I added one long-requested feature to the codebase, namely support for
area-light diffuse and specular lighting. This means that with a switch
you can make area lights not only affects shadows but also illumination.
The result will be the same as when using an explicit grid of point light
sources, but faster.
  At least for now the full illumination will by default be off (so it
will work as currently), but it can be turned on with a new keyword inside
the light_source definition block.

  Example:

  This is an image rendered with a regular old area_light (rendered with
"-w800 -h600 +a0.1 +am2"):

http://warp.povusers.org/images/arealighttest1.jpg

  It took 13 seconds to render in my computer.

  This is the same scene, but the area light has been replaced with the
equivalent grid of point lights:

http://warp.povusers.org/images/arealighttest2.jpg

  This took 1 min 51 seconds to render.

  This is, again, the area_light, but with the new full area lighting
feature turned on:

http://warp.povusers.org/images/arealighttest3.jpg

  This took 36 seconds to render.

  As always, new features are experimental and thus will require extensive
testing.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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