When right-clicking on a tab in the editor window a list of options should appear, such as:

* Close
* Close all but this
* Save
* Save as
* Print

See Notepad++, EditPad Lite, and Firefox for examples.

Using the concat function is tedious. Why not just have an operator with which to concatenate strings?

“Hello " + “world!”

“Hello " . “world!”

There already exist atan, atan2 and atan2d functions, why not atand?

Would be nice to have a “Delete” option in the File menu to delete the current file from disk.

The documentation assumes that INI files (as well as the command line!) are parsed and processed instantly. This no longer holds true for POV-Ray 3.7, where parsing INI files (and the command line) and processing it are separate operations that occur at different times. As such, one consequence is that INI file options only take effect after reading the whole INI file, and possibly later.

As such, documentation statements such as <http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.1/222/>
“Note: that these options take effect immediately when specified. Obviously any error or warning messages that might occur before the option is read will not be affected.”

Are no longer correct. It needs to be explained that options only take effect after the INI file has been read. An error in the INi file causes other options _not_ to take effect because reading of the INi file is aborted prematurely.

The ability to specify an exact name for output images during animations would be great. As it is, POV-Ray appends a numerical designation to each image (e.g. image001.png, image002.png, etc. Overriding this behavior would allow certain tasks to be accomplished without cluttering the hard drive. For instance, an image could be rendered over and over again. Certain things like cellular automata, ripple tank simulations and feedback fractals could be performed without the resulting long list of images in a given directory.

The command line option could be in the form of +oefile/+Output_File_Name_Exact=file or some such.

Macros are finicky about how you type your code. What works outside macros sometimes fails inside them. For more information see the threads:

“Problems with macro (3.6)”, in p.a-u, 06-09-10
“Bad operands”, in p.g, 05-20-10

Still not sure *what* exactly the problem was, but one of my workarounds ended up working.

In POV 3.6 you could set the Statistic_File option to a custom file and folder path. In the beta I get an “Cannot open file” error. Has the feature been intentionally removed or did it become broken?

The documentation entries for shapes.inc, shapes_old.inc, shapes2.inc, shapesq.inc, etc. should have thumbnails next to the object descriptions.

In the tray icon, I’d like to see the render progress indicated somehow icon itself. Either a set of numbers (percents), or a change in color of the icon (e.g. from top to bottom). Something like the attached images.

Windows allows you to associate programs with file extensions using the “Open with” file manager right-click menu extension.

I’m running Windows 7 64bit, and installed the 64 bit versions of 3.6.2 and the beta appropriately.

A couple of problems that I haven’t tested very thoroughly:

1. If you have both POV 3.6.2 and the beta installed at the same time, you can no longer using this dialog change the association to the beta once it has been created for 3.6.2. There’s no error or anything; it just opens the file inside 3.6.2 instead. Maybe because both versions appear as “POV-Ray for Windows” to this dialog? Would adding the version number to the name fix things? Anything I can do on my end of things to resolve this?

2. In POV-Ray 3.6.2, I can use this dialog to open *.inc, *.txt and other files in POV-Ray, but only if POV-Ray isn’t already running. If POV-Ray is already running I get an “Only /EDIT and /RENDER may be passed to previous instance” error. Files with the *.pov extension open properly regardless, without any error. I am unable to test this in the beta at the moment due to the first problem unfortunately. Could someone please test this with the beta and confirm whether the behavior also exists?

3. With the POV-Ray 3.7 beta, entering the following command in the command prompt results in the same error:

   "C:\Program Files\POV-Ray for Windows v3.7\bin\pvengine64.exe" "D:\Working\Povray\GearHead\LoadingScreen\btr_maanji.pov"

If I change it to the following it works however:

   "C:\Program Files\POV-Ray for Windows v3.7\bin\pvengine64.exe" /EDIT "D:\Working\Povray\GearHead\LoadingScreen\btr_maanji.pov"

Is this error/behavior really necessary? Would it be OK to instead change the behavior when the /EDIT flag is omitted in the
command-line such that the file is opened in the editor by default, without throwing an error?

