In article <3fe58034@news.povray.org>,
 "Tim Nikias v2.0" <tim.nikias (@) nolights.de> wrote:

> I've learned at the university that you begin with 0.x until you've got the
> first stable release, that'll be 1.0 then. Patches and updates to that go
> along with 1.0.x and 1.x.x. If the main core of the system is exchanged with
> a compete rewrite from scratch, that's when 2.x.x comes into play. But it's
> a little hazy to remember, was a few years ago. Thorsten posted a link once
> which explained the version-number-system POV-Ray uses. Do you have it?

I don't have a reference to what Thorsten posted. However, #.#.X updates 
are bug fixes, #.X updates are minor updates with new features but no 
major changes, and X.0 updates are major updates with large additions or 
changes. A bug fix or minor update will rarely affect backwards 
compatibility, a major update is more likely to do so. A total rewrite 
is a major update, but not all major updates involve total rewrites.


> That all sounds really nice. How about a ray which will output the same
> color as it would when being rendered? Sort of like an inbuilt camera? If it
> shoots rays at the surface where there's supposed to be the camera-pigment
> itself, it could just return black, or some other texture (and black is just
> default).

It is not possible to trace a ray in the scene until after parsing is 
done. Aside from the fact that once you added something to the scene 
based on the results, you will have potentially changed those results, 
it would require doing things like radiosity, photon mapping, and other 
post-parse, pre-render steps, every time you used this feature.


> But my point was: several enhancements are nice, but I'm only in the
> position of making suggestions. I can't code that good myself (yet, perhaps)
> and I can't tell anyone what to do on a project like this. I'm grateful for
> every little feature which I can use and rely on, but if, for example, the
> proximity-pattern wouldn't be implemented in the first release, I wouldn't
> blame anyone.

Hmm, just thought I should clarify something: I don't even know if my 
updated proximity pattern or other patches will make it into the next 
MegaPOV, let alone the official POV 4.0.
BTW, I just finished another pattern: voronoi. It is basically a version 
of the crackle pattern that allows you to specify the points used to 
generate the pattern. It allows some nice effects...I'll post some 
images later, but transferring them from my development machine will be 
a pain. (Long story short: I usually have them linked by ethernet, but I 
don't have an ethernet cable.)

-- 
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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