[metapost] Rovenskii

[Taco Hoekwater]

Hi Laurence,

Laurence Finston wrote:
> .. Personally, I think 2D is so limited that it 
> wouldn't be worthwhile to spend too much time on methods that 
> can only be used in 2D.  

Personally, I almost never use 3D. And when I do, I usually
want more flexibility than either FEATPOST or 3DLDF provide.
Things like viewpoints, zooms, shading and animation. Povray is
my tool of choice for these few excursions in the third
dimension.

Therefore, I am not exstatic about coding multi-dimensionality
into megapost (not against it either, but not something I wish
to spend much of my time on). I can see from the example(s) that
there are nice things you could do with a 3D extension, yes.

> From the point of view of programming, 
> there's no technical reason for not implementing n-dimensional 
> objects (where n is a natural number greater than 2).  

That is like saying that if you implement wings and jet engines
on a soapboxcar, there is no technical reason why they cannot fly.

The statement is superficially true, but the result wouldn't be
a soapbox 'as we know it' anymore, nor would it be easy to
construct one.


> I don't currently have any particular desire to do anything with, say, 
> 100-dimensional points, but 4D is definitely desirable, and perhaps 
 > other n <= 10.

Why (when) would a drawing program need more spatial dimensions than
the human brain can handle? I can see the point of 3D, but more?

> If the Megapost developers don't mind my voicing an 
> opinion, I think it would be nice if it were to have this 
> functionality.  

Speaking as a 'megapost developer', I can tell you that I will
definately not reject a patch that adds 3D support to metapost
while maintaining the current (2d) capabilities.

Go for it, I say!

> I think it would be interesting to see if Knuth and 
> Hobby's methods lend themselves to this extension.

Not sure what methods you mean. The routine that finds control
points based on tensions and curls?


Taco