As a possible future extension to the Linux/Unix version of
POV-Ray 3.6, I'm pleased to announce/release a patch which provides
support for the Linux framebuffer display.  This patch therefore
adds another possible preview method to the existing text, X Window
and SVGAlib (Linux only) displays.
	This patch to povray-3.6.1 for Unix is at an early development
stage (version 0.1) and is considered BETA code.  It was only tested
with 16bpp color depth display (65536 colors) at 1024x768, but it should
also work with 32bpp color depth (16 M + alpha) and at any other screen
resolution.  This release is aimed at testing the patch in as many
different situations as possible in order to detect major problems.

	Features currently (hopefully) supported:

1) 16 and 32bpp color depth at any resolution, either on the console
    screen or under X when the latter uses a framebuffer server*
2) Any preview size with automatic (lossy**) downscaling to fit the
    screen size when necessary
3) Automatic preview centering on screen
4) User abort by pressing the 'q' ('Q') key at any time during
    rendering (but not before) when using +x
5) A small "hidden" feature left as an exercise to the code reader  :-p

*  See p.b.i (same subject) for sample images.
** Simple nearest neighbour downscaling, so when using antialiasing
    the preview might still look harsh; but hey, that's just a preview
    afterall...

	Caveats:

a) This is quick-n-dirty BETA code, not much tested yet; it might
    blow up your computer if you are not friendly with it
b) Should support any screen depth
c) Dirty your screen, in particular under X, so you have to
    clean it yourself, e.g. by moving windows around
d) Other problems to be noticed when they'll be discovered  ;-)

	The patch is available as:

- a diff file to apply to a clean povray-3.6.1/ directory
     http://pov4grasp.free.fr/download/povray-3.6.1-fbdev-0.1.diff.gz (8 KB)
   Uncompress the file in the parent directory of povray-3.6.1/
   and run  'patch -pO < povray-3.6.1-fbdev-0.1.diff'
   then build the program as usual.

- or an archive file that contains only added/modified files
     http://pov4grasp.free.fr/download/povray-3.6.1-fbdev-0.1.tar.gz (97 KB)
   Unpack the archive, it creates a directory povray-3.6.1-fbdev-0.1/
   Then copy the directory content to your povray-3.6.1/ folder and
   build the program as usual.

	Note: this patch also contains two bugfixes to the 3.6.1 configure
script which could make the configuration fail and/or prevented the SVGAlib
to be used under Linux (the 3.6.1 official Linux binary also has this
problem).  They will be included in the future official 3.6.2 release.

	Have fun testing  :-)
	- NC

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