William F Pokorny <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> On 2/17/22 02:39, jr wrote:
> > chain-loading via 'file_exists()' is nice + "clean" (imo).
> >
>
> I'm not completely sure I'm following what you mean by chain-loading?

as BE says.  what I tried to say is something like the mechanism is nice/clean
because it all is/can be transparent to the user (as your code snippet
demonstrates).


> > > Thinking
> ...
> It would probably be TCL if I do get around to trying something radical.

please do!  ;-)


> I have a lot of that going today - as you know - but the implementation
> writes SDL. In other words, it still leans on the current SDL parsers.

I guess that a C(++) extension for Tcl, to drive the VM from Tcl, would do it
:-), access through some "specialising" packages/modules perhaps.


> > out of interest, how difficult would it be to have two separate parsers?  one
> > for pre 3.7/8 compatibility, one for newer style.  (I'm guessing that the
> > executable would not be all that much larger, and separation might bring other
> > benefits)
>
> My up front answer - difficult. The parser is still too integrated with
> the run time code. As something part of my povr branch it's not the most
> unattractive idea because it tangles me in two different parser
> implementations.

ah, naively I'd thought that the existing CLI/ini 'version' could be (ab)used,
ie if not given start with forked parser, if any file read needs <3.8 stop/error
tell user either needs option switch (to start with the "compatible") or edit
offending file.


> Aside: I've thought about hacking versions of POV-Ray in a way where
> they could be run as 'parse to some intermediate form and stop'
> utilities. And that thought reminds me I want to implement an actual
> #stop after parse directive. I use #error, but it's an ugly way to stop
> after the parsing stage.

agree with BE, being able to return a status from a scene would be neat,
particularly if it's available for 'post_frame_command's.

also re his "silly idea", SDL (and or pre-parsed VM calls) storage -- how about
DB (sqlite) storage?


> Anyway, thanks for the ideas! As with the ini and options setting
> approaches, I'm still uncertain where the povr code will go.

:-)  you'll have to tell me when to stop.


regards, jr.

Post a reply to this message