POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : POV-Ray v3.1 beta 5 released : Re: POV-Ray v3.1 beta 5 released Server Time
13 Aug 2024 17:27:16 EDT (-0400)
  Re: POV-Ray v3.1 beta 5 released  
From: Jim Kress
Date: 29 Jul 1998 15:27:02
Message: <35bf6976.0@news.povray.org>
Thanks!

Dan Connelly wrote in message <35BE6984.92C299DB@flash.net>...
>Jim Kress wrote:
>>
>> What changed?
>>
>
>
>The following is from changes.txt in the 3.14b5 windows package:
>
>
>  o Add an option to stop the render animation (see the Appearance menu).
>
>  o POVWIN should now detect Win98 and not draw the caption text in the
>    title bar. One day we'll make it use DrawFrameControl () instead of the
>    way we draw the extra button now. (DrawFrameControl () was not present
in
>    the earlier versions of windows that POVWIN was originally written
for).
>
>  o An old bug (solved in 3.02 but present in earlier versions) reappeared
>    in 3.1 betas prior to beta5. This typically shows itself as corrupted
>    text in the message window, and/or random crashes, particularly when
>    starting a render or clearing the message pane from the edit menu.
>
>    The cause of this is a memory overwrite coming from inside the generic
>    POV-Ray code, and came back since the fix never made it into the
generic
>    source after the release of 3.02. It's now fixed for good.
>
>  o There was a problem with POVWIN not releasing memory after a render.
This
>    actually was not as clear as it seems - POVWIN did in fact release the
>    memory, but the C runtime library did not. The memory was not wasted in
>    that if you did a new render, the memory got re-used. But it still was
not
>    available to other Windows apps.
>
>    The solution is compiler-specific (see CONFIG.H if you're compiling
your
>    own copy of POVWIN). The official POV-Team version of POV-Ray for
Windows
>    (which is compiled with Watcom C/C++) now does release this memory, so
the
>    problem is fixed for most users.
>
>  o The 'render from memory' feature is gone. It is a difficult feature to
>    implement (because the main POV-Ray rendering engine does not have a
>    concept of rendering from memory, so a simulation of a file had to be
>    done. This did not always work as expected). We decided that the due to
>    the restrictions that the above placed on the feature (and the problems
>    that this caused for some users) it was best not to have it.
>
>  o A new GUI extension call has been added that supplies GUI extensions
with
>    what is effectively an exact copy of the data (pixel by pixel) that
would
>    have been written to file. This works regardless of whether file output
>    is on or not. This does not break compatibility with GUI extensions
that
>    were written for previous versions of POV-Ray - if they were written
>    properly they will still work unchanged.
>
>  o The Windows help file is now 'povray31.hlp' (previously povray30.hlp).
>
>  o The registry keys now work this way -
>
>    HKLM\
>      Software\
>        POV-Ray\
>
>          Windows\
>            Home          -> Points at either v3.0x or v3.1.
>
>          CurrentVersion\
>            Windows\
>              Home        -> Path of current version always
>              VersionNo   -> Current version number
>
>          v3.0\
>            Windows\
>              Home        -> Points at path of v3.0x if it exists
>
>          v3.1\
>            Windows\
>              Home        -> Points at path of v3.1
>
>          v3.x\
>            Windows\
>              Home        -> Points at path of a hypothetical v3.x
>
>    If there was no old version on the users computer, the old Windows
value
>    points to the new version of POVWIN. If there was an old version, the
user
>    will be asked upon installation if they want to have it updated to
point
>to
>    the new one.
>
>    Authors of utilities that read the registry to extract the install dir
of
>    POVWIN are requested to use the 'v3.x' keys to locate POVWIN if their
>    program absolutely requires a specific version. Otherwise, they should
use
>    the 'CurrentVersion' key. Under no circumstances should any new utility
>    use the old 'Windows' value as support for that entry will be removed
in a
>    later version of POVWIN.
>
>--
>http://www.flash.net/~djconnel/


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