CompuServe Thread

I read somewhere in the threads, that you and Drew might be interested in beta-testers for POV-Ray v2.0 (Mac-version) ? I have a Mac IIvx at the moment, and will be upgrading to a Centris 650 as soon as the boards become available in Europe. And yes, I might be interested, what are the possibilities of becoming a beta-tester, and what to do for it? Anton There is 1 Reply. Read action !

Hi Anton, Drew would be the one to talk to abou getting you set up. A Centris? Great, we need to pipe the Mac code through a 68040 with CPU cache, and make sure its tailfeathers don't get burned off! Anyway, send Drew a personal e-mail, and he should be able to let you know what is happening (as you can tell, I don't! 🙂 He is at 73767,1244. Good luck! ttfn, Eduard [esp] Schwan P.S. Has Quicktime 1.5 gotten over to Europe and you yet? There is 1 Reply. Read action !

Hi Eduard, Please note, that the Centris 650 upgrade board for my machine is not yet available in Europe, as we write/speak! I'm still using the Mac IIvx at the moment! I wrote Drew a message (27 Apr 93 20:20pm (European time)) and I'm very anxious to see, what happens next! Yep, QuickTime 1.5 has reached my desk, plus the desks of several other Mac- users over here in Europe. You want to include it for saving PICT's and stuff? Can you also include a very tiny window in v2.0 telling the user how many lines he has traced, and how many more to do before completing the picture. Some of my tracings are just bigger than the 14" screen can hold! Anton There is 1 Reply. Read action !

Anton, > You want to include it for saving PICT's and stuff? Can you also include > a very tiny window in v2.0 telling the user how many lines he has traced, > and how many more to do before completing the picture. Yup, 2.0 will do optional QT compression in the file save, it will also add a System 7 custom Finder icon of the image itself to the PICT file (folded document corner and everything!) I'm working on getting a "shrink to fit the growable image window" option, so a 1024×1024 image will be scrunched and completely viewable. I also want to put scrollbars and a selection area for "render just this area"… we'll see how much time I have. I also need to get an animation prompt dialog put in to take advantage of an upcoming feature. I was thinking of putting some kind of status line at the top of the image window, but a separate progress window would probably be better? ttfn, [esp] There is 1 Reply. Read action !

Eduard, TThe scrollbars would be a great improvement! As might be a seperate progress window, as long as we are also able to switch it of. Is there any possibility to include a new trace mode into POV 2.0? To be more precise, a wireframe mode, so that our debugging times can be reduced enormously? Anton There is 1 Reply. Read action !

> Is there any possibility to include a new trace mode into POV 2.0? > To be more precise, a wireframe mode, so that our debugging times > can be reduced enormously? Sorry, the "Quality" command line parameter only goes down to zero. So, for a wireframe "zippy" mode, we'd have to parse a command line switch like "-q-1" which is too difficult 🙂 Interesting idea, but I think that would require a fair amount more code in the engine, which won't happen for 2.0. Hopefully we'll find that POV-Ray 2.0 is faster, and if my "re-render just the selected rectangle" code gets in to the Mac version, that'll help zoom in on problems too. [esp] There is 1 Reply. Read action !

Eduard, Yes, that would be a nice alternative to render only the object.piece you want to check on, please go for it! Have you heard from Drew, in the mean time? I haven't had an answer to my candidateship yet… – Anton There is 1 Reply. Read action !

No word from Drew in weeks, Spring is here, so I know he isn't hibernating… Read action !