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POV-Ray v3.1 \ beta 6 is now available at ftp.povray.org in the directory
/pub/povray/beta/beta3.1-6. Note that as of this writing the beta web page HAS
NOT been updated and still refers to beta 5. This is becase the MSDOS b6 is not
yet available, and nor are all versions of the seperately downloadable
documentation updated. This page will be updated later - for now, download via
FTP.
Note that the Mac and Windows downloadable versions do have updated
documentation.
Here is a summary of the changes (The changes specific to the Windows version
are listed below the changes to the rendering engine itself. Not all WINPOV
changes are listed - just the relevant ones).
POV-Ray 3.1.beta.6 released late August 1998
Bugs fixed since beta.5
Made density{color COLOR} legal mostly for use in density_map
Made pignent{average color_map{}} illegal
Fixed old bezier type 0 bug
Eliminated negative strength blobs from bounding slab calculation
Fixed hfield divide by zero bug on some platforms which didn't trap
Added some missing identifier types as macro parameters
Fixed mosaic preview overflow on odd size images
Implemented material{} statement.
MATERIAL:
material{[MATERIAL_IDENTIFIER][MATERIAL_ITEMS...]}
MATERIAL_ITEMS:
TEXTURE | INTERIOR
Example
#declare MyGlass=material{texture{Glass_T} interior{Glass_I}}
object{MyObject material{MyGlass}}
Fixed problem with media and no light sources.
Fixed memory leak in mesh
Fixed erronious missing pigment in fully textured mesh
Fixed repeat warp flip bug from 3.02
Fixed multi-dimension array initializer bug
Fixed multi-density in declared media bug
POV-Ray 3.1.beta.5 released late July 1998
Bugs fixed since beta.4
The +Q8 and +Q9 now correctly turn media off/on
Inverse CSG intersections now use merge rather than union.
Mesh triangle textures now translate properly.
The density_file pattern now searches +Lpath & Library_Path=path
Negative subscript on array now properly trapped
Fixed bug with macros with no parameters
Fixed bug redeclaring as wrong type caused crash.
Fixed bug density with no color_map inside density_map crashed.
Fixed bug #declare MyArray=YourArray now works.
New feature #declare MyIdentifier=YourIdentifier now works.
POV-Ray 3.1.beta.4 first public beta July 4th.
Changes to POVWIN as of version 3.1 beta 6
------------------------------------------
This release has a new editor in it. It may not work as expected. Remember
that this is BETA software - don't use it if you're not prepared to put up
with some bugs.
Quick Summary:
o Added new editor.
o Added rubberband mode to render window for selection of render region.
o Added auto-load of file if there's a parse error (goes to line and col).
o Modified the way the insert menu works. It's now like the 'Start Menu'.
o Removed a bunch of stuff that was a legacy of our (now gone) Win32s mode.
o Fixed the GUI Extension compatibility problem.
=============================================================================
IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU READ THE FOLLOWING NOTES ABOUT THE EDITOR !!!!!!!!!!
=============================================================================
o Totally rewrote the editor from scratch. It contains a custom control
(CodeMax from WinMain Software [www.winmain.com], who kindly donated it),
and the associated wrapper code to turn it into an integrated tool. This is
not a port of the Delphi editor in previous versions - it's a new
implementation (several thousand lines of code) in C++Builder (cmedit.dll),
with the editor control itself being cmax101.dll. Both of these should be
in <installdir>\bin.
o The editor is extensively customisable. It utilises syntax highlighting and
understands .POV and .INC files as being in POV syntax. You can change the
colour settings used from the properties dialog (ALT-ENTER). It also has
built-in syntax highlighting for C, C++, Java, Basic, Pascal and SQL.
o Here's a quick editor feature summary. Please inspect the editor menus to
gain a better understanding of its available features, until such time as
the new docs are written.
o Syntax highlighting.
o Keystroke macros. These are preserved across sessions.
o Optional auto-save which, if turned on, saves changed files periodically.
o Brace matching is available (cursor must be on a brace when you do it).
o Block indent/undent
o Tabify/untabify
o Customisable colours.
o Most key bindings are customisable (not all, just most).
o Smart case preservation in replace operations.
o Up to 10 bookmarks.
o Optional auto-reload of changed files (not yet implemented).
o Multiple views of the one file (via splits).
o OLE drag and drop between the editor and other programs.
o Optional smooth-scrolling.
o Intellimouse support.
o Column selection (control-leftbutton and drag).
o Up to 32 edit sessions.
o MRU list also tracks the line, column, language, tab and indent settings.
o You can split editor panes by dragging the little bar just above the top
of the vertical scrollbar (and likewise for horizontal). This is only
possible if it's not disabled via the properties dialog. Editor splits are
not preserved across sessions (this is by design). You can drag and drop
selected text between panes.
