POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.pov4.discussion.general : change "object" keyword to something more explicit like "instance" : change "object" keyword to something more explicit like "instance" Server Time
13 Aug 2026 03:02:43 EDT (-0400)
  change "object" keyword to something more explicit like "instance"  
From: Mr
Date: 11 Aug 2026 19:00:00
Message: <web.6a7ba8b3ce636f62807c2e6c6830a892@news.povray.org>
"object" seems a little hard to grasp for beginners in POV-Ray but it may get
worse in POV 4 when more object oriented syntaxes are probably going to make
their way into the language. What would intuition expect an "object" keyword to
do ? I will not speculate... but what it actually does in POV-Ray certainly is a
much more specific feature, called instanciation and documentation explains it
correctly. I think "instance" would be less surprising and less loaded with
extra meaning,
for instance, the kind of mistakes the current phrasing leads newcomers to is to
try and use it like a CSG keyword, trying to feed it whatever sort of input
between the braces, expecting it would result in an object... while the input it
expects should in fact already be an object and a single one! also it does allow
to populate it with either a declared variable name invoking an object, but also
a root level primitive (sphere cylinder etc)! ... This I don't know why... as it
encourages one level nesting that seems useless. Thanks for sharing your
opinions on this and I already know I'll learn from them!


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