Hi,

I really appreciate the work that you guys are all doing to incorporate new
features, such as multi-threading into POV-Ray.  I use POV-Ray for reviews,
not for actual production rendering.

One area that I've found a little frustrating is that typically beta
releases, such as 22, expire after a month.  Unfortunately, the follow-on
beta releases are rarely put online in a timely fashion - today is the 4th,
and there is no beta 23 available.  This means I have to change my system
clock to get the old beta to work.

First of all, does anyone know when beta 23 will be released?  Second, would
the developers consider removing the date checking in betas?  I understand
the rationale behind it, but it seems like a very user-unfriendly feature,
especially when there isn't always a current beta available.

Thanks,

DK

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> First of all, does anyone know when beta 23 will be released?  Second, would
> the developers consider removing the date checking in betas?  I understand
> the rationale behind it, but it seems like a very user-unfriendly feature,
> especially when there isn't always a current beta available.

Please don't even bother asking that. It has been asked 123764 times 
probably since the beginning of 3.1 beta testing, asking it once more 
won't change the "no" answer.

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dkanter <dka### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Second, would
> the developers consider removing the date checking in betas?  I understand
> the rationale behind it, but it seems like a very user-unfriendly feature,

  It would be more user-unfriendly to have 25 different betas around
during the next 5 years, causing tons of useless bug reports and bad
publicity.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> dkanter <dka### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> Second, would
>> the developers consider removing the date checking in betas?  I understand
>> the rationale behind it, but it seems like a very user-unfriendly feature,
> 
>   It would be more user-unfriendly to have 25 different betas around
> during the next 5 years, causing tons of useless bug reports and bad
> publicity.
> 
There have been several proposals to solve that.
- After expiration have a splash screen at startup, that tells the user 
that it has expired and that they should not post bug reports anymore 
nor distribute it.
- Compile several beta versions, one with the standard 1 month 
expiration. One with 1 month and a week, to be posted when the team is 
not able to generate a new version before expiration, but thinks one 
week should be enough. One with 2 months etc.
- ...

As I said before, I am *not* going to use the beta until this problem is 
solved. I am probably not the only one, so you are loosing a number of 
dedicated beta testers this way. I do appreciate all the work you are 
putting into this, but I just have to wait for a stable release :( .

Post a reply to this message

andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> As I said before, I am *not* going to use the beta until this problem is 
> solved.

  Why? Because of some kind of odd principle? Some kind of protest?
"You don't do as I say, so I don't play with you anymore."

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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andrel wrote:

> As I said before, I am *not* going to use the beta until this problem is
> solved. I am probably not the only one, so you are loosing a number of
> dedicated beta testers this way. I do appreciate all the work you are
> putting into this, but I just have to wait for a stable release :( .

Agreed. I'm not testing the beta with real project, because with real
projects you can tolerate bugs but you can't tolerate a raytracer that
stops working after one month. Faking the date is not an option if you have
an NFS server.

I would greatly appreciate to test betas, but it is currently simply not
possible.

Why not add a command-line parameter that make the beta not expire:
% povray +iknowthisisabetaandiwontreportbugsafterithasexpired

Developers of glxgears did it already. The user has to give a command line
parameter to acknowledge that glxgears is not a benchmark.

-a.

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Warp wrote:
> andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>> As I said before, I am *not* going to use the beta until this problem is 
>> solved.
> 
>   Why? Because of some kind of odd principle? Some kind of protest?
> "You don't do as I say, so I don't play with you anymore."
> 
No, because I sometimes use POV in my daytime job to create images for 
others and I can not fiddle with my system clock. I once had that 
someone came to me to get an illustration for a paper to be submitted 
that afternoon and I used a beta version to create it that just run out 
the day before. Luckily for that specific picture I could use the stable 
release (after some frenzy rewriting) and the lighting was not changed 
markedly between the releases, but it was close. After that I decided 
never to depend on a beta that could run out without a new one lined up.

Post a reply to this message

andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> No, because I sometimes use POV in my daytime job to create images for 
> others and I can not fiddle with my system clock.

  Using a beta for your daytime job? That's just silly.

  And you know, it's possible to have *both* 3.6 and 3.7 at the same time.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Alexandre DENIS <Ale### [at] labrifr> wrote:
> Agreed. I'm not testing the beta with real project

  So because the beta has an expiration date you can't render a "real
project" with it to test that it works? That makes a whole lot of sense.

  All this "I can't use it continuously so I won't use it at all" is the
silliest thing I have heard in a long time. It just doesn't make any sense.

  It's not like 3.6 and 3.7 were mutually exclusive and couldn't be located
in the same system. This is just silly.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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dkanter wrote:
> First of all, does anyone know when beta 23 will be released?  Second, would
> the developers consider removing the date checking in betas?  I understand
> the rationale behind it, but it seems like a very user-unfriendly feature,
> especially when there isn't always a current beta available.

Starting with the next Windows beta I will be changing things such that
after the expiry date, a warning is displayed which has to be clicked-
through rather than not running at all. Though there probably still will be
an absolute timeout, it will be in the order of six to twelve months or so.

-- Chris

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