Thomas Willhalm wrote:

> In my humble opinion, I suspect this not to work. Probably, there will
> be a lot of people saying "That's a great idea!" or perhaps even
> "I could write something about *". Some months later, almost nothing
> will have happened and interest will have decreased to zero.
> 
> I have several reasons to believe this:
> - Most ambitious projects I know have gone this way.
> - When someone is able and wants to write an advanced tutorial, (s)he
>   would probably have done it.
> - Why should someone write a tutorial, simply because there is now a
>   central place? The major strength of the web is the fact, that it
>   isn't centralized. A good tutorial will became famous anyway (and will
>   certainly be referenced by Ken's link page).
> - A site that suggest itself to provide the central page is www.povray.org.

  You raise a lot of valid points and unfortunately I have to agree with
most of them. The single greatest problem will be getting contributors.
As with anyone else I have little time for writing tutorials what with
a job, the time I spend on raytracing, a major links project, real life,
and helping people here in the groups. I find I have little time left for
scholarly pursuits.

  I also believe that these groups here do a great job of acting as an
advanced tutorial because of their interactive nature. If you want to
do something, but don't know how, posting a message here asking about
specifics will almost always get results, and within 24 hrs. This kind
of resource could not possibly be duplicated by a single tutorial or
even a few tutorials which will tend to be specific to one feature of
Pov and could never approach the full coverage available here.

 There is a real strong need for some decent media and radiosity
tutorials which seem to confuse just about everyone. Beyond that
the docs do a pretty good job as well as the other basic tutorials
already written dealing with the basics of the program.

 I too am not against the idea in principal but the practicalities
of it do not bode well for such a project.

-- 
Ken Tyler -  1200+ Povray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/

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