Ok. I was waiting to hear back from Chris Young. Here's his response ( from
a variety of posts ) (reposted with permission)


I had e-mailed him a while ago , and sent him the original idea. This is the
first response:

/*--- Quote from 12/28/1998 ---*/
While I wouldn't swear that the reference section is perfect, I personally
spent a lot of time rewriting and updating the reference sections.  All of
the syntax definitions were polished to the same standards and notations as
Ray Tracing Creations.  For the time being I'd prefer to keep the reference
sections entirely "in house".

<Ka - Snip!>

I'm not sure I like the idea of outsiders selling printed docs even at cost.
The issue of what is or is not profit becomes nasty.  Many movie actors have
sued studios for percentage points of films that cost $50 million, grossed
$200 million but had no "profit".  Linux allows damn near anybody to reprint
their docs even for profit and that's crazy.  I'm not going to spend hours
of volunteer time writing POV-Ray docs and have somebody else make money on
it.  I'm not sure how the team will feel about this.  My opinion is that the
more you distance yourself from the endorsement of the team, the better
chance you have and doing a commercial deal.  The closer you are, the more
we'll insist its free.  So if its "Twyst's Guide to POV-Ray" and you wrote
most or all of it, you're in good shape.  If its "The Official POV-Ray 3.1
Tutorial" and is just a touch-up of the current tutorial, its likely gotta
stay freeware.

The only commercial deals we have really endorsed are two items:the RTC
books, and the Official/IRTC CDs.  The key reasons are: A) They were
initiated and managed by long standing team members whom we know and trust.
B) They had contributed so much to the team that if anyone deserved to make
some money then they did. C) They agreed to put some of the profit back into
the team.  D) They put sufficient effort into the money-making venture that
they really EARNED the money and they weren't making money off our freeware.

So anyway, I think if you hadn't turned up volunteering, we'd have been
recruiting someone to help with tutorials anyway.  I think we can work
something out.  But 75% of the above information is just my opinion.  Its
all really up to the team to decide.  As you'll see in a day or so, the team
has a full agenda coming up.  It may be a day or two until we're ready to
even discuss this.  We all kinda agreed to take a break until after New
Years.
/*--- End Quote ---*/

Then, Jan 22 ( I didn't find out till yesterday, BTW -- shows how often I
check my CompuSmurf mail ), Chris wrote:

       Sorry its taken so long to get back to you but I've been very busy
with POV & non-POV work lately.
        The team has approved the idea of splitting our docs into separate
tutorial and reference sections.  We are giving you permission to rewrite
and expand our existing tutorial and to continue to call it an official
POV-Team product.  You may recruit help as needed.  We'll work to keep you
posted on progress on 3.5 so that you can add its features as they become
finalized.

        Two editorial requests have come up.  Although we want to give you
freedom to develop this as you wish, I hope you'll give this serious
consideration.
        1) The team feels strongly that the tutorial be 100% generic and
have no platform-specific material at all.  For example the section on
bicubic_patch is based entirely on using Moray and is highly Windows/MS-Dos
specific.  That needs to be eliminated.  Also examples involving utilities
such as DTA, QuickTime, or other platform-specific tools should be avoided.
As a separate project, you might develop platform-specific tutorials or
faq's but do not scatter lots of platform-specific content throughout the
main tutorials.  Even suggestions like "Render at 320x240 then when
finished, do 640x480" are somewhat platform-specific.  Say low res or high
res and even then, such advice better belongs in some general stratigy
section than scattered throughout the text.

        2) This is just my personal feeling... Our original tutorial started
assuming you knew nothing.  It never used a feature before it had been
explained.  You don't make example #1 be a sphere with a phong highlight
unless you introduced the finish{} statement first.  You avoid saying "do
this, this, and this because I say so and I'll explain later."  You say here
is a coordinate system.  This is a vector.  Use it to locate a sphere.  Then
locate a camera (use location, angle, look_at only).  Then a light source.
Don't try to teach it all at once.  Unfortunately for 3.0 we decided every
topic needed a tutorial (not a bad idea) and that the outline of the
tutorial exactly match the outline of the reference section (a VERY BAD
IDEA).  The thought was that a user wanted a tutorial on say...
height_fields.  They had a choice of reference or tutoral to look at and it
was organized the same way.  For current users learning a new feature,
perhaps such stand-alone, one-topic tutorials are ok.  But for novices it
sucks.  You don't organize tutorials the same way you do a reference.
Tutorials must flow.  Our current tutorial teaches bicubic_patch before box
& cone because it comes first alphabetically!  That's stupid!  As Dennis
Miller says after his ranting: "Of course that's just my opinion -- I could
be wrong."
/*-- End Quote --*/

As Well. Ken wrote:

My concern right now is who is going to coordinate this effort ?
Is this a project that even has a life right now ?
I believe it was Twyst that started the discussion but I also
know that he is very busy with several other projects right now.
So busy in fact that he is closing down twysted.net so counting
on him for leadership is probably out of the question.
/* --- End Quote ---*/

This is true. I'm having serious brainmelt at the moment. But after the new
povray.org site is done (soon! soon!) I'll have more free time. I can
certainly set up a website for this -- but I suck at coordination. I'll give
it a whack -- In fact, I had an idea -- a web based job tracking system. But
it's going to have to be on hold for a little while.

Synopsis:
It's been okayed by the pov-team, and as long as we stay within these
guidelines, it will be endorsed by the pov-team. =)

--
Twy### [at] twystednet
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A Social Life?  Where do I download that from?
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