Hi Folks,
	I recently downloaded both the Unix and Windows source code files to
see if I could compile either or both sets using the Cygnus Win32
compiler.
	After un-gzipping and un-tarring the unix set, tweaking the various
make files and config files I compiled the command line unix version. 
	(OK, so it doesn't run right - it seems to jump back into the file
parsing, after a macro, about two hundred and sixty-something characters
too soon - but I'm not sure if that's the compiler, something I did
wrong, the phase of the moon ... so I'll say no more about that here.)

	At this (partial) success I unzipped the windows source to have a look
at how much work it would be to build a make file for the windows
specific source. Didn't like what I saw (I've done no Windows
programming at all -  resources? wozzat?) and went to get a coffee.
	Upon acquiring my caffeine fix I decided to recompile the unix source
after tweaking the compiler settings. And the compile fell over with a
parse error in tokenize.c. 
	I had a look and found that the offending line was a C++ style comment.
On the following line was a windows specific function call. 
	So, I extracted tokenize.c from the unix tar file and recompiled with
the original compiler settings. And the compile fell over with a
multitude of compile/link errors.

	And so I get back to my opening query: Are the 'generic' sources to
PoV-Ray no longer being kept generic? Is there going to be a final
parting of the ways between different sets of source code? Am I over
reacting?

	I would not be surprised to find that they can no longer be generic. It
is just that I had heard nothing in these news groups about other people
finding this discrepancy between source code sets.
	My primary concern is for people writing source code patches. The
reason I was looking into compiling the source code myself was that I
wished to tweak the Photon Patch in a couple of ways. So I looked at the
source code provided for this and saw that it appeared to be based on
the Windows 'generic' source.

	Whew. I really didn't mean to write such a long post, and after
rereading it I realize I'm starting to ramble. So I'll stop now, and
invite comments, critiques, flames, etc.

	All the best,
		Mike Andrews.

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