Hello

I'm working on creating a BOINC application that renders POV-Ray images
(http://boinc.berkeley.edu/) A simple way to do this is to have my
application run an unmodified compilation of POV-Ray (with no GUI of
course), but this isn't exactly what I want, since I need to get percentage
done, CPU time used, and pass it through BOINC API. Also, I would like to
have my own I/O restriction functions, and other things that would need a
modified version.

Another way I thought of is to make a custom version of POV-Ray with BOINC
API calls when needed. (Is this legally OK?) I'm wondering what I need to
do in order to use a custom main() function, and get callbacks for each
line rendered. I'm sure this is possible somehow, since POV-Ray Windows GUI
has a WinMain that doesn't start a render right away, some callbacks for
display and to update statusbar and titlebar with lines rendered, etc. Can
anybody explain how to do this? I guess it's something about "POVMS", but I
don't understand how it works or how to use it.

As a long-term thing (not so important, but would be nice to have it), I
would like to have POV-Ray *not* save the image file each time a line is
rendered. Instead, finished image would be stored in memory, and saved into
an image file (that can be resumed) when I tell it to. (If I could also save
all the object data into a file to avoid re-parsing, that would be heaven,
but I know I would be asking too much :D)

Any help much appreciated.

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