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Do we need to rewrite the whole thing? Or would it be alright to create a supplement?
--just asking... I suppose if the intent is to give new users more assistance
with certain aspects of POV-Ray, rewriting the thing and keeping it with the
official binaries would be good, but it would still be easier to just gather
additions to the current manual. ...wouldn't it?
-Mark R.
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Can't argue with the usefulness of this. A number of tutorials are available
on the net (including, of course, your excellent page), but it would be nice
to have them bundled into one central archive.
If it's gonna be a group project, I'd be happy to donate my 3 ounces of of
experience (Is that a lot? Dunno, I'm used to the metric system :))
A couple of things that (in my opinion) need extensive coverage:
* media - probably most important, since the possibile applications are
innumerable and yet very difficult to achieve;
* lighting - imperative for a realistic/artistic scene, but also very
difficult to get right;
* loops, conditionals etc. - they can do so much more than strings of spheres,
if you know how;
* materials - again, very difficult to get right without knowing some tricks;
* radiosity - the settings are somewhat difficult to understand and it's
difficult to make a particular scene look good.
Margus
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Mark Radosevich wrote in message <3682FCEC.FC49E97D@randolph.spa.edu>...
>Do we need to rewrite the whole thing? Or would it be alright to create a
supplement?
>--just asking... I suppose if the intent is to give new users more
assistance
>with certain aspects of POV-Ray, rewriting the thing and keeping it with
the
>official binaries would be good, but it would still be easier to just
gather
>additions to the current manual. ...wouldn't it?
>
>-Mark R.
Well, it depends.
Some cases, the manual is very good..
(look at chapter 4)
In others, it's very sparse (Vectors, media, etc,etc)
Also, does anyone here actually use/understand the graphs they give (like
for the scattering types) -- Yes, it can be useful, but without a detailed
explanation ( in layman's terms, not mathematical) It's pretty useless to
me. I usually just skip right over them.
Renderings SHOWING the effects of the different settings would be far more
useful, imho.
It's also to avoid infringing on copyrights (as of this moment.. I haven't
heard "yes" or "no" about using the pov-ray documentation as a base)
Twyst
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Twyst <twy### [at] twysted net> wrote:
: 2. Make it available in a number of formats, from plain text to PDF format.
Including povhelp format, of course.
--
main(i){char*_="BdsyFBThhHFBThhHFRz]NFTITQF|DJIFHQhhF";while(i=
*_++)for(;i>1;printf("%s",i-70?i&1?"[]":" ":(i=0,"\n")),i/=2);} /*- Warp. -*/
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My 2 centimes (until Dec 31, 1999)
I don't think it's necessary to rewrite the help file, which is very good on the
whole. However, I completely agree that there's a lot to do... Povray has become
so powerful that my lingering "fear" is to see it becoming more
programmer-oriented than user-oriented. But that's another debate...
Perhaps we can distinguish between what would be the enhancement of the current
help (basically a more practical tutorial on media, macros, and radiosity, that
could be integrated in the present help), and an "applied tips" section (how to
get better lighting, how to do realistic skies, water, how to make a tree with a
recursive macro etc.) fed by users.
Gilles Tran
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A friend of mine suggested that we try to cover the gap caused by the
absence of "Ray Tracing Creations" --- Maybe do a much updated version of
that. IE.. as Gilles Tran said - A supplemental volume, that while not
encompassing the pov-ray docs, DOES go through and expand on topics, like an
indepth on CSG, beziers, etc,etc...
If the Pov-Team says "Don't use the povray docs.." we might look at doing
this. Or maybe do this from the start... After all, at the moment, nothing
is set in stone. This is just tossing ideas around right now. =)
Twyst
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Twyst wrote:
>
> A friend of mine suggested that we try to cover the gap caused by the
> absence of "Ray Tracing Creations" --- Maybe do a much updated version of
> that. IE.. as Gilles Tran said - A supplemental volume, that while not
> encompassing the pov-ray docs, DOES go through and expand on topics, like an
> indepth on CSG, beziers, etc,etc...
>
> If the Pov-Team says "Don't use the povray docs.." we might look at doing
> this. Or maybe do this from the start... After all, at the moment, nothing
> is set in stone. This is just tossing ideas around right now. =)
>
> Twyst
I've kept quite on this waiting to see where it might go
opion wise and from what I have seen so far indicates leaving
the docs alone and writing a comprehensive Pov tutorial. A good
place to start would be based on the Pov VFAQ and of course the
areas already mentioned needing further clarification.
It's my impression there is a lot left lacking in the docs but
there are also a lot of misconceptions about what the program will
and will not do. Perhaps this project could also touch on these
subjects as well. Having this supplement bundled with the program
might be a good idea but would need authorization from the Pov team
and they would have to agree with the content. That shouldn't be a
problem if it's well organized and comprehensive in it's approach.
Areas I feel need covered:
1. Media
2. Animation
3. Radiosity
4. The Texture and Pigment process
5. Conditional statments
6. What is in and what is out (the Pov surface normal)
7. CSG operations - goes with above
8. The camera statement - Seems simple now but there was a time ...
9. When to use an external program, include file, etc...
10. How to convert the output from the above to useful syntax in Pov
11. Macros !!!
That's just a few and my poor old fingers are getting tired already.
