which of the newsgroups are considered the most appropriate for asking for
help or information. General has a nice informal feel and it seems a shame
to clutter it up with too many pleas and questions. Newbies is always an
option, but it would be muddying the waters to ask about matrix, vnormalize
and such-like. Tutorials looks like the best bet, judging from the posts,
but the title implies something else (although admittedly similiar).

Does an  informal etiquette exist? Does anyone know what it is? Could this
be a queue for a faq? (and what is vnormalize?)

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Tom Melly wrote in message <37168849.0@news.povray.org>...
>which of the newsgroups are considered the most appropriate for asking for
>help or information. General has a nice informal feel and it seems a shame
>to clutter it up with too many pleas and questions. Newbies is always an
>option, but it would be muddying the waters to ask about matrix, vnormalize
>and such-like. Tutorials looks like the best bet, judging from the posts,
>but the title implies something else (although admittedly similiar).
>
>Does an  informal etiquette exist? Does anyone know what it is? Could this
>be a queue for a faq? (and what is vnormalize?)
>


IMO, the only etiquette is your common netiquette. The rest is somewhat
subjective and also depends on what kind of a reply you expect. When ask
post in .newusers, people will assume that you are exactly that - a new
user - and will (hopefully) try to base their replies on that assumption. In
.general, you can expect more technical replies which assume a certain
familiarity with POV.

As for vnormalize:
vnormalize(V) returns a vector, which has the same direction as V, but is
exactly 1 POV units long.
It's often useful when you want a vector with the same direction as V, but
with a specific length, say, 5.5 units. You would do it like this:
vnormalize(V)*5.5

Multiplying a vector changes its length while preserving its direction.
Adding to a vector basically changes its offset, while preserving its
length.

But I'm deviating from the original question here.

Margus

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"Tom Melly" <tom### [at] aolcom> wrote:

>which of the newsgroups are considered the most appropriate for asking for
>help or information. General has a nice informal feel and it seems a shame
>to clutter it up with too many pleas and questions. Newbies is always an
>option, but it would be muddying the waters to ask about matrix, vnormalize
>and such-like. Tutorials looks like the best bet, judging from the posts,
>but the title implies something else (although admittedly similiar).

This is a good question - we need a group for advanced users. So, if you get
new groups you will see a group called 'povray.advanced-users'.

Post a reply to this message

povray.org admin team wrote in message
<37189ee6.19500406@news.povray.org>...
>
>This is a good question - we need a group for advanced users. So, if you
get
>new groups you will see a group called 'povray.advanced-users'.

Hmm, interesting move. But if I qualify, I'm all for it ;)

Margus

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Interesting idea.

But probably what you will get is all the new people, coming over
to the advanced group because they know that there will be people
there who will know the answers, and spoon feed them.

I don't like elitism, and feel that the general feeling within
the wider POV community would be that we tend to be a very
cosmopolitan bunch, and the misture of ideas, between all the
different aspects adds a freshness that you probably wouldn't
find elsewhere.  Carving the groups up would probably drain some
of this freshness and give the place more of a school feel, where
students are split up into groups just to make them easier to
supervis.

Just my 2p worth.

Cheers
Steve 

povray.org admin team wrote:
> 
> "Tom Melly" <tom### [at] aolcom> wrote:
> 
> >which of the newsgroups are considered the most appropriate for asking for
> >help or information. General has a nice informal feel and it seems a shame
> >to clutter it up with too many pleas and questions. Newbies is always an
> >option, but it would be muddying the waters to ask about matrix, vnormalize
> >and such-like. Tutorials looks like the best bet, judging from the posts,
> >but the title implies something else (although admittedly similiar).
> 
> This is a good question - we need a group for advanced users. So, if you get
> new groups you will see a group called 'povray.advanced-users'.

Post a reply to this message