Hi.

I have a problem with POVray 3.5, I just recently installed 
and am trying to get it working.

my problem is tha tit wont read .ini fiules from /usr/local/share/povray-3.5/ini

here is my povray output:

povray slow castle/castle
Persistence of Vision(tm) Ray Tracer Version 3.5 Unix (.Linux.gcc)
  This is an unofficial version compiled by:
   R. Brown-Bayliss
   The POV-Ray Team(tm) is not responsible for supporting this version.
Copyright 1991-2002 POV-Ray Team(tm)
Possible Command Line Error: Could not open INI file 'slow'.
 Parsing Options
  Input file: /usr/local/Rendering/castle/castle.pov (compatible to version 3.5) 
Remove bounds........On  Split unions........Off
  Library paths: /usr/local/share/povray-3.5
    /usr/local/share/povray-3.5/include /usr/local/share/povray-3.5/ini
    /usr/local/Rendering/includes /usr/local/Rendering/castle
Output Options


and so on....   I can view the file via 'less
/usr/local/share/povray-3.5/ini/slow.ini'

and I get no problems doing #include "colors.inc"


Any clues?

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> Any clues?


I should point out that:

povray castle/castle /usr/local/share/povray-3.5/ini/res.ini[med]

works, but having to type in the full path just for ini files is a pain.

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In article <3ede741f$1@news.povray.org> , "nelson sandalwood" 
<nel### [at] zoismorg> wrote:

> povray slow castle/castle

This is not a valid command line invocation of POV-Ray.  You should at least
let POV-Ray know the filenames...

    Thorsten

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> This is not a valid command line invocation of POV-Ray.  You should at
> least let POV-Ray know the filenames...
> 

Yes, but do I have to type the full path?  Isn't that what library paths
are for?

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In article <3f0b3523$1@news.povray.org> , "nelson sandalwood" 
<nel### [at] zoismorg> wrote:

> Yes, but do I have to type the full path?  Isn't that what library paths
> are for?

No, but at least a valid and clear file names.  How to specify INi files and
scenes files on the command line is outlined in the user manual in great
detail.

You just specify two names without extension and the POV-Ray should apply
mind reading to figure out which file to use as what.  That won't work :-)

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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> No, but at least a valid and clear file names.  How to specify INi files
> and scenes files on the command line is outlined in the user manual in
> great detail.
> 
> You just specify two names without extension and the POV-Ray should apply
> mind reading to figure out which file to use as what.  That won't work :-)
> 

But it does, check this out:

[rob@musicbox Rendering]$ povray ini/res[normal] quality.ini[normal]
ship/ship.ini

The above line picks up that res is an ini file (the paht ini/ is just a
link from the current dir saving inputing the complete path) despite the
lack of  extention, but will not pick up the quality.ini is an ini file
and wont look for it in the library paths.  Here is the output.

Persistence of Vision(tm) Ray Tracer Version 3.5 Unix (.Linux.gcc)
  This is an unofficial version compiled by:
   R. Brown-Bayliss
   The POV-Ray Team(tm) is not responsible for supporting this version.
Copyright 1991-2002 POV-Ray Team(tm)
Possible Command Line Error: Could not open INI file 'quality.ini'.
 Parsing Options
  Input file: /usr/local/Rendering/ship/scene.pov (compatible to version 3.5)
  Remove bounds........On  Split unions........Off
  Library paths: /usr/local/share/povray-3.5
    /usr/local/share/povray-3.5/include /usr/local/share/povray-3.5/ini
    /usr/local/Rendering/includes /usr/local/Rendering/ship
Output Options

So it doesn't care about the extention, but it demands a full path which I
have cludged with a link from the current directory to /usr/local/share/povray-3.5/ini

Is this right?  Shouldn't it just look in the library path for any .ini
file, and why does it not need the .ini for a full path?

Post a reply to this message

nelson sandalwood wrote:
> So it doesn't care about the extention, but it demands a full path which I
> have cludged with a link from the current directory to
/usr/local/share/povray-3.5/ini

I think it's clearer to use the filename extentions and the POV-Ray
command line examples in the documentation show the use of extentions.

> Is this right?  Shouldn't it just look in the library path for any .ini
> file, and why does it not need the .ini for a full path?

I finally had the chance to test this out. It looks like POV-Ray
does not search the Library paths for ini files specified on the
command line.

For example, there's a slow.ini in the povray-3.5/ini directory
and a box.pov file in the povray-3.5/scenes/objects directory.
I added the ini and scenes/objects to my Library_Path (using the
actual full pathnames). Now if I run the following command:

povray slow.ini +Ibox.pov

I get the following output:

Persistence of Vision(tm) Ray Tracer Version 3.5 Unix (.Linux.gcc)
   This is an unofficial version compiled by:
   Gentoo Linux - orion.galaxy.com - portage
    The POV-Ray Team(tm) is not responsible for supporting this version.
Copyright 1991-2002 POV-Ray Team(tm)
Possible Command Line Error: Could not open INI file 'slow.ini'.