Currently, cameras placed inside object or union statements will halt the render with an error. Take for instance the following case:

#local temp_camera_1 = camera
{
  orthographic
  location  z*-12
  direction  z
  up    y
  right    x*image_width/image_height
  scale    32
}

#local temp_light_1 = light_source
{
  0
  color rgb 1
  translate <-30, 30, -30>
}

#local temp_light_2 = light_source
{
  0
  color rgb 1
  translate <-30, 30, +30>
}

union
{
  object {temp_light_1}
  object {temp_light_2}
//  camera {temp_camera_1}  // doesn't work!!!
}

//object {temp_camera_1}  // doesn't work!!!
camera {temp_camera_1}  // works!!!

Changing this behavior would make it possible to more easily apply transformations to scene objects and the camera at the same time in situations where the scene’s frame of reference is in motion relative to the rest of the scene, for instance in animations.

clipka anonymous@anonymous.org wrote:
> Am 29.06.2010 04:27, schrieb jberry02:
>
> > First, note that this is the Windows version.
> > Second the issue is not with opening the ini file, but with opening the scene
> > file from within the ini file.
> >
> > I have a scene.ini file, that has a line:
> >
> > Input_File_Name=scene
> >
> > under POV-Ray 3.5 *and* POV-Ray 3.6, the scene defined in the file scene.pov is
> > rendered properly using the parameters specified in the scene.ini file. The ini
> > file is opened from the POV-Ray GUI, and run using the “Run” button.
> >
> > under POV-Ray 3.7, I get an error - I originally thought that it was simply not
> > looking for scene.pov (i.e., it wasn’t adding the .pov extension when trying to
> > open the scene file), but looking closer the error is *actually*:
> >
> > Input file ‘C:\[...]\scene’ not found; cannot determine I/O permission for
> > write.
> > Failed to start render: Cannot open file.
> >
> > In other words, it appears that the problem is that it isn’t adding the default
> > ..pov extension when it is trying to do the I/O permission check. I do not have
> > any special I/O permisssions configured for any version of POV-Ray (I get the
> > pop-up dialogs), and this is a change in behavior from 3.6 to the current beta
> > of 3.7. The scene.pov file is not in any of the POV-Ray directories - it is in
> > a separate tree where I keep my scene files.
>
> Having looked at it in a debugger, I can confirm that there is a
> problem, and that you don’t seem to be far off the mark:
>
> The error occurs when POV-Ray tries to determine the I/O permissions for
> the /output/ file. If that isn’t explicitly specified with a path,
> POV-Ray will try to get the path from the input file; however, it will
> take the unprocessed parameter (in the sample case “scene”) rather than
> the file name POV-Ray makes of it (”scene.pov”), and then attempts to
> get the full /long/ path name of the file (remember the good old 8.3
> filenames for compatibility with 16-bit programs?), which only works
> when the file exists.
>
> Would you mind submitting a bug report to <http://bugs.povray.org>?

Installation script (from sources) when run with a classical “sudo make install” would create povray.ini & povray.conf in $HOME/.povray/3.7 (so far so fine) with the owner as root and the permission to readonly for the real user.

Same goes for the owner of the 3.7 directories tree : .povray & .povray/3.7 are created with root owner, despite being in $HOME of the performing user.

Please fix ?

