Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> In article <3f50c242@news.povray.org> , Oliver Jaxid <mai### [at] finniqcom>  
> wrote:
> 
> 
>>ok, ok, i am wrong
>>(i 've readed the faq's now)
> 
> 
> No problem.
> 
> 
>>but i'am not the only one. minimum 50% of all articles in this group
>>then are beeing wrong placed cause not about pov-source-programming. and
>>this was the ground why i've posted here. so, i think that the names of
>>the groups for pov-news-noobs are a little bit diffuse.
> 
> 
> Indeed you have identified the biggest problem in this group.  While there
> are only about 10% of misplaced articles those tend to attract more
> unrelated articles as those who post new articles don't read whole thread of
> the misplaced articles.  Somebody will eventually point out people are in
> the wrong group, but the "problem" is that many people are "only" helpful
> and forget to mention that it is the wrong group.  Thus, the first post
> saying someone is in the wrong group ends up being reply being number
> 1042852, which nobody who makes a new posts reads :-(
> 
> The alternative would be to remove all misplaced articles, but then some
> good questions and answers to them would be lost.
> 
> That said, many have suggested to rename this group many times, but over all
> these years nobody ever came up with a better and still _short_ name...
> 
>     Thorsten
> 
> ____________________________________________________
> Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
> e-mail: tho### [at] trfde
> 
> Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

another alternative will be the complete renaming of the actual groupnames

(it's just an idea ;-), i know that i'am sometimes to taff ;-))

something like:

povray.programing => povray.binaries.developement
povray.programing.binaries => povray.binaries.developement.extensions

and the group povray.general should be splitted in

povray.common
povray.sdl
povray.sdl.developement

why? 2 facts

1. if developers (like me too) talk about loops, variables, functions, 
objects aso. they think about programming and i think that this is one 
of the problems for the misplacements in the group 'povray.programming'

2. the most visitors here need help about sdl/sdl-programming. only a 
few c/c++ experts like to talk about pov-source-developing. so, i think 
it's a questions of name-psychology too

oliver

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Oliver Jaxid wrote:

> sorry, but i can't find a discussion there. there comes the only 
> "welcome-page".
That's only for the first time you're visiting the web-interface. Just 
read through the page, configure the web-view according to your needs at 
the bottom and press this one botton of which i can't remember the 
caption :) There you go...

You can also just search for the message:
---
From: Abe Heckenbach
Subject: object oriented features
Date: 17 Aug 2000 20:49:39 EDT
---

HTH,
Florian
-- 
//=================[web: http://www.torfbold.com]==================\\
#local a=-5;#while(a<5)sphere{<sin(a*pi)*5a*10pow(a,5)*.01>sin(a*a*a*
.1)+1pigment{rgb 9*z}}#local a=a+.01;#end camera{look_at-y*10location
<8,-3,-8>*10}// [www.povray.org]     [www.imp.org]     [www.irtc.org]

Post a reply to this message

Oliver Jaxid wrote:
> Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> 
>> In article <3f50c242@news.povray.org> , Oliver Jaxid 
>> <mai### [at] finniqcom>  wrote:
>>
>>
>>> ok, ok, i am wrong
>>> (i 've readed the faq's now)
>>
>>
>>
>> No problem.
>>
>>
>>> but i'am not the only one. minimum 50% of all articles in this group
>>> then are beeing wrong placed cause not about pov-source-programming. and
>>> this was the ground why i've posted here. so, i think that the names of
>>> the groups for pov-news-noobs are a little bit diffuse.
>>
>>
>>
>> Indeed you have identified the biggest problem in this group.  While 
>> there
>> are only about 10% of misplaced articles those tend to attract more
>> unrelated articles as those who post new articles don't read whole 
>> thread of
>> the misplaced articles.  Somebody will eventually point out people are in
>> the wrong group, but the "problem" is that many people are "only" helpful
>> and forget to mention that it is the wrong group.  Thus, the first post
>> saying someone is in the wrong group ends up being reply being number
>> 1042852, which nobody who makes a new posts reads :-(
>>
>> The alternative would be to remove all misplaced articles, but then some
>> good questions and answers to them would be lost.
>>
>> That said, many have suggested to rename this group many times, but 
>> over all
>> these years nobody ever came up with a better and still _short_ name...
>>
>>     Thorsten
>>
>> ____________________________________________________
>> Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
>> e-mail: tho### [at] trfde
>>
>> Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org
> 
> 
> another alternative will be the complete renaming of the actual groupnames
> 
> (it's just an idea ;-), i know that i'am sometimes to taff ;-))
> 
> something like:
> 
> povray.programing => povray.binaries.developement
> povray.programing.binaries => povray.binaries.developement.extensions
> 
> and the group povray.general should be splitted in
> 
> povray.common
> povray.sdl
> povray.sdl.developement
> 
> why? 2 facts
> 
> 1. if developers (like me too) talk about loops, variables, functions, 
> objects aso. they think about programming and i think that this is one 
> of the problems for the misplacements in the group 'povray.programming'
> 
> 2. the most visitors here need help about sdl/sdl-programming. only a 
> few c/c++ experts like to talk about pov-source-developing. so, i think 
> it's a questions of name-psychology too
> 
> oliver
> 

