To help demonstrate how the design of a rendering framework is evolving with the new features of C++, I will be updating Hieroglyph substantially. Because of how large the changes will be, I have decided to make a clean break and create Hieroglyph 4. This decision was not made lightly, as I have put many, many hours of work into Hieroglyph 3. In fact, I first posted Hieroglyph 3 on Codeplex back in February of 2010, and it had already been in development for months before that. As a result of our book, as well as lots of posts here on GameDev.net, there is actually a fairly substantial user base for Hieroglyph 3 (including my own use at my day job).
Due to that user base, I think it is prudent to take the next step and create the next version of the engine. This will let existing users of Hieroglyph 3 continue on without too much disruption, and then at some point down the road I will eventually have Hieroglyph 4 in a production ready state. This will also let me be more aggressive in my design changes, so I think it will be good for both cases. I will continue to apply the updates to Hieroglyph 3 when they make sense and don't significantly alter the API surface. That should keep HG3 from getting stale and allow me to maintain a before and after example set - that's the plan anyways :)
It always amazes me how much you learn over the course of a couple years. Since I wrote Hieroglyph 3, I have become much more knowledgeable about software engineering, software design, and I have also become much more aware of the importance of documentation and testing within the software realm. Hopefully I can apply all of this to the new engine going forward.
Anyways, I hope this will be the beginning of another long run, so stay tuned for more renderer design discussions!
Congratulations!