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On 05-Oct-08 22:49, Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> If so, why don't you just
>> tell him that and perhaps explain when to use and not to use macros
>> and functions? This is povray.newusers you know.
>
> Yes, but this topic is huge and well covered in the docs, so starting
> there is a very good idea for any new user ;-)
>
I know, but docs are only good if you know what to look for. For an
average person it may take weeks or months to get a feeling for what a
program does and what you may have to look for in the documentation.
Small example from p.o-t: somebody referred to the ??( and ??) as
alternatives for [ and ]. I tried to find that with google and failed. I
am guessing because of not indexing punctuation. You need to know that
these things are called trigraphs to find them. Second example: what
does p.o-t stands for? If you know it is obvious, otherwise you won't
find out until *someone* tells you. (newsgroup povray.off-topic is the
answer in case anyone still wonders ;) ).
I haven't looked into the docs for macros and functions recently (and if
I did I would not be able to judge anymore anyway), but if they behave
like ordinary docs, you can not read them unless you know what is in
there. Mathuin first posted in this group 3 days ago. In general people
wait for at least one or two weeks before posting, so I guess he*
discovered POV about 2-3 weeks ago. There will be a lot of trivial
things he does not know yet, like reading the examples in the source
directories and looking in p.t.s-f and p.t.t for inspiration. You can
blame him for not knowing these things, you can blame him for not even
trying, but that is simply not fair. Friendly point him in the right
direction and he'll study the docs before asking the next question and
he'll be back within two months with a stunning picture. Attack his lack
of knowledge and he won't come back ever again because he'll get the
impression that POV is too difficult for him. We don't want that, do we?
* or she
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