When I create a file on my Mac, whether using MegaPOV or POVRay (at least I
think I also get them from the POVRay for Mac version -- all the examples
I'm looking at now come from MegaPOV), when I bring the file up in my
POVRay for Windows editor, I get little rectangular boxes at the end of
some, but not all, lines.

They have no effect on the parsing of the scene file, and I'm assuming
they're some sort of end-of-line symbol or something, but, since many lines
lack them entirely, while some others have a string of six or seven of
these, I'm just curious what they're from.

Again, this is purely out of curiosity, and because I know that there are a
bunch of you who can answer this.  The only time they bother me is when I
want to share a scene file and want to make it look pretty; then I go
through and manually delete each of these in my Windows editor....

Thanks

Dave Matthews

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"Dave Matthews" <dav### [at] mnwestedu> wrote:
> When I create a file on my Mac, whether using MegaPOV or POVRay (at least I
> think I also get them from the POVRay for Mac version -- all the examples
> I'm looking at now come from MegaPOV), when I bring the file up in my
> POVRay for Windows editor, I get little rectangular boxes at the end of
> some, but not all, lines.
>
> They have no effect on the parsing of the scene file, and I'm assuming
> they're some sort of end-of-line symbol or something, but, since many lines
> lack them entirely, while some others have a string of six or seven of
> these, I'm just curious what they're from.

Different operating systems use different end-of-line conventions, but the
POV parser copes with them all. The editor may get confused though. There
are many  free programs that can do the end-of-line conversion for you.

Unix/Linux uses control-J (linefeed), Mac uses control-M (carriage return),
and the PC uses control-M followed by control-J.

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"PM 2Ring" <nomail@nomail> wrote:

>
> Unix/Linux uses control-J (linefeed), Mac uses control-M (carriage return),
> and the PC uses control-M followed by control-J.

Hmm.  My curiosity is (was) why some lines have, while others lack, this
symbol.  Perhaps sometimes (on the Mac) I'm hitting "return," while other
times I'm hitting "enter" (which two are different on the Mac)?

Oh well, as you say, the POVRay parser handles them all, so I've never run
into a situation where it's anything more than an issue of idle curiosity.
Can you think of a situation where it might be a problem?

Thanks for the input.

Dave Matthews

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Dave Matthews wrote:
  > Hmm.  My curiosity is (was) why some lines have, while others lack, this
> symbol.  Perhaps sometimes (on the Mac) I'm hitting "return," while other
> times I'm hitting "enter" (which two are different on the Mac)?

They are not different and will not create different characters in the 
source file. Most likely there is either a file transmission problem or a 
problem with the Windows editor reading the file. Which one it is i cannot 
tell you right now.

	Thorsten, POV-Team

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Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:

> They are not different and will not create different characters in the
> source file. Most likely there is either a file transmission problem or a
> problem with the Windows editor reading the file. Which one it is i cannot
> tell you right now.
>
>  Thorsten, POV-Team

The reason I was thinking they were different was back when I used
Mathematica on the Mac, hitting "return" just took me to the next line in
the same cell, while hitting "enter" actually evaluated the cell.  In the
Windows version, the "enter" acted like the Mac "return," and to accomplish
the same thing as the Mac's "enter" I used "shift-enter."  So I was thinking
the Mac had (the capability of) differentiating between a "return" and an
"enter."  The phrase "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" applies to
me far too often, since my knowledge is quite often "little." ;-)

Anyway, like I said, this was a purely idle question, since everything works
fine, regardless.

Thanks Thorsten.

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Dave Matthews wrote:
> ...
> The reason I was thinking they were different was back when I used
> Mathematica on the Mac, hitting "return" just took me to the next line in
> the same cell, while hitting "enter" actually evaluated the cell.  In the
> Windows version, the "enter" acted like the Mac "return," and to accomplish
> the same thing as the Mac's "enter" I used "shift-enter."  So I was thinking
> the Mac had (the capability of) differentiating between a "return" and an
> "enter."  The phrase "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" applies to
> me far too often, since my knowledge is quite often "little." ;-)

Yes, some software CAN distinguish them as different keys, however, they 
both insert the same (ASCII) code into a text file.  In that sense, they 
are identical and MOST software does not distinguish between them.

      -=- Larry -=-

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Larry Hudson <org### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> Dave Matthews wrote:

> Yes, some software CAN distinguish them as different keys, however, they
> both insert the same (ASCII) code into a text file.  In that sense, they
> are identical and MOST software does not distinguish between them.
>
>       -=- Larry -=-

That makes sense.  Thanks!

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