o By default both scrollbars are on. You can change this from the properties
or the Editor menu.
o Printing is not yet implemented (nor are a few other options, which is why
they are grayed out in the menus).
o If the editor gets into a strange state, and restarting POV-Win doesn't fix
it, you may need to clear the registry settings for the editor. To do this,
it is essential that POVWIN is not running (otherwise it will rewrite the
old values when it finally does exit). Then, using REGEDIT.EXE or similar,
delete the entire subkey HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\POV-Ray\v3.1\POV-Edit.
o Note that the editor properties dialog only allows you to set things that
are implemented within the editor. There are some other options implemented
within the editor wrapper code in POV-Ray for Windows which are able to be
accessed via the Editor menu (only visible when an editor is selected). For
example, the keybinding for saving a file (Ctrl-S) is not listed in the
editor properties since this function is handled by the wrapper code. You
can't change this assignment.
o Some properties only affect the current file, and some affect all files.
Additionally, most (but not all) of those that affect the current file will
become the default for any new files opened after that point. This is by
design. For example, changing the tab stop setting only affects the current
file, but will then become the default for new files from that point on.
o You can drag and drop selected text between panes of the editor window, or
between the editor and any OLE compliant drag and drop application, such as
Microsoft Word. Control-dragging copies instead of cuts.
o Some people have asked why the 'quit bugging me' option in the render save
dialog is not persistent across sessions. This is by design and is not
likely to change.
o The RMB context menu has an option for 'show/hide message window' (as
before, though many people didn't look closely enough to realise it). This
window is now sizable (unlike the previous version, where it was a fixed
size). A quick way to close this window is to drag the divider down to
within a few pixels of the bottom border - when you release the mouse, the
message window will vanish.
o You can also tell POVWIN not to display the message window automatically
when starting a render. You do this from the Editor menu, by turning off
'Auto-Show Parse Messages'. This is most useful with the Error File option.
o POVWIN will now optionally automatically load a file in which a parse error
has occurred into the editor (or select it if it's already loaded) and
place the cursor on the line and column of the offending code. This is able
to be turned on or off using the 'Auto-Load Error File' option in the
Editor menu. Also, if this option is on, and the message window was
displayed automatically (see above), it will be closed automatically rather
than being left open (as used to be the case when an error happened). The
text describing the error will be displayed in the status bar at the bottom
of the window.
o Quick key summary (this is not comprehensive and does NOT include shortcuts
already listed in the menus - check the menus for these).
Ctrl-LeftButton and drag Column Selection
Drag selection Move text (also drag and drop)
Ctrl-LButton and drag selection Copy selection
Click and drag splitter bar Split window
Double-click splitter bar Split window in half, or unsplit.
Alt-Left or RightArrow Change selected editor tab
Ctrl-Tab Change selected editor tab
Tab when some text is selected Indent selected lines
Shift-tab when text is selected Undent selected lines
o Drastically changed the way the Insert menu is built. Instead of a template
file (previously pov3tmpl.txt), the Insert Menu is built the same way as
such things as the Windows 95/98/NT Start Menu ; it's a series of folders
with the actual text that gets inserted being .txt files within them.
You'll find this in <installdir>\Insert Menu. Just select 'edit this menu'
from the Insert Menu to get to there. For those of you who had a customised
version of the old template file and want to convert it - if there's enough
people who ask we'll release the converter program.
o Added an 'Older Files' submenu to the File menu. This contains recently
used files (up to 32 of them) that have scrolled off the main MRU list at
the bottom of the File menu. Note that this (and the main MRU list) now
not only stores the filename, but also the line, column, language, indent,
and tab settings that were last in use when the file was previously open.
o Fixed a problem relating to turning off the toolbar then restoring the
window from the taskbar.
o Removed the non-client code that draws the custom caption button. This is
no longer needed since we no longer support Win32s (Windows 3.1x) and there
is a better way available to true Win32 applications. For the time being
(and perhaps forever) there is no way to get the old 'mini window' mode
(did anyone use it in any case ??? We don't even know).
o Removed the 'Tiny Render window caption' option.
o Removed the old statusbar code and replaced it with the common control.
POV-Ray for Windows can no longer be moved by clicking on the status bar.
o Pared down the Appearance menu, merged with Misc menu, renamed it Options.
Added a new menu called 'Text', available only when the editor is in use.
o Removed the 'Expert Menus' option - full menus are always on now.
o Added a 'rubberband' mode to the render window. Once a render is completed,
you can click and drag on the render window to draw a box that represents
a selection. Once you release the mouse button, you have the option of
starting a new render that will only trace the pixels within the box. Note
that this is NOT a zoom function ; the render does not zoom in to the box,
but just renders the pixels inside it. You can also shift-drag to have the
co-ordinates of the area you selected added to the command-line (so the
selection will last for the rest of your POV session). POVWIN attempts to
remove the selection from the command-line before shutting down on exit.
