Later today (Sunday 23 August), POV-Ray for Windows v3.1 beta 6 will be made
available. Other versions will be posted on the web site as and when they
become available. Full release notes will be provided with the beta. The
changes to POVWIN itself are extensive and will be listed in this newsgroup to
allow users to decide whether or not to download it.

Here is a short extract (which may change before the actual release).

  Quick Summary:
        
    o Added new editor.
    o Added rubberband mode to render window for selection of render region.
    o Added auto-load of file if there's a parse error (goes to line and col).
    o Modified the way the insert menu works. It's now like the 'Start Menu'.
    o Removed a bunch of stuff that was a legacy of our (now gone) Win32s mode.
    
  o The editor is extensively customisable. It utilises syntax highlighting and
    understands .POV and .INC files as being in POV syntax. You can change the
    colour settings used from the properties dialog (ALT-ENTER). It also has
    built-in syntax highlighting for C, C++, Java, Basic, Pascal and SQL.
    
  o Here's a quick editor feature summary. Please inspect the editor menus to
    gain a better understanding of its available features, until such time as
    the new docs are written.
    
    o Syntax highlighting.
    o Keystroke macros. These are preserved across sessions.
    o Optional auto-save which, if turned on, saves changed files periodically.
    o Brace matching is available (cursor must be on a brace when you do it).
    o Block indent/undent
    o Tabify/untabify
    o Customisable colours.
    o Most key bindings are customisable (not all, just most).
    o Smart case preservation in replace operations.
    o Up to 10 bookmarks.
    o Optional auto-reload of changed files (not yet implemented).
    o Multiple views of the one file (via splits).
    o OLE drag and drop between the editor and other programs.
    o Optional smooth-scrolling.
    o Intellimouse support.
    o Column selection (control-leftbutton and drag).
    o Up to 32 edit sessions.
    o MRU list also tracks the line, column, language, tab and indent settings.
      
Renderer bugs fixed since beta.5

 Made density{color COLOR} legal mostly for use in density_map
 Made pigment{average color_map{}} illegal
 Fixed old bezier type 0 bug
 Eliminated negative strength blobs from bounding slab calculation
 Fixed hfield divide by zero bug on some platforms which didn't trap
 Added some missing identifier types as macro parameters
 Fixed mosaic preview overflow on odd size images
 Implemented material{} statement.
   MATERIAL:
     material{[MATERIAL_IDENTIFIER][MATERIAL_ITEMS...]}
   MATERIAL_ITEMS:
     TEXTURE  |  INTERIOR
  Example
   #declare MyGlass=material{texture{Glass_T} interior{Glass_I}}
   object{MyObject material{MyGlass}}
 Fixed problem with media and no light sources.
 Fixed memory leak in mesh
 Fixed erronious missing pigment in fully textured mesh
 Fixed repeat warp flip bug from 3.02
 Fixed multi-dimension array initializer bug
 Fixed multi-density in declared media bug

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