POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : C API : Re: C API Server Time
20 Apr 2024 04:09:22 EDT (-0400)
  Re: C API  
From: William F Pokorny
Date: 6 Feb 2023 01:45:56
Message: <63e0a224$1@news.povray.org>
On 2/5/23 20:20, Kima wrote:
> How can I install/find -lpovray library for C?

There is no POV-Ray C / C++ API or library.

In other words, all that is POV-Ray specific is today included as part 
of the povray load module. POV-Ray itself, makes use of other libraries.

Bill P.



More of me yapping for those wishing to trudge onward...

An official API has discussed at various times in the past - and I'd 
make a guess bits of the main body you posted comes from such a 
discussion thread! :-)

Christoph invested considerable time trying to untangle the code 
(v3.8/v4.0) to better set up for support of an API with a library build, 
but that code re-factoring start is as far as work got.

It's possible to write custom C++ making use of the POV-Ray code base to 
render scenes. Somewhere on the news groups Christoph worked up and 
posted C++ code which manually made all the necessary calls to render a 
sphere IIRC. The work was done to look at the feasibility of 'just' 
coding scenes in C++ as some had suggested at the time. His conclusion 
was it would be a difficult way to create and render scenes in practice.

FWIW. You can find povray.h in the 'source code' tree at:
./source/backend/povray.h. There have been changes to this file over 
time, but I think v3.7/v3.8/v4.0 consistent with respect to file 
location at least, though not the file's contents.


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