here my suggestion if the names are to long:

povray.common           => just for real common questions
(like the futures, plannings, parties, wishlist aso.)

povray.sdl.XXX          => for pov-sdl-questions (common)
povray.sdl.devel        => for pov-sdl-questions (developers)
...

povray.src.XXX     	=> for pov-source-questions (common)
povray.src.extension   	=> for pov-source-questions (extension)
...

povray.bin.XXX     	=> for pov-binary-questions (common)
povray.bin.windows     	=> for pov-binary-questions (windows)
povray.bin.linux     	=> for pov-binary-questions (linux)
...

Post a reply to this message

"Oliver Jaxid" <mai### [at] finniqcom> wrote in message
news:3f50d076$1@news.povray.org...
> > Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> >>
> >> That said, many have suggested to rename this group many times, but
> >> over all
> >> these years nobody ever came up with a better and still _short_ name...
> >>
> >
> > another alternative will be the complete renaming of the actual
groupnames
> > something like:
> >
> > povray.programing => povray.binaries.developement
> > povray.programing.binaries => povray.binaries.developement.extensions
> >
> > and the group povray.general should be splitted in
> >
> > povray.common
> > povray.sdl
> > povray.sdl.developement

Follow-Up:

Are you a business manager IRL, Oliver? Only joking.  :-)

Maybe I'm not the only one thinking this could become too convoluted, and
yet, as I was going to shrug off this whole idea it occured to me that you
make a valid argument (suggestions). Especially since people have confused
this particular group for being merely scene file 'programming' discussions
in the past. And present too. :)

povray.src or povray.sourcecode or any such thing might help. But I doubt
it, simply because some people could think of those words as also being tied
to SDL. Might be why it was never changed from povray.programming to that
kind of name. Casual artisans together with computer programmers, and
everyone inbetween; all in one place, kind of thing.

Hmmmm, what about the names below for groups? Nothing more, nothing less. I,
too, am only one voice here but I do not want to see a large number of new
groups and subgroups if it means making it more complex to read messages.

povray.program-code
povray.program-code.binaries
povray.scene-description-language

Reason I spelled out SDL is that I don't know if the definition is really
common knowledge, so I feel that src and sdl might confuse people. Would
anyone mistake what program-code means? Maybe... Could it be worse than
"programming"? Possibly the same? No question, anyhow, that this is the unde
rlying issue. I don't think there's any elegant answer other than
povray.announce.frequently-asked-questions being required reading. Oh hey,
that's not abbreviated. Certainly nothing short about that name.

Bob H.

Post a reply to this message

In article <3f50b482$1@news.povray.org>, Oliver Jaxid <mai### [at] finniqcom> 
wrote:

> >> so, any idea to wright the function with only 1 box-parameter?
> > 
> > have a look at the min_extent & max_extent functions.
> > 
> 
> thx, that was it!

Well, you've already been corrected about the group, so I'll just answer 
your question: this does not do what you asked for. The *_extent() 
functions return the extents of the object along each coordinate axis. 
If you rotate or shear the box, this will no longer correspond to the 
corners, and it is useless for most other objects.

