I would like to know which variables, vectors, matrices and other features you want to have implemented for effect files.

We'll add the inverse view matrix, and a tangent vector instead of the second texture coordinate set - both are required for certain shader effects. Then we'll have basically the same set of shader variables that programs like RenderMonkey or EffectEdit offer, so I guess that's all what's needed for all kind of effects. After implementation of the new light management, we'll also add vectors for the properties of the 8 lights.

If you need anything else, please post it here, and also mention for which kind of shader effect you'd need it (or mention the sample in one of the shader programming books).

It was requested to add C-Script access to the transformation matrices. However the world matrix is different for every rendered entity, so this would not make much sense, or would at least slow down the rendering due to the fixed<->float conversion. So I'd prefer to calculate all required matrices by the engine.