Pavel,

a question similar to yours (but it was a request and not an offer :)
) has been brought up in these groups. It concerned the exsistance of
a POV-Ray source code guide or manual. I think it was Chris Cason
(POV-Ray Team Coordinator) who summed up, "if you find one, let us
know :)."

All patch writers have to do it the hard way (is there an easy one?).
Fortunately, the source is well written and generally well documented,
but some things can only be found through trial and error. A guide to
the internal structure of POV would be of great use.

It is quite a hard task but in no case one without purpose. You
mention that you initially learned POV by its source. I know a lot of
programmers, and some good one, I dare say, but this is amazing! I
mean, the source is several megabytes big! Anyway, to me this
indicates that a) you are a Good Programmer™ and b) you know the
internals of POV quite well.

Chris Huff started writing a tutorial on writing patches, you might
want to look into it. It's the last post in povray.binaries.tutorials
. Other users frequenting this server have good programming skills,
too, but whether they would be willing to donate time and brain cells
to this project I may not and can not tell.

This project is likely to take a lot of time and hard work. Be aware
that POV-Ray 4.0 (the major version after the next one) will be
completely rewritten in C++. This may effectively render all the work
and time invested useless.

I can not help you much aside from giving a friendly and supportive
pat on the shoulder, which I am taking the opportunity to do now :) I
can only say that if this project yields real results, they will be
invaluable and of great use to patch writers and why not the Team
themselves?

One last note. This post reflects my own opinions. I do not speak for
the POV-Team (which I can not do anyway) nor for the TAG.


Peter Popov
pet### [at] usanet
ICQ: 15002700

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