As an ongoing effort to provide additional functionalities and
bugfixes to povray-3.6.1 for unix, I'm pleased to announce a new release
of the Linux framebuffer patch, as well as a brand new patch that provides
a dedicated unix frontend (for stream colors) and a "featureless" patch
for the build system of the povray source distro:

http://pov4grasp.free.fr/download/povray-3.6.1-fb-0.4.0.diff.bz2
http://pov4grasp.free.fr/download/povray-3.6.1-frontend-0.1.0.diff.bz2
http://pov4grasp.free.fr/download/povray-3.6.1-config-0.1.0.diff.bz2

	Note that the patches are now available as diff-formatted files
that are applied against the povray-3.6.1 source distribution using the
unix patch command.  This allows to maintain and install various patches
independantly from each other.  See the installation instructions below.

	A generic linux povray binary is also available here:

http://pov4grasp.free.fr/download/povray-nc.bz2

The binary was compiled with the Intel C++ compiler to take advantage
of Pentium 4 optimizations.  However it should also work on any other
platform (tested on an AMD Athlon XP).


	Here is a brief description of the new/added features:

Linux Framebuffer patch (povray-3.6.1-fb-0.4.0.diff):

   (minor version aimed at adapting to the new distribution scheme)

   - add control of dump file through $POV_FB_DUMP; defaults to dump.ppm
   - add dump screen info/error messages; wait for keypress to continue


Unix frontend patch (povray-3.6.1-frontend-0.1.0.diff)

   - first attempts, based on source/frontend/defaultrenderfrontend.cpp
   - support colored POV-Ray streams through $POV_STREAM_COLORS
   - read terminfo capabilities to check usability of ansi escape sequences
   - fix non-working stream redirections in official povray-3.6.x

   The main purpose of this patch at the moment is to allow povray to use
custom colors to display the information such as render statistics, errors,
and so on.  The colors are defined through the POV_STREAM_COLORS environment
variable using a syntax inspired from the similar feature of GNU ls.  See
the manual of the 'dircolors' command.
   This patch recognize the following keywords: all, fatal, warning, status,
debug, render, statistic.
   Here is an example of how to setup colors depending on the terminal in use:

(put this in your ~/.bashrc or ~/.profile file)

case "$TERM" in
   linux*) export
POV_STREAM_COLORS="fatal=01;37;41:warning=01;33:status=01:debug=01;35";;
   xterm*) export
POV_STREAM_COLORS="fatal=01;37;41:warning=30;43:status=01:debug=35";;
esac

   IMPORTANT NOTE: stream colors will only work with terminals that are able
to understand ansi escape sequences (usually most newer terminals do, e.g.
xterm, linux, as show above).  The patch detects whether the terminal has
such capability.  Otherwise it warns that colors cannot be used.  The terminal
is defined by the value of the TERM environment variable.

   See p.b.images for samples.


Unix config patch (povray-3.6.1-config-0.1.0.diff)

   This patch fix the broken detection for svgalib and some compiler flags
that comes in the configure script.  These fixes were formerly included
in the Linux framebuffer patch.


	Installation instructions:

1) copy the files linked above to the parent directory of the
    povray-3.6.1/ directory (source distribution only).  The povray
    source distro that you intend to patch should be the official
    release.

2) unpack them, e.g.  bunzip2 *.diff.bz2

3) patch the povray-3.6.1/ sources using e.g.

    patch -f -p0 < povray-3.6.1-config-0.1.0.diff
    patch -f -p0 < povray-3.6.1-frontend-0.1.0.diff
    patch -f -p0 < povray-3.6.1-fb-0.4.0.diff

   and ignore the errors/warnings (in principle they are harmless).

4) cd to povray-3.6.1/ and run the ./bootstrap script.  This requires
    having the GNU autotools installed, i.e. autoconf and automake.

5) run  ./configure && make check  as usual


	Have fun!
	- NC

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Calimet wrote:
> 
>   - first attempts, based on source/frontend/defaultrenderfrontend.cpp
>   - support colored POV-Ray streams through $POV_STREAM_COLORS

It might be a good idea not to restrict this to colors but allow to 
specify any line formatting.  For reading the output with a different 
program it is often more convenient to have a plain text prefix for each 
line.

I already said IIRC that i think offering command line options as an 
alternative to environment variables would be useful, esp. if you call 
POV-Ray from another program.

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Landscape of the week:
http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/ (Last updated 24 Jul. 2005)
MegaPOV with mechanics simulation: http://megapov.inetart.net/

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