Yeah, thanks. some of the things are a little confusing to me as well.
I don't quite understand all of the reasoning of the POVRay people.
For example, why require all people to put a gamma instruction into their files?
They could as well have assumed a suitable default (as in the past).
From what I conclude, that default in the past for the PC has been too bright.
Now I assume that they wanted to change that default,
but that would have broken all existing scenes.
This probably led them to require the #version tag,
and through the discussion of introducing it, probably someone came up with
"if we require people to specify the #version, then why not at the same time
require them to specify a gamma?"
To me, this is how it appears that these 2 new future-mandatory settings got introduced.
Yes, I also think that the 2 (#version and gamma) are related in some way. I think if you write
#version 3.5;
, then you get the 3.5 default gamma and no warning, if you write
#version 3.7;
, then you get the 3.7 default gamma and a warning, and probably in future if you write
#version 3.8;
, then you get no default gamma and an error about that it is missing.
I also had thought to suggest to output
#version 3.7;
, but that would have produced a warning when people with POVRay 3.5 or 3.6 open such a file
("the file you're opening is of a newer syntax than your current POVRay version, some features might not work as expected"
and stuff).
To make a long story short: I agree with you that it probably would be the best to give the user
a chance to adjust such things. Of course, LDView outputs .pov file in a certain syntax version,
so it could easily output the #version it creates, but if a user wants to switch that from #version 3.5 to #version 3.7,
then without a GUI control he's lost.
The same goes for the gamma: making the output setting optional, giving it a suitable default, and letting the user
adjust the value if necessary is the best thing you can do here.
Sorry for the long text.
EDIT: I just found these - they shed some light into the issue:
#version
http://news.povray.org/povray.beta-test/...ay.org%3E/
gamma
http://wiki.povray.org/content/HowTo:Fix...mma_system
I don't quite understand all of the reasoning of the POVRay people.
For example, why require all people to put a gamma instruction into their files?
They could as well have assumed a suitable default (as in the past).
From what I conclude, that default in the past for the PC has been too bright.
Now I assume that they wanted to change that default,
but that would have broken all existing scenes.
This probably led them to require the #version tag,
and through the discussion of introducing it, probably someone came up with
"if we require people to specify the #version, then why not at the same time
require them to specify a gamma?"
To me, this is how it appears that these 2 new future-mandatory settings got introduced.
Yes, I also think that the 2 (#version and gamma) are related in some way. I think if you write
#version 3.5;
, then you get the 3.5 default gamma and no warning, if you write
#version 3.7;
, then you get the 3.7 default gamma and a warning, and probably in future if you write
#version 3.8;
, then you get no default gamma and an error about that it is missing.
I also had thought to suggest to output
#version 3.7;
, but that would have produced a warning when people with POVRay 3.5 or 3.6 open such a file
("the file you're opening is of a newer syntax than your current POVRay version, some features might not work as expected"
and stuff).
To make a long story short: I agree with you that it probably would be the best to give the user
a chance to adjust such things. Of course, LDView outputs .pov file in a certain syntax version,
so it could easily output the #version it creates, but if a user wants to switch that from #version 3.5 to #version 3.7,
then without a GUI control he's lost.
The same goes for the gamma: making the output setting optional, giving it a suitable default, and letting the user
adjust the value if necessary is the best thing you can do here.
Sorry for the long text.
EDIT: I just found these - they shed some light into the issue:
#version
http://news.povray.org/povray.beta-test/...ay.org%3E/
gamma
http://wiki.povray.org/content/HowTo:Fix...mma_system