Changes to POVWIN as of version 3.1 beta 5
------------------------------------------
o Add an option to stop the render animation (see the Appearance menu).
o POVWIN should now detect Win98 and not draw the caption text in the
title bar. One day we'll make it use DrawFrameControl () instead of the
way we draw the extra button now. (DrawFrameControl () was not present in
the earlier versions of windows that POVWIN was originally written for).
o An old bug (solved in 3.02 but present in earlier versions) reappeared
in 3.1 betas prior to beta5. This typically shows itself as corrupted
text in the message window, and/or random crashes, particularly when
starting a render or clearing the message pane from the edit menu.
The cause of this is a memory overwrite coming from inside the generic
POV-Ray code, and came back since the fix never made it into the generic
source after the release of 3.02. It's now fixed for good.
o There was a problem with POVWIN not releasing memory after a render. This
actually was not as clear as it seems - POVWIN did in fact release the
memory, but the C runtime library did not. The memory was not wasted in
that if you did a new render, the memory got re-used. But it still was not
available to other Windows apps.
The solution is compiler-specific (see CONFIG.H if you're compiling your
own copy of POVWIN). The official POV-Team version of POV-Ray for Windows
(which is compiled with Watcom C/C++) now does release this memory, so the
problem is fixed for most users.
o The 'render from memory' feature is gone. It is a difficult feature to
implement (because the main POV-Ray rendering engine does not have a
concept of rendering from memory, so a simulation of a file had to be
done. This did not always work as expected). We decided that the due to
the restrictions that the above placed on the feature (and the problems
that this caused for some users) it was best not to have it.
o A new GUI extension call has been added that supplies GUI extensions with
what is effectively an exact copy of the data (pixel by pixel) that would
have been written to file. This works regardless of whether file output
is on or not. This does not break compatibility with GUI extensions that
were written for previous versions of POV-Ray - if they were written
properly they will still work unchanged.
o The Windows help file is now 'povray31.hlp' (previously povray30.hlp).
o The registry keys now work this way -
HKLM\
Software\
POV-Ray\
Windows\
Home -> Points at either v3.0x or v3.1.
CurrentVersion\
Windows\
Home -> Path of current version always
VersionNo -> Current version number
v3.0\
Windows\
Home -> Points at path of v3.0x if it exists
v3.1\
Windows\
Home -> Points at path of v3.1
v3.x\
Windows\
Home -> Points at path of a hypothetical v3.x
If there was no old version on the users computer, the old Windows value
points to the new version of POVWIN. If there was an old version, the user
will be asked upon installation if they want to have it updated to point to
the new one.
Authors of utilities that read the registry to extract the install dir of
POVWIN are requested to use the 'v3.x' keys to locate POVWIN if their
program absolutely requires a specific version. Otherwise, they should use
the 'CurrentVersion' key. Under no circumstances should any new utility
use the old 'Windows' value as support for that entry will be removed in a
later version of POVWIN.
Changes to POVWIN as of version 3.02
o Hopefully, the BMP format read will now work for continue traces.
o The problem that caused the message display to be occasionally
corrupted, and sometimes caused a GPF has been fixed.
o Updating of the mini render window now works under Windows NT 4.
o A number of other things have been tweaked ; too many to list here.
Changes to POVWIN as of version 3.01
If you are running Windows 95 or NT 4, pressing ALT-W or selecting
the Appearance|Put Main Window in System Tray menu item will do just that -
put POV-Ray into the taskbar as a system tray icon. Once you've done that,
left-clicking on the icon, or right-clicking and selecting Restore Main
Window from Taskbar will restore it. You can start renders and do other
things such as select priority using the abovementioned right mouse button
menu.
If you are using the MaxiMinimise function, the right mouse menu now
includes a facility to restore the window (i.e. it does the same thing
as double-clicking.)
CHANGED FEATURES
Because of the number of users who didn't bother to read the manual (and
then complained to us about not being able to run multiple copies of POV),
we've changed the installation to allow multiple instances of POV-Ray at
the one time. The previous default was to only allow one copy, though this
had always been controlled by the use of the Appearance|Keep Single Instance
menu item (available when Expert menus are selected and documented in the
help file under 'Appearance Menu'). If you want to keep single instances
now (handy when starting renders from explorer/file manager), just select
this option. Note that there is a known problem with parameter passing
when using the explorer to start renders when a copy is already running,
which will be fixed in a later release.
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org (povray.org admin team) writes: