On 30 Jun 1999 09:48:06 -0400, par### [at] fwicom (Ron Parker) wrote:

>On Wed, 30 Jun 1999 00:31:14 GMT, Glen Berry wrote:
>>Since most all of the image formats support some sort of comment
>>fields, wouldn't it be nice to take advantage of them? We could have
>>POV-Ray automatically insert a small text file into each of out images
>>stating the author's name, copyright notice, etc. This text file would
>>be created by the user and pointed to by an entry in the master ini
>>file. If no pointer existed, no text would be inserted into the image.
>
>Why not put the text in the .pov file instead?  I think that would be
>much more flexible.  If you have a boilerplate you want to use, just 
>put it in a #include.

That suits me fine. The ini file idea was just the first to come to
mind. Of course you would need a new keyword to identify which part of
the pov file went into the user's name and copyright header, but that
is no problem. (I only wish I had the skills and proper compiler to
try it myself.)


>
>>It would also be nice to mention in the comments which version of
>>POV-Ray created the image.
>
>That might be nice.  Render settings might be nice, too, but would
>probably take up too much space.

Yeah, I'm thinking of a short ID header here to save space. I suppose
one could offer a "verbose" option, but I'm not sure it would be worth
the trouble.


>DPI seems like such an American unit of measure.  Do Europeans and 
>other more advanced cultures use a more metricized term?

I have no idea, but I'll try to find out.

>Also, I'd think it'd be nice to specify the intended physical 
>dimensions of the image rather than directly specifying the DPI.
>Or specify the physical dimensions and the DPI but not the pixels.

Actually, I think that would be nice, but I don't know if the standard
graphics programs and publishing programs would recognize the physical
size statement. There *is* some sort of standard established for DPI.
I don't know the details of it yet, but I would want anything in the
way of DPI or physical size headers to be compatible with current
industry standards. 

In other words, if I purposely rendered a file with the intention of
printing it at 300dpi and it was to be 8"x10" in physical size, I
would want Photoshop or some publishing software to recognize this
automatically. I know this can be done, but I don't know the details
of how yet. I will start looking for the established methods. I *do*
know that printers (humans) often only go by DPI. If you set a
recommended DPI in your file, the graphics software will automatically
calculate the physical size based on that and the height and width of
the image measured in pixels. People doing professional  publishing
don't even usually look at the exact size of an image in pixels. In
fact, Photoshop measures images in physical units, which are based on
the image's stored DPI figure. If you want Photoshop to measure images
in pixels, you have to override this feature and turn on the option of
measuring in pixels.

*******************

Lastly, I want to mention that my original proposal was for three
different headers, and not something to be rolled into one custom
comment file. I hope everyone understands that now. I know at least
one person got that confused.  For the record, I was thinking of 3
different headers:

1)  User supplied, intended for author name and copyright notice. It's
final use is ultimately up to the user, and can be omitted if desired.
The length of this text should be kept small.

2) POV-Ray name and version number header, inserted automatically.

3) "DPI header" - or something that functions like that. Based either
upon an ini file setting or via a keyword in the POV file.

Sorry for the verbosity of this post, but I felt that some people
hadn't totally understood my intentions.

Thanks,
Glen Berry

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