--
Ken Tyler
tyl### [at] pacbellnet
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On Sat, 26 Dec 1998 18:30:55 -0800, Ken <tyl### [at] pacbellnet> wrote:
>
> I've kept quite on this waiting to see where it might go
>opion wise and from what I have seen so far indicates leaving
>the docs alone and writing a comprehensive Pov tutorial. A good
>place to start would be based on the Pov VFAQ and of course the
>areas already mentioned needing further clarification.
> It's my impression there is a lot left lacking in the docs but
>there are also a lot of misconceptions about what the program will
>and will not do. Perhaps this project could also touch on these
>subjects as well. Having this supplement bundled with the program
>might be a good idea but would need authorization from the Pov team
>and they would have to agree with the content. That shouldn't be a
>problem if it's well organized and comprehensive in it's approach.
>
>Areas I feel need covered:
>
> 1. Media
> 2. Animation
> 3. Radiosity
> 4. The Texture and Pigment process
> 5. Conditional statments
> 6. What is in and what is out (the Pov surface normal)
> 7. CSG operations - goes with above
> 8. The camera statement - Seems simple now but there was a time ...
> 9. When to use an external program, include file, etc...
>10. How to convert the output from the above to useful syntax in Pov
>11. Macros !!!
>
> That's just a few and my poor old fingers are getting tired already.
Like Ken I have held my fire on this subject, although it is one dear
to my heart. I like Ken's idea of a comprehensive Pov tutorial, but I
also think that the basic Pov documentation should be revised on a
regular basis.
In my experience there is no good computer documentation - just some
worse than others. (cf beer ;-) ) Clarity and conciseness are both
extremely important, but are often in conflict and one has to be
balanced against the other. One of my pet Pov documentation gripes is
in the realm of CSG operations. It took me ages and much
experimentation to find out how to use inverse (tremendously useful in
CSG). Nevertheless I think the Pov documentation is very good,
considering it has all been done by voluntary effort (or perhaps
because of this.)
One of the great things about Pov is the ability it gives you to
experiment and quickly find out what works and what doesn't. That
is, until you hit the buffers with media! Unless you have an ultra
fast machine experimentation with media takes forever, as I have found
out trying to generate realistic smoke for my steam loco. So a
comprehensive, well illustrated, tutorial on media would be a boon to
many of us.
In generating documentation (whether tutorial or reference) we are
unlikely to find a paragon who;
a) is an expert in all aspects of PovRay,
b) is able to write simple English well (we have many users who don't
have English as their first language) and
c) can envision all the difficulties a beginner may have.
With the net, however, we have a great opportunity to set up a group
who, communally, have all these virtues. How about an "ego-less"
documentation group? A povray.documentation category of this news
group would be a good start, perhaps split up into the sub-topics Ken
has listed. This category should NOT be the place to post
documentation, but more of a discussion group. Those who were
interested could take whichever section of the documentation they
thought they could improve, or add a tutorial to, and post their
efforts on their own web sites using html and then advise the group of
their efforts. There are, of course, quite a few good such sites
already in existance, and perhaps the first step is to generate a
comprehensive list of these.
Participants would have to accept that others might be able to improve
on their uniquely wonderful efforts, but from what I have seen of this
group I don't think that will be a problem!
Sorry for the long posting!
David
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." Samuel Johnson
dav### [at] cwcomnet
http://www.hamiltonite.mcmail.com
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David Wilkinson wrote:
> Like Ken I have held my fire on this subject, although it is one dear
> to my heart. I like Ken's idea of a comprehensive Pov tutorial, but I
> also think that the basic Pov documentation should be revised on a
> regular basis.
I agree.
However, as Ken so often and rightfully points out, there is a tremendous
wealth of information in the example files. Just rendering each of them,
and then examining the source code, is in itself an excellent tutorial.
It is well worth the time. But many of the questions posted by users
to these groups reveal that it is not a sufficiently exploited resource.
You can lead a horse to water....
Dan
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On Sun, 27 Dec 1998 06:58:04 -0800, Dan Connelly <djc### [at] flashnet>
wrote:
>
>.... as Ken so often and rightfully points out, there is a tremendous
>wealth of information in the example files. Just rendering each of them,
>and then examining the source code, is in itself an excellent tutorial.
>It is well worth the time. But many of the questions posted by users
>to these groups reveal that it is not a sufficiently exploited resource.
>
>You can lead a horse to water....
>
>Dan
OK point taken, but rendering the example files takes time and they
are not necessarily relevant to the problem you have in hand. A
textual guide to the example files would help a great deal.
I have just rendered (again) all four of the examples in scenes\CSG
and find that they emphasise interesting textures rather than clearly
showing the way that CSG operations can be used. This just helps to
convince me that an objective look at on improving documentation would
be well worthwhile.
I don't want to criticise POV-Ray developers who are doing a
magnificent job - for which I am sincerely grateful. I just believe
that the POV-Ray community could help to make POV-Ray even more
accessible. If, for instance, each contributed something of their
own particular expertise, perhaps by a simplified and well commented
example, it would be a great help to many of us.
David
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." Samuel Johnson
dav### [at] cwcomnet
http://www.hamiltonite.mcmail.com
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