Hi,

The new version sais this:

The MS-DOS version contains ASCII documentation (with no
     graphics). It no longer contains the POV-Help system.

Is this true regarding the final vesion, or just the beta? Because I
kinda liked the POV-Help system.

Guy

Post a reply to this message

>Is this true regarding the final vesion, or just the beta? Because I
>kinda liked the POV-Help system.

POV-Help is no longer being maintained. All the new documentation is being
developed in Word and converted to the other formats from there. While POV-Help
had its good points, there was too much work involved in writing converters to
other formats that we now have available to us (e.g. PDF and Word 97 itself).

This makes printing nice docs much easier.

Post a reply to this message

povray.org admin team <new### [at] DESPAMpovrayorg> wrote:
: POV-Help is no longer being maintained.

  I am really disappointed! Please don't torture me this way. POV-Help and
a good editor (I use Qedit) is the best way to make hand-written pov files
(at least in DOS). Without POV-Help it's extremely tedious.
  I have a terrible premonition: The support for the dos help has ended. What
comes next? Of course povray itself. I envision the world after a couple of
years: Povray 4.0 is released... but the dos version is no longer supported.
People like me, without any chance to buy a machine with win95 or unix, will
not be able to use povray anymore.
  Will this end this way?

  I really need the POV-Help program. I can't live without it. Please...

-- 
                                                              - Warp. -

Post a reply to this message

Maybe someone (maybe even myself if I find the time) could write a
little program to convert between HTML or something to something similar
to the pov-help system, which must also be created by that someone.

Guy

Nieminen Mika wrote:
> 
> povray.org admin team <new### [at] DESPAMpovrayorg> wrote:
> : POV-Help is no longer being maintained.
> 
>   I am really disappointed! Please don't torture me this way. POV-Help and
> a good editor (I use Qedit) is the best way to make hand-written pov files
> (at least in DOS). Without POV-Help it's extremely tedious.
>   I have a terrible premonition: The support for the dos help has ended. What
> comes next? Of course povray itself. I envision the world after a couple of
> years: Povray 4.0 is released... but the dos version is no longer supported.
> People like me, without any chance to buy a machine with win95 or unix, will
> not be able to use povray anymore.
>   Will this end this way?
> 
>   I really need the POV-Help program. I can't live without it. Please...
> 
> --
>                                                               - Warp. -

Post a reply to this message

Guy Rauscher <rau### [at] netvisionnetil> wrote:
: Maybe someone (maybe even myself if I find the time) could write a
: little program to convert between HTML or something to something similar
: to the pov-help system, which must also be created by that someone.

  I have understood that the pov-help program just reads a help file. It
should be enough to make a html to pov-help file format converter... or
something like that.

-- 
                                                              - Warp. -

Post a reply to this message

Basically, it should, but I don't know the format and besides I remember
that it had bugs here and there. It might be better to create a whole
new program altogether. But then again, its the choise of whoever does
it.


Nieminen Mika wrote:
> 
> Guy Rauscher <rau### [at] netvisionnetil> wrote:
> : Maybe someone (maybe even myself if I find the time) could write a
> : little program to convert between HTML or something to something similar
> : to the pov-help system, which must also be created by that someone.
> 
>   I have understood that the pov-help program just reads a help file. It
> should be enough to make a html to pov-help file format converter... or
> something like that.
> 
> --
>                                                               - Warp. -

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 06 Jul 1998 00:19:08 -0700, Guy Rauscher
<rau### [at] netvisionnetil> wrote:

>Basically, it should, but I don't know the format and besides I remember
>that it had bugs here and there. It might be better to create a whole
>new program altogether. But then again, its the choise of whoever does
>it.

How about Lynx?

Post a reply to this message

It comes down to time. Members of the POV-Team have very limited time available
to them and we had to find a better way to do docs. If we had to spend more
time fiddling around with documentation converters we'd have less time to put
features into POV-Ray.

Post a reply to this message

In article <35A### [at] netvisionnetil>, rau### [at] netvisionnetil says...
>
>Maybe someone (maybe even myself if I find the time) could write a
>little program to convert between HTML or something to something similar
>to the pov-help system, which must also be created by that someone.
>
>Guy

Pov-Help sources and format specs are freely avaliable, if I remember correct,
so, if someone(s) wants to unofficially continue to support it, it could be 
done...

Post a reply to this message

povray.org admin team <new### [at] DESPAMpovrayorg> wrote:
: It comes down to time. Members of the POV-Team have very limited time available
: to them and we had to find a better way to do docs. If we had to spend more
: time fiddling around with documentation converters we'd have less time to put
: features into POV-Ray.

  Yes, I understand that.
  I'm sorry about the complaining. I know it's not fair to demand something
like this since you all are making a great job with povray itself.
  But the lack of the pov-help program is a big deprivation to me. The
program has two very useful features: it's a hypertext-like viewer, which
makes it very easy to find help about something, and definitely the best
feature (at least to me as a DOS user) is the popup-property by pressing
a hotkey combination (like alt-esc in my case) during editing. It's an
extremely useful feature that you just put the cursor over the keyword
you want to see help about in your text editor and press alt-esc and then
the help pops up.
  I am a DOS user because I just can't afford a machine which can run win95
or whatever. That's the reason why I make all the povray editing in DOS.
With pov-help and qedit it's very handy. It's a lot like the borland c and
pascal dos-editors (where you can press ctrl-F1 to pop up help about a
keyword) which I like a lot.
  Now all the help is just one text file. It's really heavy to read and
qedit is unable to load it entirely (it still has the damned 640k limitation).
Also searching help about a specific keyword is a lot more difficult.
  A partial solution should be to download the windows help file and read it
with windows 3.1, but that doesn't solve the problem about the lack of a
handy online help which you can just pop up when the cursor is over the word
you want to see help. And besides, "povraying" under win3 is just a pain.

-- 
                                                              - Warp. -

Post a reply to this message