Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> 
> BTW, as far as I know the HTML help can be used with IE 3, just not
> everything might work.
> 

It works without error messages, but the text is not really usable (just
enough to look if something is there, not to read it).

Christoph

-- 
Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde>
IsoWood include, radiosity tutorial, TransSkin and other 
things on: http://www.schunter.etc.tu-bs.de/~chris/

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Glen Berry <7no### [at] ezwvcom> wrote:
: What's worse, the POV-Team has seen to it that I can't run the latest
: version of POV-Ray without also installing a certain buggy, high
: security risk, grossly bloated, 64 Meg (when still compressed),
: "web-browser"  package. 

  The latest version of POV-Ray is 3.1g.
  Don't forget that 3.5 hasn't been published. The fact that you have been
invited to beta-test the current development version doesn't diminish this
fact.

  What makes you think that HTML help format will be the only format available
when POV-Ray 3.5 comes out?

  I myself hate microsoft and the quality of most of its software. Still I
prefer the MS HTML help format when using POV-Ray in Windows.

-- 
#macro N(D,I)#if(I<6)cylinder{M()#local D[I]=div(D[I],104);M().5,2pigment{
rgb M()}}N(D,(D[I]>99?I:I+1))#end#end#macro M()<mod(D[I],13)-6,mod(div(D[I
],13),8)-3,10>#end blob{N(array[6]{11117333955,
7382340,3358,3900569407,970,4254934330},0)}//                     - Warp -

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Glen Berry <7no### [at] ezwvcom> wrote:
: I knew that some variation of these two comments was coming. Whenever
: someone doesn't like a certain aspect of POV, these comments always
: surface. I've always considered them to be petty, and in poor taste.

  Perhaps, but it's still true.

-- 
#macro N(D,I)#if(I<6)cylinder{M()#local D[I]=div(D[I],104);M().5,2pigment{
rgb M()}}N(D,(D[I]>99?I:I+1))#end#end#macro M()<mod(D[I],13)-6,mod(div(D[I
],13),8)-3,10>#end blob{N(array[6]{11117333955,
7382340,3358,3900569407,970,4254934330},0)}//                     - Warp -

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On 12 Oct 2001 16:47:17 -0400, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:

>  Don't forget that 3.5 hasn't been published. The fact that you have been
>invited to beta-test the current development version doesn't diminish this
>fact.

How can I argue with logic like that?  :)

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In article <FxjHO3LiiUznSx=cB1yQjal21Fty@4ax.com> , Glen Berry 
<7no### [at] ezwvcom>  wrote:

> Chris had no other choice? Microsoft made it that way?
>
> That's nonesense!

Actually, what I don't get is why users constantly have to second guess
POV-team decisions.  From what I read frequently I get the impression most
people think we are idiots who don't know how to solve a particular problem.
Why can't the assumption be that if we make a change we did do so
considering all options, including our time and resources*?

    Thorsten

* And certain tools are very expensive, I remember either Chris Young or
Chris Cason wasted a lot of money and time buying tools that didn't do what
they were supposed to do to solve problems generating a decent documentation
during the 3.1 alpha/beta development.


____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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The following is my personal opinion on the general issue of 
non-constructive complaints or opinions.  In no way is it meant to be
offense towards you or any other person who has expressed similar opinions
in the past.  I just feel I have to say it when looking at many similar
messages in this group or received by email...

-----

If we just say that something doesn't work we get comments like "nonsense"
or "explain it"; every time questioning our decisions.  If we try to explain
detailed technical problems in advance we in turn get other people who
second guess our problems and again start _discussing_ the problems and
telling us what we _should_ do and jumping to conclusions without actually
having tried, knowing about or even understanding the problem.

On the one hand very, very few of the people complaining actually go and fix
a problem themselves.  There are many limits in 3.1 that are low priority
for the team, i.e. the 256 entry limit in maps, but we would surely have
added a change if it had been written - the no-source-code-for-3.5 excuse
doesn't cut it in many, many cases.

On the other hand we got a fairly big pile of junk when looking into
individual patches we considered for 3.5 because the patch authors didn't
finish or cleanup their code.  Everybody who has been seriously programming
for some time knows that writing a program that works most of the time is
10% of the work while fixing all the bugs is 90% of the work.  This is what
the POV-Team did for three years now.

If you give us your opinion of our work the way you did, please don't be
surprised if we give you our opinion on your opinion in return.  We always
try to give reasonable explanations and argue as far as it makes sense, but
IMO there is a time when the only response possible seems to be: "Fix it
yourself or shut up!" (this is a quote, I am *not* saying it to you!).  Now,
this would surely be unfriendly and we won't do this as discussion is
something we do want, but we do *not* want constant questioning of our
decisions or abilities.

