Mark Gordon <mtg### [at] mailbagcom> wrote:
: 1) Under what operating systems do you use POV-Ray? Please be specific
: as to e.g. Linux distributions, versions, and so forth.  Multiple
: answers are fine.

  - Solaris 7 (in a Sun Ultra 5)
  - Windows98 (in a P-II)

  I have access to other platforms, but I don't use povray actively in those.
  As for the Solaris 7 povray, I probably would not use any official compile
but I will probably always compile it by my own.

: 2) Do you want POV-Ray for Unix to have an official GUI front-end for
: your platform? Please indicate which one(s) if you list several
: platforms.

  I always make my povray files with emacs and would probably not change
to any other editor (unless it had the same features). A GUI would be, then,
fancy but mostly useless.
  Of course a GUI could have other things that could be useful, like all
the other features of Winpov besides the editor. For example the ability of
marking a rendering area in the render window with the mouse could be very
useful.
  I would not mind a GUI, but could live perfectly without one.

: 3) Would you want such a front-end to have a built-in editor?

  As I said, I would probably not use any other editor unless it had the
same features as emacs (with pov-mode).
  The GUI would definitely have to have support for an external editor.

: 4) Any preference on languages/GUI libraries on such a front end, pro or
: con? (Tcl/Tk, Perl/Tk, Python Tkinter, Java AWT, gtk+, Gnome, KDE,
: Motif/Lesstif)

  Not really, as long as it works well and fast here.
  I have coded a bit with gtk. It's a pain to code but seems to work fine
and efficiently.

: 5) What editor do you use for editing .pov files?

  Emacs (with pov-mode.el).

: 6) What format(s) do you prefer for documentation? (HTML, ASCII, PDF,
: ps, man, info, Word document, etc.)

  HTML and PDF are fine. Plain ascii is horrible. Man pages could be good.
No PS nor Word, thanks (well, I can view PS, but browsing it is a pain).

: 7) What sort of package management do you prefer for precompiled
: binaries? 

  Sorry, don't know about this.

: 8) What unofficial version(s) of POV-Ray (e.g. MegaPov, PVMPOV) do you
: use on a regular basis?

  MegaPov.

: What I plan to get from this:
: 1) Insight into the platforms for which official binaries perhaps ought
: to exist, used with 2, 3, and 4 to determine the operating systems(s)
: for which there is the strongest demand for a GUI, which in turn will
: help determine the language/toolkit used.

  I'm sure that Linux users will like a GUI that is similar to the one
in Winpov.
  Some GUI packages are quite platform independant, so code made for those
can be compiled in almost any platform that has that GUI library ported.

: Some of the things that were asked about in my last survey have happily
: been rendered (no pun intended) moot.  Specifically, the demand for a
: configure/make/make install has been addressed, and there's now just one
: binary that uses whatever form of display makes the most sense in the
: context.

  I have made an almost-universal makefile which can compile almost anything
(it calculates all the dependencies by itself) and use a modified version
when compiling megapov. The makefile itself is really short because almost
everything is calculated automatically. It needs gmake, though.

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):5;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

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