On Thu, 2 Dec 1999 16:24:58 -0500, "TonyB" <ben### [at] panamaphoenixnet>
wrote:

>Huh? Could you explain how creating a file gives me the time?

  Time-date stamp?

-- 
Alan - ako### [at] povrayorg - a k o n g <at> p o v r a y <dot> o r g
http://www.povray.org - Home of the Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer

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I know about that, but how is it accesible from POV?

Besides, you guys are proposing a work-around that requires (or so it seems)
a lot of work. Can't somebody just make it a built-in variable, like clock?
I mean, it has to exist for POV to report parse time, so you can just rewire
that number so that the user can access it. Right?

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On Thu, 2 Dec 1999 16:58:20 -0500, "TonyB"
<ben### [at] panamaphoenixnet> wrote:

>I know about that, but how is it accesible from POV?
>
>Besides, you guys are proposing a work-around that requires (or so it seems)
>a lot of work. Can't somebody just make it a built-in variable, like clock?
>I mean, it has to exist for POV to report parse time, so you can just rewire
>that number so that the user can access it. Right?

Actually, it doesn't. POV starts the timer, does the initialization
stuff and goes on to parsing. After it's done parsing. it checks the
time, stores parsing time in total time, resets the counter and starts
rendering. After this has been done, it stops the timer, checks it,
remembers this as render time and adds it to total time. Provisions
are made for the case of animation.

On the other hand, it wouldn't be *that* hard to check the timer any
time during the parsing.


Peter Popov
pet### [at] usanet
ICQ: 15002700

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In article <3846eaef@news.povray.org> , "TonyB" 
<ben### [at] panamaphoenixnet> wrote:

> I know about that, but how is it accesible from POV?

I didn't say so, I said: 'Of course you have to calculate the differences
manually'
The idea was that you don't have to wait for a patch ;-)


      Thorsten


____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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TonyB wrote:
> 
> I know about that, but how is it accesible from POV?
> 
> Besides, you guys are proposing a work-around that requires (or so it seems)
> a lot of work. Can't somebody just make it a built-in variable, like clock?
> I mean, it has to exist for POV to report parse time, so you can just rewire
> that number so that the user can access it. Right?

I'll tell you what I'm going to do... I have Bill's recent request for
a file associations change with the windows editor. I will lump your
request into Bill's and present it to the POV-Team at the appropriate
time. Chances are very good that you will not hear back on this but at
least I will make it part of the discision making process.

Fair enough ?

-- 
Ken Tyler -  1200+ Povray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/

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Maybe a #timer feature. The syntax would be:
#timer TIMER_ID, "timer text" start|stop|pause

TIMER_ID would allow multiple timers. It would be used like this:

#timer 1, "start of tree timer, first tree" start

DoTree()

#timer 1, "finished with first tree" pause

DoOtherStuff()

#timer 1, "starting second tree" start

DoTree()

#timer 1, "finished with second tree" stop



The output would be like this:
START TIMER: 1|start of tree timer, first tree
parse time:xx hours, xx minutes, and xx seconds
timer time:xx hours, xx minutes, and xx seconds

PAUSE TIMER: 1|finished with first tree
parse time:xx hours, xx minutes, and xx seconds
timer time:xx hours, xx minutes, and xx seconds

START TIMER: 1|starting second tree
parse time:xx hours, xx minutes, and xx seconds
timer time:xx hours, xx minutes, and xx seconds

STOP TIMER: 1| finished with second tree
parse time:xx hours, xx minutes, and xx seconds
timer time:xx hours, xx minutes, and xx seconds


"parse time" would be the total duration of parsing up to that point, 
"timer time" would be the amount of time accumulated in that timer up to 
that point.
In the timer statement, "start" would start the time accumulating in the 
timer, "pause" would stop the time accumulation, and "stop" would do the 
same as "pause" but would also reset the timer accumulator to 0. They 
would output the text to the status window formatted something like the 
above, similar to #debug, #render, etc.

-- 
Chris Huff
e-mail: chr### [at] yahoocom
Web page: http://chrishuff.dhs.org/

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>Fair enough ?


=)

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>The idea was that you don't have to wait for a patch ;-)

You'll have to wait for me to (re)learn programming to get on that
bandwagon. =\

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Sounds overly complex. Being variable like "clock", "parse_time" sounds
better to me, as the user can do what he/she wants with it.

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TonyB wrote:
> 
> Sounds overly complex. Being variable like "clock", "parse_time" sounds
> better to me, as the user can do what he/she wants with it.

Now that's a good point: flexibility. 

It's been asked before to have access to the system clock for 
things like random seeding (although that's been shown to have an 
alternative), and such. If POV had a  built-in function that 
returned a variable or array containing the date/time at the moment 
that code was parsed, a macro which calculates time differential 
could coded from it pretty easily, but any additional uses (like 
time/date stamping file i/o blocks, or inserting creation dates as 
text objects within your scene, for example) and such would also be 
able to use the same function. It would be more generally useful.
No longer as "silly little" a feature request, therefore.

Charles

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