Yah, good point. I confess, I don't love the suggested syntax much on
a gut level, but you're probably right that, in the long run, we're
going to want some sort of capability like this. (And the more I look
at the proposed syntax, the more it grows on me.)
Putting this in programming terms, Nathan's second proposal (which I
think is the more important one) is basically a simple means for
parameterizing objects. I think it's inevitable that we're going to
find ourselves wanting this; indeed, I've had it at the back of my
mind for a while. I don't know that we *need* it for 1.1, but I'd
definitely like to see something like this for 2.0.
(You can make a counter-argument that we don't *need* this sort of
thing if we have full programmability and behaviours. Which is true,
but I still think it's appropriate -- this is essentially a means
of defining the *static* properties of the scene, the way that an
object appears *in context*. I think Nathan's example:
>DEF BOB Separator {
> NAME mat Material { emmissiveColor 0.3 0.3 0.1}
> Cone { height .4 bottomradius .2} }
>USE BOB
>ALT BOB.mat Material {emmissiveColor 0.4 0.4 0.7}
>USE BOB
is a nice, elegant example of the sort of context where it would be
really nice -- parameterizing the colors of parts of an object.)
-- Justin
Random Quote du Jour:
"For tasteless religious superheros, a friend of mine once suggested Crucified
Kid. Basically a Capt. Marvel ripoff. A boy who speaks his magic words
("Eloi, Eloi, Lamas Sabac Thani" or something similar; from the Bible,
meaning "My Lord, My Lord, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?") he finds himself
suffering on a cross. He fights crime by hopping around on it (kind of
like a pogo stick :-)) and twirls in circles to hit criminals with the plank
his arms are attached to."
-- Tom Johnston