Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> 
> He has also been in these groups for a month, and is
> aware of the Mac group, so a straight forward suggestion to post Mac issues
> there is reasonable, I think.

Without the benefit(?) of cross-platform testing, though, it can be
difficult at best to tell if a problem is platform-specific or not, and
given the (apparently) high portability of the code, it seems reasonable
to me to assume that any given problem of unknown cause is probably XP.

Or should we automatically be assuming that any problem we have is
platform-specific, and post our questions and complaints in the
appropriate group, only moving the discussion to .general after someone
who reads that group, but has alternate platform(s) to test for the
problem, confirms that it is, in fact, XP? Seems a little impractical,
if you ask me.

> The problem is that making a Mac-like alert box to show an error or warning
> out of the POV-Ray text output is not exactly feasible because of the
> console centered design of POV-Ray.

I don't think an alert box is necessary; after all, she did *see* the
error message. I question whether the error message was clear enough for
an ordinary user to understand its meaning, though. I'd be lying if I
said that POV never stumped me with any of its error messages (though
mine tend to be syntax problems).

> > I guess being a developer gives you the right to be as big an asshole as
> > you want.
> 
> No, it does not.  Nor does me being a developer give you as user the right
> to insult me as you want.  And, have I insulted anybody personally so far?

Perhaps not; nevertheless, I feel that you were unnecessarily rude in
your second reply. I don't know what you were trying to accomplish,
other than making the poster look and/or feel like a complete idiot.

> What I do not like is the attitude by some people that they do not even want
> to try to solve the problem by themselves.

Granted. I used to get this all the time, and I know how frustrating it
is. Still, I think your way of handling it was inappropriate. If nothing
else, she obviously took the time to learn the app well enough to create
a complex scene (unless she was using a modeller, but there aren't any
good ones for the Mac IMHO), and it has been acknowledged that POV has a
pretty steep learning curve at first; I think that's enough reason to
cut some slack.

> But no, his attitude of "there is a problem, I don't care if POV-Ray is
> free, just fix it now, I am your customer" is the problem I have with him.

I wasn't aware that being a POV team member required you to answer any
and all technical questions posed by users, let alone immediately;
rather, I'd assumed that, like POV itself, tech support was something
that would be done in your free time, as circumstances allow. Feel free
to correct me if I'm wrong here.

-Xplo

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