POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.beta-test : `datetime(now)` issue - suggestions for a solution : Re: `datetime(now)` issue - suggestions for a solution Server Time
8 Nov 2024 09:34:41 EST (-0500)
  Re: `datetime(now)` issue - suggestions for a solution  
From: clipka
Date: 9 Aug 2021 05:20:18
Message: <6110f352@news.povray.org>
Am 09.08.2021 um 09:07 schrieb jr:
> hi,
> 
> clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
>> We have established that the `datetime(now)` combo is both currently
>> broken (on some systems), and has some shortcomings in its design (on
>> all systems, both broken and otherwise).
>>
>>
>> I think the key issues in finding any satisfactory solution are the
>> following:
>> ...
> 
> could make a "fine" setting for 'povray.conf', eg:
> 
>    [timezone]
>    ; local
>    utc

I disagree.

`povray.conf` is there to tie the *NIX front-end(!) of your POV-Ray 
installation in to your *NIX run-time environment, and nothing more. 
Mainly to let the binary know where to find its auxiliary files 
(includes, primarily), and what directories never to access even if a 
scene says pretty please with a cherry on top.

There's also no such file in POV-Ray for Windows; such information is 
handled entirely differently there.


Also, it is definitely a setting that individual scenes should be able 
to override. Because in the end it will usually be the scene author who 
knows best whether they want some date or time displayed in their scene 
in local or UTC format - and it might change from scene to scene, or 
even between different portions of the scene.


If anything, one could argue that there should be an INI setting to 
specify the default, which in turn would make it configurable globally 
via the master `povray.ini`.

But the more places we want to add to tweak the setting, the more work 
it is to implement, and for the time being I'd like to keep it simple, 
and leave the implementation of such an INI default as an exercise to 
the reader, so to speak.


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