Parsing Options
   Input file: box.pov (compatible to version 3.5)
   Remove bounds........On  Split unions........Off
   Library paths: /usr/share/povray-3.5/include
     /data/ART/POV-Ray/MyFiles/MyLib /data/ART/POV-Ray/OtherIncludes
     /usr/share/povray-3.5/ini /usr/share/povray-3.5/scenes/objects
Output Options
   Image resolution 320 by 240 (rows 1 to 240, columns 1 to 320).

[snip]

Statistics for /usr/share/povray-3.5/scenes/objects/box.pov, Resolution 
320 x 240
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pixels:           76800   Samples:           76800   Smpls/Pxl: 1.00
Rays:             76800   Saved:                 0   Max Level: 1/5
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

[snip]

So it finds box.pov fine but does not find slow.ini. I've verified
upper/lowercase spelling and even placed a scene file in the ini
directory and POV-Ray had no problem finding it.

The POV-Ray documentation really does *not* state that it will use
the Library paths to search for ini files so maybe the Library paths
were not meant for ini files, just scene files.

I have not been able to come up with a workaround except for
specifying the path to the ini file on the command line. Sorry
I can't help you more than just confirm the behavior you're seeing :(

-Roz

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nelson sandalwood <nel### [at] zoismorg> wrote:
> 
> Is this right?  Shouldn't it just look in the library path for any .ini
> file, and why does it not need the .ini for a full path?

Your little problem sounded kinda interesting, so I spent some more of
the little time that I don't have to try to see why povray doesn't look
in the ini directory for ini files.  The answer's pretty simple, so if
it sounds confusing, it's just because I'm tired and I need to go to bed
:).

So here's the deal:  From what I can tell, povray does not know that it
has a default library path.  It loads it library path from the command
line or from an ini file.  So, simply put, without knowing exactly where
the ini file is, povray can't load the Library_Path to know where to
look for the ini file.  Yes, the program could be modified to look in
the .../share/ini directory for ini files until it successfully loads
one, but it doesn't and the change would not be trivial.

There is supposed to be one way you could get things to work the way you
want, but there seems to be a bug (at least in my build) that prevents
it from working.  What you should be able to do is create a basic ini
file that simply set the Library_Path so that povray could find other
ini files.  Set the environment variable POVINI to the full path of this
ini file, then try running povray as you did before.  The $POVINI file
should be loaded before povray goes out looking for slow.ini, and so it
should search the library paths you list.  However, as I was saying,
povray is throwing an assertion whenever I set POVINI, so there seems to
be a bug hiding somewhere in there that needs to be fixed first.

Hope That Helped,
  Karmix
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fsd### [at] uafedu wrote:
> So here's the deal:  From what I can tell, povray does not know that it
> has a default library path.  It loads it library path from the command
> line or from an ini file.  So, simply put, without knowing exactly where
> the ini file is, povray can't load the Library_Path to know where to
> look for the ini file.  Yes, the program could be modified to look in
> the .../share/ini directory for ini files until it successfully loads
> one, but it doesn't and the change would not be trivial.

What about having a .povrayrc file in your home directory? That's
where I have my Library_Path settings specified. I would have
thought that POV-Ray would process that file, then process the
command line, then process any ini files specified on the command
line. But maybe the order of processing is different. I do know
that POV-Ray processes the ~/.povrayrc file.

Here's a pertinent section of the README.unix file:

INI files:
    POV-Ray allows the use of files to store common configuration
    settings, such as the output format, image size, and library paths.
    Upon startup, the Unix version of POV-Ray will use the environment
    variable POVINI to determine custom configuration information if \
    that environment variable is set.  Otherwise, it will look for the
    file "povray.ini" in the current directory.  If neither of these works,
    then POV-Ray will try to read a file called ".povrayrc" stored
    in the user's home directory.  If none of these work, then POV-Ray will
    try to read the file "povray.ini" in a default system-wide directory
    defined at compile time (/usr/local/lib/povray35 by default).
    Each user should copy the system-wide "povray.ini" file to
    "$HOME/.povrayrc".

So POV-Ray could theoretically know the Library_Path prior to
looking for ini files specified on the command line. But I
have the impression that ini files were not meant to be located
that way and that the Library_Path is meant for scene file
includes and the like.

-Roz

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Roz wrote:
> fsd### [at] uafedu wrote:
> 
>> So here's the deal:  From what I can tell, povray does not know that it
>> has a default library path.  It loads it library path from the command
>> line or from an ini file.  So, simply put, without knowing exactly where
>> the ini file is, povray can't load the Library_Path to know where to
>> look for the ini file.  Yes, the program could be modified to look in
>> the .../share/ini directory for ini files until it successfully loads
>> one, but it doesn't and the change would not be trivial.
> 
> So POV-Ray could theoretically know the Library_Path prior to
> looking for ini files specified on the command line. But I
> have the impression that ini files were not meant to be located
> that way and that the Library_Path is meant for scene file
> includes and the like.

Sorry for replying to my own post but I realized after posting
it that a problem with using the Library_Path settings in the
~/.povrayrc file for finding ini files is that that might not
be the end of the picture for Library_Path settings. There may
be more path additions or changes in the ini files specified
on the command line or on the command line itself. It's
probably best to get all the Library_Path settings sorted out
prior to parsing the scene files. Perhaps that's what you meant
all along Karmix. I'll just go back to lurk mode now ;)

-Roz

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