Op 24-7-2023 om 13:23 schreef Bald Eagle:
> "Greg Kennedy" <ken### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> The default POV-Ray camera setting for "right" is a 4:3 ratio, designed to match
>> the default 4:3 output (for 4:3 screens) leading to a 1:1 pixel aspect ratio.
>>
>> A common stumbling block for new users is attempting to render a 16:9 image,
>> which leads to non-square pixels and the output appearing horizontally
>> stretched.  This means a search in the manual until you discover the magic words
>> "right x*ImageWidth/ImageHeight" to produce the desired aspect ratio.
>>
>> The rationale for 4:3 default in the manual FAQ section is pretty thin these
>> days, as people are not rendering Windows XP startup screens any more, and it
>> seems FAR more likely that users will want a 1:1 PAR by default (which they can
>> change if needed for special cases).
>>
>> I suggest for 4.0, that the default for camera Right be automatically set to the
>> same ratio as the requested image output ratio, which means 16:9 resolutions
>> will work "out of the box", and that users wanting an anamorphic ratio should
>> instead tweak Right themselves (overriding the default).
> 
> I, and others completely understand these little things that drive new users
> crazy - since we were all once new users, and sometimes get caught making newbie
> mistakes even now.
> 
> The Insert menu is there to solve many of these problems, along with example
> scenes, and scenes posted my users to the forum.   There kind of is a FAQ that
> covers stuff like this - maybe it should be made more prominent, and maybe a
> VERY simple new user guide should be written walking someone through the various
> necessary and sufficient steps to writing a basic scene.
> 
> The paradox of all of this is that the more you hand them, the less they learn,
> and the more disconnected they get from the HOWs and WHYs of everything - which
> just winds up kicking the stumbling block further down the road.
> 
> The Shadertoy community has some amazing content, and they write ALL of the code
> for ALL of the elements of their scenes from scratch.   Camera, lighting, the
> functions for all of the shapes and colors - everything.
> 
> So, I would say that there ought to be a two-prong approach, one addressing the
> quick and easy copy-paste to speed the creation of a working scene, but with the
> proviso and caveat that the user should work through a more technical version of
> the scene to gain an understanding of WHAT they are doing with the various
> commands, arguments, and values, and WHY.
> 
> Mindlessly plopping text into a .pov file without understanding any of it is a
> sure recipe for greater eventual frustration, when they want to start really
> making nice looking scenes, and still don't for the life of them know HOW.
> 
> 
> That's the just way of things, I guess..
> 
> - BW
> 

A page that can help (new) users is:

https://wiki.povray.org/content/Reference:Keywords

The advantage is that it is the latest up-to-date version, including 
changes related to version 3.8.

For the present topic, the default for right is:

right <image_width/image_height,0,0>

-- 
Thomas

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