To make this message at least somewhat on-topic for this group: Patching 
POV to allow these attributes to be accessed would be difficult, because 
they are not always stored in the form they are specified in. For many 
objects, POV calculates additional information based on the object 
parameters, and may throw away the original parameters entirely. Not 
impossible, but to do it right would require a lot of code rewriting. 
Objects could be parsed into an intermediate form which is then 
reprocessed into the data structure used for rendering, requiring code 
to be written for every single object, and a rewrite of all object 
parsing code.

Anyway, with the example you gave and keeping to plain-vanilla official 
POV-Ray, the best thing to do is to just create the box inside the macro 
instead of doing it outside and passing it and its corners...you have 
not provided enough information for me to tell if this even makes sense 
in your situation. Your syntax was completely wrong, maybe you don't 
know about the macro feature.

#macro myInvBox(ptA, ptB, Tex)
    box {ptA, ptB texture {Tex}}
    ...
#end

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

In article <3f50c242@news.povray.org>, Oliver Jaxid <mai### [at] finniqcom> 
wrote:

> but i'am not the only one. minimum 50% of all articles in this group 
> then are beeing wrong placed cause not about pov-source-programming. and 
> this was the ground why i've posted here. so, i think that the names of 
> the groups for pov-news-noobs are a little bit diffuse.

This seems to be true, although I have no idea why. There's *.newusers, 
*.general, *.advanced-users...what attracts people to a group about 
programming? Especially when watching for a few days would show where 
all the posts are.

And your misconception...why would anyone think *.binaries.programming 
was a discussion group unrelated to *.programming? I would have thought 
it was fairly obviously the binary counterpart to this one. I'm not 
attacking you, but I'm really wondering what drove you to that 
conclusion. And why do people disregard all the pointers to the 
documents describing the purpose of each group?

What makes the names unclear? We have povray.programming, we have 
povray.binaries.programming. You could use "source-code", but that would 
probably be worse. "development" is even more unclear, and imprecise...a 
discussion may not be about POV-Ray development but still be on-topic. 
Writing scenes could be considered programming, but given the 
alternatives, why do people go straight to this group?

Particularly, why do new users avoid povray.newusers so thoroughly?

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

Christopher James Huff wrote:
>In article <3f50c242[at]news.povray.org>, Oliver Jaxid <mai### [at] finniqcom>
>wrote:
>
>> but i'am not the only one. minimum 50% of all articles in this group
>> then are beeing wrong placed cause not about pov-source-programming. and
>> this was the ground why i've posted here. so, i think that the names of
>> the groups for pov-news-noobs are a little bit diffuse.
>
>This seems to be true, although I have no idea why. There's *.newusers,

>...

>What makes the names unclear? We have povray.programming, we have
>povray.binaries.programming.

I've been reading these groups since 1999 or so, and sometimes I _still_
forget what "povray.programming" is intended to cover.  Here's why:
POV-Ray has evolved into a pretty serious scripting language.  I would
suspect that very few files use simply the "scene description language" in
a static way.  If only for convenience, most scenes involve algorithmic
structures (loops, conditionals, etc.).  And the use of algorithmic
structures is one of the hallmarks, to very many people, of "programming".

Or, more briefly, many people believe that they are "programming" when they
create a POV-Ray scene.  This group is not about writing programs IN
POV-Ray; it's for discussing the programming that CREATES POV-Ray.  But the
name doesn't make that entirely clear.

As for better names... I'm not sure I have an opinion.  Someone offered
"povray.internals", which seems OK.  Almost any choice of name would at
least avoid this unfortunate conflation of the two senses of "programming"
POV-Ray.


>....

>Particularly, why do new users avoid povray.newusers so thoroughly?

I think a lot of people assume that groups like povray.newusers are created
to quarantine all the newusers so that veterans can more easily avoid them.
 :)  For POV-Ray, this seems an unfair prejudice.

--=================--
The _real_ lesson of John Henry: Never compete with a machine, at the task
for which it was designed...

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