In article <36e5113f.0@news.povray.org> , "Rudy Velthuis" 
<rve### [at] gmxnet> wrote:

> As most users do NOT have access to Compuserve, I think he (and I also)
> consider a POV-Ray version released officially, if it can be downloaded from
> the web page on www.povray.org and announced in these newsgroups.

Well, the team is based on CompuServe, its our official _home_ and you can
get access to it (of course, CompuServe takes money for it...).
And these newsgroups are no official team support area (see
http://www.povray.org/groups.html), the CompuServe POVRAY forum is.

> If the bump_map bug can easily be fixed (it appears to be), why not
> re-compile and put a fixed 3.1d (or whatever you call it) on the web page?

Please note that _only_ the DOS 3.1e version is there yet. No other platform
version.

A lot of (often repeated) reasons:
- This is (usually) out hobby.
- CompuServe is the home of the team.
- CompuServe provides the forum, the team gives something in return: Users
visiting and downloading from it. If no users come to the forum, there won't
be a forum much longer...
- Making a _lot_ of different versions available (some are still 3.02, some
3.1a, some 3.1d and others 3.1e) increases the time needed for support.
- Updating the web for each version is some work, and doing so for each
version update that is ready is even more work.
- It is not just recompiling! The docs need to be updated, some basic
testing needs to be done, the archives need to be prepared and tested, etc,
etc...


     Thorsten

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