to me that he is stating that if POV_ray is going to employ a
scripting based SDL then it should be robust enough to do AI. POV_SDL is
only about half way towards perfection. And as we all know nothing ever
reaches perfection.

I also got out of his statements that if the SDL is only to be used in a
limited way then some other structure would be just as good. His stating of
XML seemed to be just an example of a structure. I was also able to
conclude he would not want to use XML because of its weaknesses.

A solution might be to create a POV_ray lib that could be included into

the SDL. Perhaps POV_RAY is not even the system to use for this. I would
hate to think I would hate to have to drop POV_RAY just because the
POV_TEAM decides I am using it wrong. :)

IMOP: Any good program becomes great by growing with its users. Just think
how far POV_RAY has come.

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