Many, many years I used a set of applications called BSpice and its Front-End
Nutmeg. One of the "problems of BSpice was its reliance on (sometimes) huge
include-files from which you only needed one or two declares. Because of the
size of these include-files, calculating/compiling even a simple circuit would
take enormous CPU bandwidth and hence long processing times.

Then, in stepped a small application called Cinnamon. This app would scan the
circuit file for any objects that were not declared locally. Then Cinnamon
would scan all the include-files that it could find. All declares of objects
used in the circuit-file were then copied into a dedicated include-file. Next,
you would only need to include that particular include-file and it would
contain only objects needed for the circuit.

Each declare was put in the file with a comment stating it's
source-include-file and the comments from the start of the include-file
(usually copyright messages)
Declares by the same name where all added. It would be up to the user to edit
the include-file to remove doubles.

After a long introduction, here's my question.
I recognise the same "problem" with POV-Ray that we encountered with
BSpice/Nutmeg. It seems no more than logical that someone already developed a
small program (a la Cinnamon) that would generate a scene-specific include-file
resulting in faster processing of the scene and perhaps also faster rendering.

1. Does such an application exist? If yes, where can I find it?
2. Is it possible to include such functionality in POV-Ray?

-- 
SomeOne

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SomeOne wrote:

> Many, many years I used a set of applications called BSpice and its Front-End
> Nutmeg. One of the "problems of BSpice was its reliance on (sometimes) huge
> include-files from which you only needed one or two declares. Because of the
> size of these include-files, calculating/compiling even a simple circuit would
> take enormous CPU bandwidth and hence long processing times.
> 
> Then, in stepped a small application called Cinnamon. This app would scan the
> circuit file for any objects that were not declared locally. Then Cinnamon
> would scan all the include-files that it could find. All declares of objects
> used in the circuit-file were then copied into a dedicated include-file. Next,
> you would only need to include that particular include-file and it would
> contain only objects needed for the circuit.
> 
> Each declare was put in the file with a comment stating it's
> source-include-file and the comments from the start of the include-file
> (usually copyright messages)
> Declares by the same name where all added. It would be up to the user to edit
> the include-file to remove doubles.
> 
> After a long introduction, here's my question.
> I recognise the same "problem" with POV-Ray that we encountered with
> BSpice/Nutmeg. It seems no more than logical that someone already developed a
> small program (a la Cinnamon) that would generate a scene-specific include-file
> resulting in faster processing of the scene and perhaps also faster rendering.
> 
> 1. Does such an application exist? If yes, where can I find it?
> 2. Is it possible to include such functionality in POV-Ray?

There is little need for such a function with POV-Ray.  Lengthy parse times
are almost always the result of extensive looping in the parse code, and
would not benefit.

Regards,
John

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Wasn't it SomeOne who wrote:
>
>After a long introduction, here's my question.
>I recognise the same "problem" with POV-Ray that we encountered with
>BSpice/Nutmeg. It seems no more than logical that someone already developed a
>small program (a la Cinnamon) that would generate a scene-specific include-file
>resulting in faster processing of the scene and perhaps also faster rendering.
>
>1. Does such an application exist? If yes, where can I find it?
>2. Is it possible to include such functionality in POV-Ray?

If I unnecessarily #include every one of the standard .inc files, then
it only adds 1 second to the parse time on my (rather slow) machine and
1.5 megabytes to the peak memory used. 

Developing a program that you perform the task you mention would be
quite a substantial effort. It would have to be able to parse POV SDL in
order to work out which bits of the include files were actually being
referenced. I'm sure there are many easier ways to slice the odd second
off large renders.

-- 
Mike Williams
Gentleman of Leisure

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Oh, wow! Another Old Fart shows up, somebody who actually used BSpice back in 
the day. OrCAD/PCAD was my nemesis.

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