POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.documentation.inbuilt : Command line switches and ini file settings Server Time
28 Mar 2024 21:51:24 EDT (-0400)
  Command line switches and ini file settings (Message 1 to 3 of 3)  
From: Jon Buller
Subject: Command line switches and ini file settings
Date: 9 Feb 2006 16:15:00
Message: <web.43ebacf5dc73d596be920ef30@news.povray.org>
Is there anyplace where all the command line switches and ini file settings
are documented?  The stuff at http://www.povray.org/documentation/ seems a
bit lacking...  Consider this:

I'm sort of getting started with POVRay, and I know there are INI files for
setting up lots of parameters about the render, esp. sizes, but the
quickres.ini file has some Antialiasing settings in it as well.  So I start
poking through the documentation looking for what things I can set there...

Start with the big table of contents.  Hmm section 3.3 has command line
options...  But only where to put the default INI files.  (Or maybe just
where I should find the ones that came during the install.)  That leads to
3.3.1 which tells me about /EXIT, /DEMO, and a few other semi quirky things
I'm not really interested in.

3.3.2 is a little better, I now know about Width, Height, Antialias, and
Antialias_Threshold via the example.  The first three are pretty obvious,
but what's special about the =0.3 on the last one...?  Maybe the "More
about INI files" links will tell me.

3.2.5.2 doesn't say much more than I've already seen, but the most promising
link is to section 2.1.2 in the *introduction*?.  I can probably skip that,
since I'm looking for some rather detailed stuff, not just some fluffy
intro. Oh, but there it is, who whould have thought that a complete
reference list of options would be called "Introduction".  (I'm glad I
found it this time, I missed that link in the flow of looking for it the
last 4 or 5 times.)

I don't mean to rant, and I know I'm doing it pretty badly right now, but
I've been looking pretty hard for that, for quite a while the last couple
of days.  Maybe it's just me, but I'd expect "Introduction" to have some
basic explaination and just a few things to get you started.  It would just
have stuff that you could probably skip if you've done a simple render or
two. Then later on in the document I'd expect to see a "Options Reference"
or something that describes each and every option in gory detail, more like
the headers "Scene Description language", "Scene Settings", "Objects" or
"Textures", etc.

I'd also like to see a link to that section on all the pages that discuss
INI files.  Kind of like "This page tells you the location and purpose of
the file, this link will tell you all about its contents."  But that seems
to be missing from the first few pages I was poking through.

I'll shutup now, but thanks for listening, even if all you do about it is
totally ignore me.

Jon


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From: ingo
Subject: Re: Command line switches and ini file settings
Date: 10 Feb 2006 11:39:02
Message: <Xns9766B38CDB92Aseed7@news.povray.org>
in news:web.43ebacf5dc73d596be920ef30@news.povray.org Jon Buller wrote:

> Is there anyplace where all the command line switches and ini file
> settings are documented?  The stuff at
> http://www.povray.org/documentation/ seems a bit lacking...

3.1.2 Command-line options

close to anything you can put on the commandline you can put in an INI-
file.

When you have access to the windows help (chm) file, in the index search 
for anything with a "+", these are the shortcuts for command-line options.

Ingo


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From: Jon Buller
Subject: Re: Command line switches and ini file settings
Date: 10 Feb 2006 13:20:00
Message: <web.43ecd6e7b36d0cd6be920ef30@news.povray.org>
ingo <ing### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> in news:web.43ebacf5dc73d596be920ef30@news.povray.org Jon Buller wrote:
>
> > Is there anyplace where all the command line switches and ini file
> > settings are documented?  The stuff at
> > http://www.povray.org/documentation/ seems a bit lacking...
>
> 3.1.2 Command-line options
>
> close to anything you can put on the commandline you can put in an INI-
> file.
>
> When you have access to the windows help (chm) file, in the index search
> for anything with a "+", these are the shortcuts for command-line options.
>
> Ingo

Ahh, yes, but I've been switching back and forth between a UNIX box and a
windows box, and most of my coding / searching was on the UNIX box, using
firefox pointed at povray.org/documentation.

I probably should have asked Google and limited the site to the
documentation section of povray.org though.  I always think of the better
and simpler ways of doing things after ranting.  I suppose that isn't
really the inbuild documentation either, but I didn't see a better place to
post.

I think the main point I was trying to make is that "Introduction" is not a
good name for that section in the online docs, and the "see also" links are
not particularly good at directing you to that section if you are somewhere
else.  I also thought that the windows stuff was generated from the same
source as the online HTML was.  I now see that there are some reasonable
differences, and that it was a poor assumption as well.

Jon


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