"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message news:3bee5f11@news.povray.org...
> Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:
>   As for the Windows version: I still don't understand why a bigger stack
> could not be linked to the program. Most compilers have an option to specify
> the stack size the program will use; this stack size is usually very small
> (eg. 8 or 16 kilobytes); just increase it and there you are: You can have
> tens of thousands of recursions in winpov.

I agree with Warp here.  I understand that the stack has been set to 1 MB.  I've
done that with just about every non-trivial Windows program I've written.  But
considering what POV-Ray is doing, and if my understanding is correct in that
lots of things get put on the stack, I don't think 4 or even 8 MB would be
unreasonable.  IIRC, in some (most?) compilers you can even set the stack size
at runtime, but that would be a feature request, so consider it just a comment.

Of course, once source is out, we can change it ourselves :-)


>   If you are going to limit the max recursion limit, then at least put
> somewhere an easily modifiable flag that can be switched to get rid of
> this limitation. This way people compiling the unix version can get an
> unlimited version.
>
I completely agree with that.  Also, what limit to use?  Wouldn't some scenes be
able to survive a higher limit than others?

I would say put an extra note about it in the FAQ and leave the rest alone.
Yes, I know people ask stupid questions (I'm guilty on occasion).  but putting
info in two places about it might help head off some of those questions.  I was
actually a little surprised that there is not a section on possible errors, that
is a list of errors with likely causes.  I realize many of the errors are
self-explanatory, but many only make sense if you know what's going on
internally.  Such a list would have helped me several times so far.

By the way, on the topic of stupid questions and why they're asked, I'd like to
explain why I sometimes ask them.  In the case of max_trace_level, I've used it
many times before 3.5.  I've read the manual about before.  But it was a long
time ago, and I didn't figure max_trace_level (which really has only one
purpose) would have changed.  I didn't realize too high a value could cause a
crash.  Until I did it the other day.  And now I see it's in the manual.


Just my 5 cents (I went over the 2 cent limit, I think)

Michael

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