[Edu-sig] no Python 2.0 bindings for Lightflow until now ...

[Charlie Derr]

Hi all,
	I hope you'll forgive this tech-support-like question being posted to a
non-tech-support list, but there's been so much discussion about Lightflow
here, that I thought someone would be bound to know the answer...

	I am an enthusiastic (but not so very experienced) pythonista.  I just
downloaded the lightflow python module for windows (NT in my case).  I have
python 1.5 installed, but the instructions in the Lightflow documentation
don't seem to make much sense to me.

<quote from Lightflow\CS\Docs\Chap1.html>

Tutorial
The following example is one of the simplest possible scenes that can be
rendered: a sphere in the empty space.
Now start your preferred text editor and type the following text. When you
have finished save it in a file, and then start python from a console
passing the file name as an input (for example, if you have saved the file
as example.py, just type: python example.py).


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

#include < Lightflow/LfLocalSceneProxy.h >

void main(void)
{
    LfLocalSceneProxy* s = new LfLocalSceneProxy();
    LfArgList list;

    list.Reset();
    list << "position" << LfPoint( 5.0, -5.0, 4.0 );
    list << "color" << LfColor( 300.0, 300.0, 300.0 );
    s->LightOn( s->NewLight( "point", list ) );

    list.Reset();
    list << "ka" << LfColor( 0, 0, 0.5 );
    list << "kc" << LfColor( 1, 0.5, 0.5 );
    list << "kd" << 0.5;
    list << "km" << 0.1;
    LfInt plastic = s->NewMaterial( "standard", list );


    s->MaterialBegin( plastic );

    list.Reset();
    list << "radius" << 1.0;
    s->AddObject( s->NewObject( "sphere", list ) );

    s->MaterialEnd();


    list.Reset();
    list << "file" << "ball1.tga";
    LfInt saver = s->NewImager( "tga-saver", list );

    s->ImagerBegin( saver );

    list.Reset();
    list << "eye" << LfPoint( 0, -4, 0 );
    list << "aim" << LfPoint( 0, 0, 0 );
    LfInt camera = s->NewCamera( "pinhole", list );

    s->ImagerEnd();

    s->Render( camera, 300, 300 );

    delete s;
}



</quote from lightflow manual>




My problem is that this doesn't really look like python to me.  I'm guessing
it's either c or c++.  When i follow the instructions given above the code
(i pasted the code into a file exam.py) , i get:

Microsoft(R) Windows NT(TM)
(C) Copyright 1985-1996 Microsoft Corp.

C:\>cd python

C:\Python>cd lf

C:\Python\lf>ls
Lightflow  exam.py

C:\Python\lf>python exam.py
  File "exam.py", line 3
    void main(void)
            ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax



Do i need to use gcc to compile this file first?  (I have the cygwin port of
gcc, but am unfamiliar with its use)  I tried, but it wasn't able to find
the included header file.    While you folks are answering (or not) I'll be
trying to get lightflow to work on linux -- maybe this stuff makes more
sense there.


	thanx very much for any information,
		~c