>> The filename resolution issue is not yet resolved.
>
>OK.  If you tar a directory tree, do the subdirectory levels get
>searched.  If so, are they treated as subdirs?

    Yes, as it stands, subdirectories are treated properly.
    For example, I've bundled the Galaxy include file
    into a tar:

N:\devel\Pov31b>tar tvf galaxy.tar
drwxrwxrwx 0/0               0 Feb 07 00:56 1999 galaxy/
-rw-rw-rw- 0/0            2242 Aug 09 00:00 1998 galaxy/AllObjs.pov
-rw-rw-rw- 0/0             885 Aug 09 00:00 1998 galaxy/DnmcOpts.pov
-rw-rw-rw- 0/0           11395 Aug 09 00:00 1998 galaxy/GALAXY.BG
-rw-rw-rw- 0/0           42412 Aug 09 00:00 1998 galaxy/Galaxy.htm
-rw-rw-rw- 0/0            9780 Feb 05 14:51 1999 galaxy/GALAXY.INC
-rw-rw-rw- 0/0           35742 Aug 09 00:00 1998 galaxy/GALAXY.OBJ
-rw-rw-rw- 0/0            3884 Aug 09 00:00 1998 galaxy/GALAXY.SF
-rw-rw-rw- 0/0            1025 Feb 07 00:58 1999 galaxy/Rand.ini
-rw-rw-rw- 0/0             339 Feb 07 00:21 1999 galaxy/Rand.pov
-rw-rw-rw- 0/0            1048 Aug 09 00:00 1998 galaxy/Readme.txt
-rw-rw-rw- 0/0            1481 Aug 09 00:00 1998 galaxy/Trifid.pov

    From the command line:

    povray +Igalaxy/Trifid.pov +w630 +h480 +OTrifid

    There is a bit of a catch though, to put files in a subdirectory,
    each pov/inc needs to look for "galaxy/galaxy.inc" rather than
    just for "galaxy.inc".  It's my thought that POV should also
    search the directory of the _current file_ to more easily
    support this kind of modularisation.


>1)  Documentation:  If all the includes come as one big tar (or
>whatever) file, then people won't be able to peruse them the way they
>can

    Yes I agree this is a draw-back.  You can browse the tar with
    Winzip....  But what would be really nice would be a hyperlinked
    and indexed version of the standard includes, as HTML or
    windows HLP.  It makes me grumpy to search for the include
    directory in windows, and a man page or java-doc style solution
    would be much more useful.  (And complement the
    existing documentation very nicely)

>2)  Home-brews:  There'd have to be some sort of utility (hardwired into
>POV or released separately) so that people could make their own
>modules.  And of course, it would have to work on several platforms.


    Any port of command-line tar will.  It's not a job
    we need to worry about.

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