Include file golds.inc still provides warnings when parsed, a shame for a standard include file.
(colors.inc is ok, I did not test the other includes)

File '/usr/local/share/povray-3.7/include/golds.inc' line 118: Parse Warning:
 Expected pure RGB color expression, unexpected filter and transmit components
 will have no effect.
File '/usr/local/share/povray-3.7/include/golds.inc' line 119: Parse Warning:
 Expected pure RGB color expression, unexpected filter and transmit components
 will have no effect.
File '/usr/local/share/povray-3.7/include/golds.inc' line 129: Parse Warning:
 Expected pure RGB color expression, unexpected filter and transmit components
 will have no effect.
File '/usr/local/share/povray-3.7/include/golds.inc' line 130: Parse Warning:
 Expected pure RGB color expression, unexpected filter and transmit components
 will have no effect.
File '/usr/local/share/povray-3.7/include/golds.inc' line 140: Parse Warning:
 Expected pure RGB color expression, unexpected filter and transmit components
 will have no effect.
File '/usr/local/share/povray-3.7/include/golds.inc' line 141: Parse Warning:
 Expected pure RGB color expression, unexpected filter and transmit components
 will have no effect.
File '/usr/local/share/povray-3.7/include/golds.inc' line 151: Parse Warning:
 Expected pure RGB color expression, unexpected filter and transmit components
 will have no effect.
File '/usr/local/share/povray-3.7/include/golds.inc' line 152: Parse Warning:
 Expected pure RGB color expression, unexpected filter and transmit components
 will have no effect.
File '/usr/local/share/povray-3.7/include/golds.inc' line 162: Parse Warning:
 Expected pure RGB color expression, unexpected filter and transmit components
 will have no effect.
File '/usr/local/share/povray-3.7/include/golds.inc' line 163: Parse Warning:
 Expected pure RGB color expression, unexpected filter and transmit components
 will have no effect.

Compiled on linux (revision #5066),
./configure COMPILED_BY=”###” –disable-io-restrictions

the command: povray –benchmark

is failing:
Failed to parse INI file

povray –version

I/O restrictions:          disabled
X Window display:          enabled (using SDL)
Supported image formats:   gif tga iff ppm pgm hdr png jpeg tiff openexr
Unsupported image formats: -

Build architecture:  x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
Built/Optimized for: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu (using -march=native)
Compiler vendor:     gnu
Compiler version:    g++ 4.4.3
Compiler flags:      -pipe -Wno-multichar -Wno-write-strings -fno-enforce-eh-specs -s -O3 -ffast-math -march=native -pthread 

A df3 file is written, with header 00 00 00 00 00 00 and no data (hypothetically valid df3 file).
This file is used as density file for media, using interpolation. This causes a crash once Pov-Ray starts rendering the pixels that contain media.
All pixels rendered before that render fine. Using no interpolation does not cause a crash.

Sample Scene:
#fopen out “random.df3” write
#write (out, uint16be <0,0,0>)
#fclose out

box{0,1 pigment{rgbt 1} hollow interior{media{
density{density_file df3 “random.df3” interpolate 1}}}} // interpolate 2 also crashes, interpolate 0 does not.

System: Win7 x64, 3.7 Beta 38

value is erroneously clipped to the range 0..1 before being displayed

Test bug for checking features of flyspray.

There is a confirmed bug when writing jpg file format with the current linux build (beta39). when specifying +fj output format the following error occurs:

JPEG parameter struct mismatch: library thinks size is 372, caller
expects 376
JPEG parameter struct mismatch: library thinks size is 372, caller
expects 376
Render failed

this has been confirmed on ubuntu 10.4 and openSuSe 11.2 (assuming 32 bit version) as openSuSe 11.2 64-bit reports no problem

there has been a proposed fix to ~smp/source/base/image/jpeg.cpp that appears to work, however it requires some additional work to make it a platform (linux) and compiler (gcc) specific fix.

no warning is issued when an object/primitive has no pigment type given

I’d like to request the ability to create a date/time stamp on output images so that new renders don’t always overwrite old ones. Thanks.

the quick_color feature doesn’t work when +qN or Quality=N is set to 5 or below

From post in povray.general (circa 29 september 2010: “Maximum Resolution of Renders?”)

