Am 17.01.2011 21:14, schrieb Gyscos:
> I know, and understand that the ability to control the aspect ratio is
> important, but I'm talking about the default behavior here :
> If someone creates a scene, and wants only a small part of it to be visible,
> then explicitly entering the desired aspect ratio in the camera makes more sense
> than relying on the default settings. On the other hand, for quick and short
> scene, it is much more practical to have the default settings adapt to the image
> size.
>
> Also, the 4:3 ratio is really not so frequent, especially when using POV-Ray to
> render images to be used by another program (which is its main use in the lab
> I'm working for).
>
> I completely agree with the link about aspect ratio issue, and I think a
> command-line argument for pixel ratio could be an elegant idea to easily fix
> anamorphic issues. I just don't understand the default setting.

The default setting has been around probably since the days POV-Ray was 
still named DKB-trace, and back then the setting was just taken for 
granted because /every/ computer display (except for a few extremely 
exotic ones) used a 4:3 aspect ratio - even when the number of pixels 
would nowadays seem to imply otherwise (e.g. 320x200 CGA, 640x350 EGA, 
320x200 MCGA, or even 1280x1024 SXGA). Back then, non-square pixels were 
actually quite common, whereas non-4:3 aspect ratios were rare exceptions.

The reason that this default has never been changed is pretty simple: 
Backward compatibility.

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