I was just wondering if by frenetically adding so many features to the
SuperPatch we could be slowing down the release of Official 3.5. What I
am really curious about is whether the POV-Team has actually written 3.5
and is just waiting for the SuperPatch to reach 'stable' (no
modifications to be added any time soon) to add that into the ready
source, and release it Officially. If it has been written, then what's
the current progress on 4.0? Has anyone on the Team begun to rewrite POV
in C++?

Thanks in advance to all responders for quenching my overabundant
curiousity.

PS: If you saw Austin Powers, please tell me if you think this smiley

you like. If you can, hail me as its 'creator'. =)

--
Anthony L. Bennett
http://welcome.to/TonyB

Non nova, sed nove.

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On Wed, 28 Jul 1999 15:53:44 -0400, TonyB wrote:
>I was just wondering if by frenetically adding so many features to the
>SuperPatch we could be slowing down the release of Official 3.5.

Speaking as the creator of the superpatch and not as a member of the
POV-Team, I would say the answer is no.  I sent Chris Young a copy of
the superpatch source sometime between the superpatch 3.1a release and
the superpatch 3.1e release to use as he saw fit for 3.5.  As far as I 
know there has been no effort to incorporate the minor[1] changes that 
were in the 3.1e sp release and I expect that the 3.1g sp release will 
also not be considered for inclusion in 3.5.  I wouldn't want it any other 
way.  The superpatch will almost certainly always be a step ahead of the 
official version in terms of features.  That's the whole idea, after all.

Something else I should mention, because I've seen misinformation here 
and there recently, is that 3.5 is not just a rubberstamped official 
superpatch.  Go back and read Chris Young's "plans for the future" 
document and you'll see that the superpatch was just a convenient 
evaluation vehicle for a number of patches, which were to be accepted
or rejected on their individual merits and depending on the permission
of their original authors.  The final 3.5 will probably bear as much 
resemblance to the superpatch as the superpatch does to UVPOV: they'll 
both have features 3.1 doesn't, and some of the new stuff will be in 
both, but neither will be a subset of the other.

[1] minor compared to what I sent, not compared to 3.1a.  For example, 
the pigment isosurface stuff and the lighting changes are in what I sent
Chris but not in 3.1a.

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Ron Parker wrote:

> [1] minor compared to what I sent, not compared to 3.1a.  For example,
> the pigment isosurface stuff and the lighting changes are in what I sent
> Chris but not in 3.1a.

 Quick question about the isosurface stuff. I also recall from Chris's message
that there was an issue involving dll's and the isosurface patch that may
cause it omission from the official version. Has this issue been resolved in
the super patch so that full functionality of the isosurface function can
ba maintained in a cross platform release ? With the recent submissions of
images created with that function it certainly has proved that it would
be worthy of addition and I am looking foreword to it's official inclusion.

-- 
Ken Tyler
  
mailto://tylereng@pacbell.net
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/links.htm

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On Thu, 29 Jul 1999 00:27:29 -0700, Ken wrote:
>
>
>Ron Parker wrote:
>
>> [1] minor compared to what I sent, not compared to 3.1a.  For example,
>> the pigment isosurface stuff and the lighting changes are in what I sent
>> Chris but not in 3.1a.
>
> Quick question about the isosurface stuff. I also recall from Chris's message
>that there was an issue involving dll's and the isosurface patch that may
>cause it omission from the official version. Has this issue been resolved in
>the super patch so that full functionality of the isosurface function can
>ba maintained in a cross platform release ? With the recent submissions of
>images created with that function it certainly has proved that it would
>be worthy of addition and I am looking foreword to it's official inclusion.

The DLLs were only in the additional libraries, which I haven't seen anyone
using to any great degree anyway.  Edna Dornblazer's DOS patch works around
the lack of DLLs on that platform quite neatly while preserving the 
functionality, if not the syntax, of the provided "plugins", but I believe 
that functionality will not be present in 3.5.  All of the rest of the 
isosurface stuff should be, though, as I understand it.

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