The ultimate goal would be a 41000×41000 image. However each time I have attempted to render that Pov-Ray has crashed on
me. Even when using a single, simple test object (a plain white sphere that
should use a single pixel). So I think this is running into a program limitation
at present.

It won’t be for the faint hearted: a 30500 x 30500 does still produces the bug, but you’d better have 24 GB of true ram to test it.
(it’s a render of a few “real” minutes if you do not swap, for any very quick scene (a 305 x 305 in 0.117s moved to 220s for 30500×30500 on my system when corrected))

With core-dumped enable, the issue is pointed in the creator of PixelContainer.
The problem is due to the resize() parameter: despite the parameter being a size_t (8 bytes long on 64bits), the computation ( h * w * 5 ) use unsigned int for h & w (and signed int for 5).

As a consequence, the value of resize is computed as a signed int... havoc might happen when the signed bit (#31) is propagated to the #63 to #32 of size_t... vector does not enjoy a negative value for resize (and destroy itself: no iterator on coming soon call! hence the crash when the values in the vector are to be initialised)

30500²: (in hex)

1 15 3C 71 50 floats
4 54 F1 C5 40 bytes

Basic solution: promote the 5 to an unsigned long, forcing the computation to happen on unsigned long, avoiding promotion of silly sign-bit, and keeping the resize’s value as a good number.

aka: resize( w * h * 5) becomes resize ( w * h * 5ul )

This solution has been tested and seems fine (it’s just that in base/image/image.cpp, there is a lot of resize()!).
For all resize(), the “ul” must be added. (and that means also that resize( w * h ) must be rewritten as ( w * h * 1ul ). )

[Original Title: “texture_map interpolation does not work correctly for some patterns”]

The below test scene should yield identical textures
T_STRAND1 and T_STRAND2 but this is not the case. Reported
and verified in

http://news.povray.org/povray.general/thread/%3C4cbd804b%241%40news.povray.org%3E/

The problem seems to affect bozo, bumps, dents, granite, spotted,
and maybe wrinkles. The problem was reported earlier in

http://news.povray.org/povray.beta-test/thread/%3C48112367%241%40news.povray.org%3E

with a comment that 3.6 gives the expected results

#declare C_STRAND = color rgb 1;

#declare C_CLEAR  = color rgb 0;

#declare T_STRAND = texture
{
  pigment {color C_STRAND}
}

#declare T_CLEAR = texture
{
  pigment {color C_CLEAR}
}

#declare T_STRANDS1 = texture
{
  pigment
  {
    granite scale 2 color_map
    {
      [0.0 color C_STRAND]
      [0.5 color C_CLEAR]
      [1.0 color C_CLEAR]
    }
  }
}

#declare T_STRANDS2 = texture
{
  granite scale 2 texture_map
  {
    [0.0 T_STRAND]
    [0.5 T_CLEAR]
    [1.0 T_CLEAR]
  }
}

plane
{
  z, 10
  texture {T_STRANDS1}
  //texture {T_STRANDS2}
} 

POV-Ray 3.7-generated JPEG image output files do not conform to the JFIF standard. Most importantly, the files written do not use the standard YCbCr color model (they seem to use plain RGB instead), nor do they have a proper JFIF tag.

As a consequence, some software may be unable to read the generated JPEG files properly. In addition, it seems that POV-Ray mixes up the Red and Blue channels.

Setting File_Gamma=1.0 produces unexpectedly bright output files for most output file formats, as if File_Gamma was set to 2.2 instead.

The underlying problem is a bug that, when File_Gamma is set to exactly 1.0, causes the encoding gamma function to be undefined, which was not meant to happen in current versions, and instead was reserved for future versions to signal that a file-format-specific default encoding gamma should be used. The image file output handlers already support this, most of them choosing the sRGB transfer function, giving roughly the same output as setting File_Gamma=2.2.

As a preliminary workaround, users may want to set File_Gamma=1.02 (any value smaller than 0.99 or greater than 1.01 should do).

