[Edu-sig] PyGeo vs PovRay

[Steve Morris]

Arthur Siegel writes:
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 > So that I certainly do not want support a Python to POV-RAY, versus PyGeo
 > argument.
 > 
 > BUT - (you knew one was coming)
 > 
 > What hasn't been emphasized in the discussion so far is the PyGeo is fully
 > interactive.

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Leaving the issues of implementation behind for the moment, in a
perfect world we want the interactivity of PyGeo/OpenGl with the
quality of PovRay.

Since that is impossible (at least with our resources) the next best
thing is to be able to debug with lower (graphical) quality higher
speed interactive tools and then do hardcopy with PovRay.

In this better but less than perfect world we would have a higher
level abstraction that could map into eithor output method at the
users discretion.

The concept of a common abstraction with drivers hiding the details of
the implementation is not rocket science. On the other hand adding a
level of abstraction also adds to the complexity (cost) of a
project. Today we have two people generating useful work. If we wait
for the development of a spec and the implementation of an abstraction
layer everything would stop for a while.

Another disadvantage of such an approach is that it is a lowest common
denominator kind of thing. Adding features gets harder because they
have to be implemented and debugged in both backends.