>distributed rendering...  Maybe I didn't clarify myself enough.  And at
>current the POV Team has no thoughts of implementing an InetPOV...  So you

Can you speak on our behalf ? I don't recall telling you so. I'm sure no other
member has done so either.

>Each thread will work on a seperate part of the image with it's own set of
>global variables...  I have looked at the source and it isn't hard to do at

Which means major modifications to the POV source. You would have to make
almost every single global variable thread-local, plus the frame as well.

>all.  My proposal would be the same as running 4 versions of POV each
>rendering say 1/4 of the picture.  This is easily done and each thread could
>have its own thread-local.  And it would be very easy to implement.  Don't

Unless you have four CPU's what the point ? Running four rendering threads on a
single CPU would be noticably slower than running a single rendering thread on
that same CPU. You've fallen into the old 'more threads are faster' trap.
Believe me, it will NOT make rendering faster on ANY single-CPU operating
system.

>Quit talking about crappy OSes...  Windows NT has no problem thread

Please don't be so rude - the other user was giving you quite good advice. It
doesn't matter what the OS is. If a thead switch takes any more than zero time
(which it must) then the time spent swapping threads is time wasted that could
have been better spent rendering the image. Don't fool yourself by thinking
that it takes 'amost no time'. Time is time, no matter how short it is.
Multiply that small time by a few hundred-million thread switches (possible on
a very long render) and you'll get a quite significant performance loss.

>Again your being narrow minded...  Why does POV need to know when a file has
>been changed...  As long as some means is enabled to save a file.  And yes

So when you press the 'render' button it knows whether to read the file from
disk or prompt the user to read it from memory (or another location). Amongst
other things.

You've got a lot of ideas here but going for the throat of people who tell you
that what you suggest isn't as easy as you think isn't the way to go about
things.

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