If you look closely, we get lots of bug reports that are incomplete on three
lines and then all what follows are guesses and wild ideas about the inner
working of POV-Ray on another 25 lines where the person reporting the
problem is trying to do our task of debugging POV-Ray.  This costs valuable
time on both sides.  Us reading what we don't need to know (because 99% of
the time it is wrong and the other 1% we could have found out in 10 seconds
looking at the source code) and the person writing the additional 25 lines
nobody needs.

Yes, a good bug report needs lots of detail, but *only* details *relevant*
to the problem.  These are the steps to reproduce the problem (including
configuration, command-line settings, buttons pressed, etc, etc), the
expected results (what did happen), the actual results (what the user thinks
should have happened) and a workaround (if any - this assumes the user did
take more than five seconds trying different things which help us find the
problem faster).

If you point out a problem with POV-Ray we *do* want to hear about it!  What
we don't want is to hear that we could fix it but don't want to for some
reason because that is simply not true!!!  Or that there is a problem and
arguing over the existence of a problem based on some assumptions about the
inner workings of something the person can't even have seen (because the
source code is not public yet).

Apart from this arguing, if one of our responses is short it sometimes seems
to be taken as disinterest.  Not so!!!  Keep in mind we have been looking at
POV-Ray source code for the past three years, and those who have been
working on a long term project before can surely understand how everyone
will eventually react to something reoccurring after three years.  Even more
so if writing the response in the spare time which is usually late in the
evening or night after a long and busy day.

Our interest is to make POV-Ray as good as possible taking into account that
we don't have a 200 programmer, 100 tech writer and 500 marketing people
company to develop POV-Ray.  We have our spare time and fun to drive us and
POV-Ray forward!

All core POV-Team developers have university degrees in Computer Science or
equivalent qualifications in related fields.  At least Chris Cason and Ron
Parker have considerable decade-long experience developing for Windows and
other systems because they do so for a living.  Nathan Kopp has been working
in the field for nearly two years now.  I am getting a post-Bachelor
university education.  We are not idiots who do not know what to do, we do
*not* need someone else to tell us what is nonsense and what is not!

We may occasionally appear to be less friendly or elaborate when responding
than we should be, so don't take each and every word we say and analyze if
for flaws in our reasoning.  We all do make mistakes, introduce bugs or are
unclear in responses or documentation we write.  All this is human, I think.

-----

This is my opinion, and only my opinion.

Please note that I will (try to) ignore any further discussion responding to
this.

    Thorsten Froehlich

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> What's worse, the POV-Team has seen to it that I can't run the latest
> version of POV-Ray without also installing a certain buggy, high
> security risk, grossly bloated, 64 Meg (when still compressed),
> "web-browser"  package.

Rubbish. Firstly, there's nothing stopping you running POV without using
HTML Help. You just can't use the built-in docs.

Secondly, the 'latest version' of POV-Ray is 3.1g. If you don't like the
way we've released the beta, you are welcome to a full refund. You know
where to go to get it.

-- Chris

PS WRT your comments about WinHelp still being a valid alternative, you
are completely wrong. You have no idea about help authoring or the hassle
that WinHelp is to work with, plus all the major limitations and huge bugs
that are still in it, even after more than ten years.

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> Well, Microsoft made it that way. They dropped support for their old
> .hlp format ages ago, and their HTML help format requires IE4.0 and

Actually, it will work with IE 3, but some of the help file features
won't function correctly ... this is why I suggest IE4.

-- Chris

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> someone doesn't like a certain aspect of POV, these comments always
> surface. I've always considered them to be petty, and in poor taste.

No, 'poor taste' is a user whining about a beta of a free software
program that the developers spend thousands of hours making not having
a help format that HE personally prefers, especially in light of the
fact that most users seem to think that the HTML Help version of the
docs is a significant improvement on the WinHelp version of 3.1g.

> I *WANT* to use POV-Ray for Windows version 3.5 (or higher).

No-one is stopping you. Just use the online docs.

> I've been led to believe that this will only be "generic" POV-Ray help

By who ?

-- Chris

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Perhaps you will volunteer to make a winhelp version of the documentation
so that people can use it as an alternative to the html help? This way you
can do something to the problem instead of just ranting about it.

-- 
#macro N(D,I)#if(I<6)cylinder{M()#local D[I]=div(D[I],104);M().5,2pigment{
rgb M()}}N(D,(D[I]>99?I:I+1))#end#end#macro M()<mod(D[I],13)-6,mod(div(D[I
],13),8)-3,10>#end blob{N(array[6]{11117333955,
7382340,3358,3900569407,970,4254934330},0)}//                     - Warp -

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