Tom Melly wrote in message <37168849.0@news.povray.org>...
>which of the newsgroups are considered the most appropriate for asking for
>help or information. General has a nice informal feel and it seems a shame
>to clutter it up with too many pleas and questions. Newbies is always an
>option, but it would be muddying the waters to ask about matrix, vnormalize
>and such-like. Tutorials looks like the best bet, judging from the posts,
>but the title implies something else (although admittedly similiar).
>
>Does an  informal etiquette exist? Does anyone know what it is? Could this
>be a queue for a faq? (and what is vnormalize?)
>


IMO, the only etiquette is your common netiquette. The rest is somewhat
subjective and also depends on what kind of a reply you expect. When ask
post in .newusers, people will assume that you are exactly that - a new
user - and will (hopefully) try to base their replies on that assumption. In
.general, you can expect more technical replies which assume a certain
familiarity with POV.

As for vnormalize:
vnormalize(V) returns a vector, which has the same direction as V, but is
exactly 1 POV units long.
It's often useful when you want a vector with the same direction as V, but
with a specific length, say, 5.5 units. You would do it like this:
vnormalize(V)*5.5

Multiplying a vector changes its length while preserving its direction.
Adding to a vector basically changes its offset, while preserving its
length.

But I'm deviating from the original question here.

Margus

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