> Well, Linux is the only system to which I have unfettered access.

	That was meant to be a criticism  :-)

> Thanks, I'd been hoping for input on this.

	Actually I already contributed several months ago some autoconf
code to test compiler flags, but apparently it didn't catch attention.
Since compiling problems were recurrent (particularly on the odd IRIX
system) I though it was time to contribute a bit more. Sadly I don't
have much time to do more right now...

 >> 1) Any compilation flag is now checked at configuration time instead
 >>     of being hard-written in the Makefile.
> This had been on my todo list...

	So here it is. Look at acinclude.m4 for details. This is
some quick adaptation of code I wrote for my own developpments, so
there might be flaws.

>>3) A --disable-shared option is added for linking with static libraries
>>    instead of shared libraries (default).
> This had also been on my todo list.

	Shamelessly borrowed from related libtool's code. Then again
it's not much tested but on Linux and IRIX archs.

> Are you willing to submit bits of this to the official version?

	Sure. Feel free to take anything that suits.

> Your "missing" script is GPL.

	Not only it: config.guess and config.sub are also.
	I know it can be a problem with povlegal, but I'm not going
to rewrite those scripts (or re-invente the wheel, which I actually
do quite often because it's FUN), especially for all those machine-
related tweaks...

>>* Libpng seems to be an issue at least on IRIX
> Makes sense.  If we know for a fact that, for example, POV-Ray won't
> compile (or otherwise won't work) with certain older versions, we can
> include that in the documentation and ideally have the configure script
> notice that and whine as well.  You can igore the docs more easily than
> the configure script. ;-)

	I guess a test should be straightforward. Since libpng-1.2.3
there is a libpng-config script. IIRC this is at the same time that
-lpng is actually -lpng12. Previous release are all -lpng I guess,
so the only test to do would be to check for libpng-config and
what it returns when present.

> Also on todo.  I'm going to need a somewhat broken development environment
> to test that. ;-)

	I had to install jpeg-6b on my linux box -- initially RedHat 7.2
but augmented a lot by custom installs  :-)  -- and also under IRIX.
So I'll test for this one.

>>* I guess only GNU make will work correctly (untested others make's).
> I've heard a bug report that one of the lines in one of the Makefiles is
> too long for some make versions.

	On IRIX it was even worse, since I could basically compile
nothing "descent" like gcc-3.x with the make provided by SGI. As soon
as GNU make was installed, everything became _much_ better (while not
perfect, of course).

>>* An option should be provided to customize DISTRIBUTION_MESSAGE_2
>>instead of the default "user@machine" replacement.
> Agreed, though the default is a good default.  For my own personal use,
> I'd be potentially interested in a flag I can use to generate an
> "official" blurb.  It's not particulary hard to reverse engineer that
> section of the code, so I don't think there's a problem with it being
> released to the public, so long as it's not the default.

	I do this directly in autoconf.ac (provided in the tar file).
It's purely sh code. In principle I should create a Makefile target
for that and give a src/optout.h.in, but I was lazy  ;-)

	On the same topic, I wonder whether it's actually required
to create all those Makefile's for scenes/ scripts/ and so on. Have
to investigate it cannot install all without a Makefile in each
sub-directory. But that's not priority.


	BTW, glad to hear about your opinion, Mark  :-)
	- NC

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