In article <3A286D04.A7BD3287@mac.com> , Dawn McKnight <mck### [at] maccom> 
wrote:

> I beg your pardon, sir.  I have read the documentation fairly
> thoroughly;

Unfortunately I cannot grand your request for a full pardon.  Let me quote
the POV-Ray Mac documentation, page 26:

>>
Output Image Memory
POV-Ray tries to store the output Preview image entirely in application RAM
memory while rendering.  Because the image requires approximately Width x
Height x 4 bytes of memory, sometimes this is not possible.  For example, a
640 x 480 pixel image needs about 1.25 megabytes of RAM.  When POV-Ray
finds that it can not hold the image in RAM, it will start saving parts of
it in a temporary disk file, and swap it in to a smaller RAM buffer in
rectangular chunks.  This lets you create very large images with limited
RAM, at the cost of slower rendering time and more disk I/O.  This is
referred to in POV-Ray Mac as the "Image Buffer" or IB.  To avoid increased
wear and tear on your hard disk, and to speed up rendering times on large
images, you can allocate more application memory to POV-Ray, to reduce the
use of the Image Buffer disk swapping. If you do not have enough memory in
your Mac and the IB is used heavily, you can speed things up a lot and
reduce RAM and disk space usage a lot by turning off the Preview Window when
it renders.  You can do this by opening the Render Settings dialog, and
going to the Preview pane, and turning  off "Show Preview."
<<

As the error message you cite clearly states "Could not create image
buffer.", you obviously never read the documentation, or looked in the
Render Preferences dialog Preview pane where you find a "Image buffer cache
size" slider.

Thus, I stand to my earlier "RTFM".

> I do not recall seeing a listing of cryptic error codes such
> as -108 listed anywhere in it.  If you would be kind enough to point out
> to me where that is, I shall refrain from bothering you in the future.

You can download the whole list here:
<http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macos8/ResultCodeTable/ResultCodes.pdf>

Further, you may have noticed that I did not refer to "(Error: -108)", which
is just a hint for me in case of a real problems to find out where exactly
the error is happening if I cannot reproduce it on my system.

In your case there are actually two errors because you are out of memory.
First the "File init error." which simply says that the internal buffer for
the output image file and thus the file itself could not be created. Second
the display image buffer, which requires a lot of memory as well, cannot be
created.

> Again, I beg your pardon.  I did not realize this was a macintosh
> specific question; I believed it to be generated by POV's renderer, and

Thus, I stand to my earlier "RTFM", or maybe even "RTFD" (D for Dialog box).

And maybe the - 20 or so? - clear explanations in the documentation how lack
of memory assigned to POV-Ray will cause complex scenes to fail to render
were not enough?  RTFM!!!

> thus, to be a platform independent question.  Add to that the fact that
> p.macintosh is used /very/ sparsely, and perhaps you will perceive my
> reluctance to post this question there.

Yes, because it is for Mac issues, not general discussion!  If you do not
post Mac issues there (through people have always received helpful responses
there, haven't they?), how are there going to be any responses there?

I assumed you have been to these groups long enough to have read
povray.announce.frequently-asked-questions "Welcome To the POV-Ray News
Groups".  In case you have not (which seems to be the case), I strongly
suggest to read all the messages in that group - it also explains why it
helps if you let people know the platform you are running POV-Ray on...

> However, I realize that you are a busy person, and I therefore excuse
> you from reading any further posts from me, as no doubt, they will turn
> out to be horrendous wastes of your time, just as this one was.

Thank you for being so generous!  After all, all the team did was develop,
compile, debug and distribute it to you for free, in our spare time - so we
really appreciate user feedback like yours, it motivates us every day to
spend our free time and continue our development.


    Thorsten


____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich
e-mail: mac### [at] povrayorg

I am a member of the POV-Ray Team.
Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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