In article <3eec650f@news.povray.org>, fabien Henon <fabienhenon@fr> 
wrote:

> - handle multiple files at once : Has the user to select one files among
> others with a mouse-click ?

Both do. jEdit has a buffer menu, tabs, or a buffer selector which 
contains a button for each open file, depending on which plugins you 
use. Emacs can switch buffers with keystrokes when in a console, and has 
similar facilities for switching buffers when using the graphical 
interfaece.


> - Is it possible to choose a predefined resolution without typing +W...
> +H... in a command line ?

This is possible with some simple scripting and an ordinary terminal 
program. With Emacs, you could probably do a fairly sophisticated 
interface in the editor itself, with jEdit a simple plugin should do.


> - Is it possible to choose the quality settings ( from +Q0 to Q9) with a
> mouse click ?

Not "out of the box". Both are customizeable enough to make it possible 
though.


> - Does your editor show you the previously opened POV-Ray files (so that
> you can open them with a mere click) ?

jEdit: yes. Emacs: I don't know if it has a file history or not.


> - Do you have the possiblity to define which area to render (+sc...
> +ec.... ) without the command line

Not out of the box.


> - Does it handle syntax hightlighting well ( I know that Pyvon does not
> do it well either because of speed)

Both handle it quite well.


> - Can you pause, then resume a render ?

The Unix version handles this just fine, the method you use to start it 
doesn't affect it.


> - Can you choose the color for each type of keywords in a simple window
> dialog ?

jEdit: yes. Emacs has a different interface for setting these options, 
but you can enter a "dialog" where you choose the colors.


> - Can you do queue rendering ( render one file then another unattended) ?

Not out of the box.


> As I am not sure that you can answer yes to all the questions above,
> that is why I think POV would 'deserve' a GUI on its own.

Faulty thinking. The existing solutions don't cover 100% of the needs, 
that does not mean you have to go use something else. It should be quite 
easy to build a plugin for jEdit which puts all the rendering options in 
the toolbar, and you would be building on an already highly capable 
editor for the scene files.


> > I like this idea better: create a Cocoa interface, and port it to 
> > GNUStep for other systems.
> Could you tell more about Cocoa ?
> I don't know much about it, but I thought it was a graphical toolkit for 
> Mac OS.X.
> Besides, is it easily portable to other platform ?
> Is it freely available ?

It is one of the primary APIs for Mac OS X, and is pretty much the 
modern OpenStep API. GNUStep is the open source implementation, which 
tries to follow Cocoa as closely as possible. It isn't complete, but 
should be enough for a POV interface.

-- 
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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