I tried a lot of things to output scene data into the scene itself.
All the numbers seemed all bunched up on top of one another.
Changed sclae, spacing, font, etc.
tried vstr(3, vector...) as well as str(vector.x [or .y or .z]) but to no avail.
POV-Ray 3.6 on Winbloze.

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Am 31.07.2013 22:34, schrieb Bald Eagle:
>
> I tried a lot of things to output scene data into the scene itself.
> All the numbers seemed all bunched up on top of one another.
> Changed sclae, spacing, font, etc.
> tried vstr(3, vector...) as well as str(vector.x [or .y or .z]) but to no avail.
> POV-Ray 3.6 on Winbloze.

If you use multiple text objects for that purpose, make sure that you 
translate them to different places in the scene. POV-Ray does /not/ do 
that automatically for you.

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I did do that.
I found it quite convenient to declare a variable for the y-coordinate and then
subtract the scaled text size from it after every line of text.  Then all I had
to do was copy and paste both lines, which gave me all the text syntax I needed,
plus the "carriage return".

The problem is, even if I output a single variable to the screen, its value is
all bunched up on itself what appears to be horizontally.
I say appears to be, because when I started spacing the text and scaling it, I
got a weird effect where it appeared to increase the y-position as the text went
across the screen. - not a variable thing, because it all happened from text
contained inside a single concat directive.

Puzzling.

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Am 01.08.2013 17:32, schrieb Bald Eagle:
> I did do that.
> I found it quite convenient to declare a variable for the y-coordinate and then
> subtract the scaled text size from it after every line of text.  Then all I had
> to do was copy and paste both lines, which gave me all the text syntax I needed,
> plus the "carriage return".
>
> The problem is, even if I output a single variable to the screen, its value is
> all bunched up on itself what appears to be horizontally.
> I say appears to be, because when I started spacing the text and scaling it, I
> got a weird effect where it appeared to increase the y-position as the text went
> across the screen. - not a variable thing, because it all happened from text
> contained inside a single concat directive.
>
> Puzzling.

Sounds like a non-zero "offset" parameter to me; that would also explain 
the text piling up on itself.

Did you perhaps set the "offset" parameter to a (non-zero) scalar (i.e. 
a single number)? The parameter is actually a vector, so POV-Ray will 
promote any scalar value to <1,1,1>*NUMBER, while <1,0,0>*NUMBER (i.e. 
x*NUMBER) is what users will typically want (if they bother about this 
parameter at all; usually a value of 0 will do just fine).

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I'm pretty sure the offset was zero, though I've played with that parameter
before, and haven't had any problems.

(I was trying different fonts.
I don't know WHERE or exactly how to define my font directory, and
of course Windows has spaces in the path for my fonts - how do I include those?)

Putting other variables into the exact same text directive that were not derived
from vectors worked just fine, so I'm pretty sure it's something wacky with
vstr() rather than text().

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Am 02.08.2013 06:44, schrieb Bald Eagle:
> I'm pretty sure the offset was zero, though I've played with that parameter
> before, and haven't had any problems.
>
> (I was trying different fonts.
> I don't know WHERE or exactly how to define my font directory, and
> of course Windows has spaces in the path for my fonts - how do I include those?)

Placing them in double quotes I guess.

> Putting other variables into the exact same text directive that were not derived
> from vectors worked just fine, so I'm pretty sure it's something wacky with
> vstr() rather than text().

I very much doubt that; strings are strings, whether from literals or 
generated by string functions. I suggest you post your code.

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> > I don't know WHERE or exactly how to define my font directory, and
> > of course Windows has spaces in the path for my fonts - how do I include those?)

More explicitly - what file do I alter to have the library path include that
directory?


> I very much doubt that; strings are strings, whether from literals or
> generated by string functions. I suggest you post your code.

I obliterated the original code, but something new I'm working on has PART of
the same problem.  I can now see that vstr is not the problem - it's how I'm
placing the text with translate (and possibly rotate) in the original.

Nothing like simple Cartesian coordinates to make me feel like a simpleton.

text {ttf "arial.ttf", concat("(",vstr(3, Center2, ",", 0, 0),")"), 0.1, 0 scale
0.2 translate (x*X2)+0.2 pigment { color Green}}

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On 08/03/2013 01:08 PM, Bald Eagle wrote:
>
>>> I don't know WHERE or exactly how to define my font directory, and
>>> of course Windows has spaces in the path for my fonts - how do I include those?)
>
> More explicitly - what file do I alter to have the library path include that
> directory?

you can do it from the command line:
http://wiki.povray.org/content/Reference:Scene_Parsing_Options#Library_Paths

or edit: your local povray.ini file

... and possibly (I don't use windows version) the windows gui allows on 
the fly additions as well

PS: I know the documentation /can/ be fairly dry reading, but it's all 
in there ;-)

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Am 03.08.2013 19:08, schrieb Bald Eagle:

> text {ttf "arial.ttf", concat("(",vstr(3, Center2, ",", 0, 0),")"), 0.1, 0 scale
> 0.2 translate (x*X2)+0.2 pigment { color Green}}

Is it intentional that you translate by 0.2 in /all/ three dimensions 
(in addition to translating by X2 along the x axis)?

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> > 0.2 translate (x*X2)+0.2 pigment { color Green}}
>
> Is it intentional that you translate by 0.2 in /all/ three dimensions
> (in addition to translating by X2 along the x axis)?

No.  So I guess I need to do x*(X2+0.2)
I've always found the translate syntax confusing because my brain wants to
multiply the present X location by the float, instead of adding it like what
actually happens.   Grrrr.

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