"Dudo" <nomail@nomail> wrote in message 
news:web.4af8133e717d7fb2130ab9690@news.povray.org...
> I'd like to ask, if it is possible to be using the POVRAY also for 
> rendering 2D
> pictures, such like 2D charts and color maps.

As already mentioned the answer is Yes. It's possible!
I'd recommend thinking carefully before doing that though.

> Could you give me some
> recommendation, if the POVRAY is useful for such the purpose

It depends what sort of charts and pictures you wish to create and whether 
you plan to use POV-Ray for anything else. If you're planning to generate 3D 
images and want to incorporate the same objects into some sort of 2D 
representations, and if you are already planning to learn (or already know) 
POV-Ray, then it may be appropriate to use it for 2D images. Some folk have 
used it in the past with high ambient levels to create cartoon-like effects. 
I'm currently doing some 2D style elevation maps of the Earth using an 
Orthographic camera, with only ambient lighting and with a color map to give 
different elevations different colors, but then I'm also planning to use the 
same POV-Ray objects for separate 3D representations.

> o if there exists an alternative program for 2D which you know..

There are lots of 2D graphics programs available that are very easy to 
learn. There are different types of application, with each type of 
application being best suited to a particular type of use. There are free 
examples of most of those types of application.  OpenOffice incorporates two 
applications that may be of particular interest to you for generating 2D (or 
fake 3D) charts:

OpenOffice Draw is what's known as a vector graphics application that 
enables you to draw boxes, lines, circles and randomly shaped 2D objects 
with the mouse and to add text with the keyboard. You can add shading to 
each object and 3D effects, such as shadows to objects text. This is a free 
equivalent to commercial presentation packages such as Freelance Graphics 
and Microsoft PowerPoint and enables you to do multi-slide presentations 
with some animation and transitional effects.

OpenOffice Calc is a spreadsheet, mainly for doing calculations, but also 
has a 2D charting function so that you can plot graphs of data held in the 
spreadsheet or calculated using mathematical formulae. This makes it very 
easy to make bar charts, pie charts, line charts and other 2D 
representations of data. You can also very easily switch between different 
representations if you change your mind. Commercial equivalents are Lotus 
123 and MS Excel. You can cut and paste charts from any of these into other 
2D graphics software such as OpenOffice Draw, enabling you to use the best 
features from each application.

Two other free 2D applications you might find handy (depending on exactly 
what you want to do) are Gimp (for photo editing) and Inkscape for 2D 
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) editing.  Inkscape falls into a similar 
category to OpenOffice Draw, but works with SVG files which are freely 
editable text files (a bit like POV-Ray scene files in concept). There are 
quite a lot of free SVG graphics and charts already available on the 
Internet that may avoid you having to start from scratch.

Sorry if I'm telling you stuff you already know, but it's hard to judge the 
level to aim a response at from the question :-)

Regards,
Chris B.

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