In article <3e598261@news.povray.org>,
 "Joseph Zeglinski" <JAZ### [at] rogerscom> wrote:

> (1) I asked for HELP on the "Newusers" group, because I mistakenly thought it
> was meant for newbies on POVRAY, like myself. If that is the case, based on
> the replies, I am in the wrong group - is there a "tiny tots for POVRAY"
> group?

It's just generally assumed that the manual is the first place people 
will look. That's why it exists, and is included with every distribution 
of POV-Ray.


>     Well...yes... I downloaded the POVRAY Tutorial (because after a half day's
> search on the internet and local bookstores, I couldn't find a POVRAY book,
> still in print, even a used one,  to buy. Then I read through all of the
> discussions on the POVRAY documentation group, etc. trying to find out if a
> book was in the works. Discovered they aren't organized enough to answer at
> this time, perhaps ever. Still no strlen() answer... so I looked through the
> help file ... without much luck ( I must have missed it, I guess? damned
> bi-focals).

I don't know what you downloaded. The manual is not separately available 
in an easily downloadable form, and there is no document called anything 
like "The POV-Ray Tutorial".
As for books...there are none that deal with a recent version of 
POV-Ray, and they would be unlikely to cover the strlen() function 
anyway...it's already documented in the manual.


>     O.K. Needed to get out the heavy artillary - needed to print out (computer
> screens are for propeller heads)  the TUTORIAL for POVRAY 3.5 - strange name
> for a tombe of 782 pages - needs to be renamed  THE MANUAL or the BIBLE.
> Inkjet....forget it. My old Laserjet-2 ... life is too short.

If you are talking about the document that came with POV-Ray, that *is* 
the manual, it just contains 2 tutorials. And it would be easier to 
search the electronic version than hunt through a hard copy.
Printing the manual takes a lot of paper, ink, and time, you miss out on 
any corrections, plus you would need to re-print it for POV updates. I 
initially printed large chunks of the manual twice, found I never used 
the hard copies, and gave up on it.


> To my dismay, this turkey ... has no INDEX to scan for a topic quickly. Did
> you guys forget something after putting the tombe to bed?

It's designed as an electronic document. Page numbers are pretty 
useless, it uses hyperlinks.


> (4) Finally ... no one actually took the effort to simply copy the strlen()
> syntax statement into a reply.
> And I thought everybody was so expert in such a simple task.

Well, you pretty much used it in your original message. strlen(STRING)


>     I really enjoyed the serious sessions of navel gazing ...or is it navel
> grazing...that this question provoked. It might end up improving the
> documentation ... perhaps by adding something like an INDEX section? Reading
> the replies, I certainly learned a lot about the intricacies of language
> structure, and how poorly the documentation in POVRAY is considered, by some.

An index of the type you are looking for wouldn't really be very useful. 
The manual *does* have an index (surprisingly enough, with the title of 
"Index"), but it does not use page numbers, it uses section numbers and 
hyperlinks, as is appropriate for a document intended to be read 
electronically.


>     Then again... maybe I should have hunted for THE MANUAL instead of the
> TUTORIAL at the POVRAY website. Or perhaps, have downloaded the POVRAY source
> code, and skimmed through it - surely would have found a strlen() something.
> My mistake, I just took the "obviously" easy way out.

I don't know where you got "THE TUTORIAL". There is no tutorial document 
remotely like what you describe, so you must be speaking of some version 
of the manual, and probably an old version because the new one isn't 
downloadable separately. Finding the current manual is quite easy: go to 
povray.org, click Documentation, or just find it in your POV-Ray 
installation.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

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