[Radiance-dev] no response

[Greg Ward]

Hi Ignacio,

Sorry for the lack of response, but the dev list is often pretty  
quiet compared to radiance-general.  Your questions are appropriate  
to this list, though, so we should probably keep this discussion here  
for now.

My personal excuse for not responding to your post is that I tend to  
ignore all things Windows.  I didn't even know what "wxWindows" was  
before looking it up on the web this morning, so I didn't feel I had  
much to offer the discussion.  In general, I don't like to parade my  
ignorance on this list, as it tends to undermine my image as "the guy  
who knows what he's talking about."

Nevertheless, I do want to see a standard Windows version of Radiance  
get out sometime soon.  It's been way too long coming, and I'm  
getting really tired of hearing desperate questions from Desktop  
Radiance users.  It's great to see someone taking the work Schorsch  
has done and putting it to good use.

With that, let me pull up some of your old e-mails...

> From: Ignacio Munárriz <gvn at retena.com>
> Date: May 2, 2005 3:32:30 AM PDT
>
> Hi, here is a screenshot of my .000001 version of nrv, a wxwindows  
> opengl radiance viewer
> http://www.alfanature.com/avis/screen.jpg

Looks very nice, though I'm wondering what your intentions are  
relative to other CAD methods for editing Radiance descriptions, such  
as the export function Francesco Anselmo has written for Blender:

     http://www.dream.unipa.it/dream/pub/dot/anselmo/radiance/06.php

What are your motivations, goals, etc.?  Without spelling some of  
these things out, it's difficult to know when and how others might  
help you.

>  Now, it comes the hard part, implement real time scene object  
> manipulation, radiance code is not intended for objects  
> manipulation in memory, and parse rad files in each change, ie, if  
> i have a genbox in a rad file when i oconv it, the genbox command  
> is lost, so i need a parser for rad files and a way to connect them  
> with actual objects stored in memory, i've thought to make a lookup  
> table with rad line numbers and objects, but i am a bit lost
>
>  any advise?

If I were trying to maintain a native Radiance description in an  
editor, I'd probably require the user or CAD system isolate objects  
in separate scene files.  My editor would then place these with the  
appropriate  xform's or instances (a la replmarks) in the main scene,  
possibly building a hierarchy.  I wouldn't attempt to parse all the  
various scene-generating commands in Radiance, particularly because  
users are allowed and encouraged to write their own.

> From: Ignacio Munárriz <gvn at retena.com>
> Date: May 25, 2005 7:34:25 AM PDT
>
> Hi all, i'm yet working in a wxwindows application for interactive  
> opengl viewing mixing glrad and rview, for rview i am using a  
> separate process with rtrace, so i dont get idle the main  
> application, but i have a problem when i change the view 
> (interative) all the values sended to rtrace must be erased, i've  
> thinked to use the  rtrace persistent mode but it doesn't go under  
> windows(F_SETLKW undefined) is'nt it?

Yes, I think that the persistent mode of rtrace and rpict have been a  
persistent problem under Windows, so to speak.  Why don't you simply  
track which rays belong with which views, and discard returned rays  
from the previous view(s)?  That way, you don't have to restart  
rtrace, which is bound to be a lot more expensive than discarding a  
few rays.  So long as your input queue to rtrace is held to a  
reasonable length, i.e., the average number of rays it computes in a  
second, the delay should be tolerable.  This is the approach I take  
in rholo, for instance.

> From: Ignacio Munárriz <gvn at retena.com>
> Date: May 27, 2005 2:19:00 AM PDT
>
> Hi all again, i've got no answers to my questions, and i am  
> wondering if i am doing something wrong.
> can i make a wxwindows version of radiance? can it be comercial? is  
> radiance open source? do you see something bad?

No, it's just that Schorsch and I are the main responders on this  
list, and as I have explained I tend to leave Windows stuff for  
Schorsch.  His response pattern is month-long periods of silence  
followed by a burst of activity, and I assume this reflects his  
workload.  Don't take it personally -- I never do.

I'm not sure if Radiance fits the strictest definition of OpenSource,  
but there are no restrictions in the license on its use, only the  
usual disclaimers.  Ian is right that you can do pretty much whatever  
you like with it, so long as the original license accompanies any  
redistribution.

-Greg