Kirby Urner wrote:

...

I do know the pov-ray people have been pretty insistent on making sure nobody repackages it in a way you don't see their interface. I think we'd need to wait for the repackaging they are in the midst of. I think it's fine to invoke povray from within Python using os.system or some such. Povray remains an independent program with its own identity.

I know we are free individually to make these changes. However, I'd like some clarification to verify the command-line thing-ami-bob would not incur their ire (I'm unclear where they draw the line, and they have felt very burned at least a few times).

I have a pov.py that looks like this, which might give some ideas. But yes, in this version the paths to the pvengine are hardcoded. It'd take some doing (not a lot) to make this more friendly to configure (not my need at this time). But at least I test for which operating system (no Mac option as yet).

def render(filename="default.pov"): if os.name == 'linux2': linuxcomm = "povray +V +W640 +H480 +FN16 +AM2 +Q9 +A0.3 +P +L/home/urnerk/include" print "Rendering... (this will take some time)" os.system(linuxcomm+" +I"+filename)

if os.name == 'nt': wincomm = '"c:\\program files\\POV-Ray for Windows v3.5\\bin\\pvengine" -V fpp.ini' print "Rendering... (this will take some time)" # os.system(wincomm+" +I"+filename) os.system(wincomm)

How about something like: def render(filename="default.pov"): if os.name == 'linux2': cmd = ("povray +V +W640 +H480 +FN16 +AM2 " "+Q9 +A0.3 +P +L/home/urnerk/include +I" + filename) elif os.name == 'nt': cmd = ('"c:\\program files\\POV-Ray for ' 'Windows v3.5\\bin\\pvengine" -V fpp.ini') # or use r'HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\Applications' # r'\pvengine.exe\shell\RenderAndExit\command' else: raise NotImplementedError, 'Not ready for os %r' % os.name print "Rendering... (this will take some time)" os.system(cmd) -Scott David Daniels Scott.Daniels@Acm.Org