POV-Ray 3.7 does not show output options, such as:

Output Options
  Image resolution 640 by 480 (rows 1 to 480, columns 1 to 640).
  Output file: D:\foo\test.png, 24 bpp PNG
  Graphic display......On  (gamma: 2.2)
  Mosaic preview.......Off
  CPU usage histogram..Off
  Continued trace......Off

(the above is what 3.6 used to show)

I can no longer run a Myfile.ini over a network, on a different computer.

Possiblely related to:

    http://bugs.povray.org/task/97   FS#97  (Forward-slash pathnames not fully supported in Windows version)

-
Cannot open INI file
‘\\STEPHEN-POVRAY\Bishop3d\Objects\Industrial_enclosure\Telco_enclosure_extra.ini’.
Failed to start render: Failed to parse INI file

Hi,

following scene will not be rendered correctly in 3.7.beta.35a:

http://lib.povray.org/collection/beamtest/cousin%20ricky%201.1/beamtest.html

maybe it is a configuration problem or it is a real bug.

The following SDL code

sphere {0, 1 pigment {image_map {png "missing.png"}}

yields “render failed” in 3.7b25 and the position of the error
is not highlighted in source code, giving no clue what went wrong.
In 3.6 this yields “Parse Error: Cannot open PNG file”.

When I try to re-render the insert menu bitmaps,on the Windows version 3.7b36 there is an error with the
Shapes.pov file.
line 474: Parse Error: Unexpected additional ‘.’ in floating-point number

line 474 is:

<2.6, 0>, <3.6.9>, <4, 1.1>, <3.4, 2>, <3, 1>, <2, 1>

The second vector has two decimal points
Change to <3.6,.9>

In pvengine.cpp (file revision 154), lines 4003-4006 are exact duplicates of lines 3999-4002:

3997    case KEYWORD_LOOKUP_MESSAGE :
3998         hh_aklink.pszKeywords = (LPCSTR) lParam ;

3999         if (strncmp (hh_aklink.pszKeywords, "oooo", 4) == 0)
4000           hh_aklink.pszKeywords = ""  ;
4001         if (strncmp (hh_aklink.pszKeywords, "//", 2) == 0)
4002           hh_aklink.pszKeywords = ""  ;

4003         if (strncmp (hh_aklink.pszKeywords, "oooo", 4) == 0)
4004           hh_aklink.pszKeywords = ""  ;
4005         if (strncmp (hh_aklink.pszKeywords, "//", 2) == 0)
4006           hh_aklink.pszKeywords = ""  ;

4007         HtmlHelp (NULL, engineHelpPath, HH_KEYWORD_LOOKUP, (DWORD_PTR) &hh_aklink) ;
4008         return (true) ;

This duplication appears pretty much useless to me - or am I missing something?

File output code for virtually all file formats performs gamma correction on unclipped color values, which leads to issues when color values happen to be negative for some reason and gamma does not happen to be an integer value such as 1.0 or 2.0. As a consequence, subsequent steps (clipping and converting to integer) apparently produce compiler-dependent results. Compiled with Microsift or Intel compilers, POV-Ray seems to write zero brightness in such cases, while compiled with g++ 4.4 (and possibly other compilers) it seems to write full brightness instead.

(See thread news://news.povray.org:119/4ba819f6@news.povray.org for examples.)

The proper solution should be to apply gamma correction after clipping.

When choosing PPM output with a bit depth other than 8 bits per color channel (e.g. +FP16), POV-Ray messes up the colors (see thread news://news.povray.org:119/4babb48f$1@news.povray.org)

The following code is erroneously accepted by POV-Ray (tested with 3.7.0.beta.36):

pigment{
  slope { x }
  checker
}

The result is a checker pattern.

Apparently there is an EXIT statement missing in the slope-pattern parsing code in parstxtr.cpp.