[Radiance-general] coherent advice on running Radiance on win32

[Jelle Feringa / EZCT Architecture & Design Research]

> AFAIK they don't include any user interfaces (rvu, ximage). But you 
> can use them for rendering and convert the images to a Windows 
> friendly format.

There are reasonable solutions to that, as mentioned before, NRV is really
cool as an up-to-date rview/rvu replacement:
http://www.aisarquitectura.com/nrv/

Also HDRshop is a terrific .pic viewer, its very, very fast:
http://www.hdrshop.com/

Radiance is a unix tool, we all know that, but really, stop this windows
bashing, its not very constructive at all. A lot of new users will be on
win32, its part of life as we know it, so please, let's deal with it that
way. There are respectable reasons for working on win32, there's simply no
way of denying that. Autocad, Archicad, Rhino, Solidworks, Catia, Pro/E,
TracePro aren't software that work on linux, and work fine with Radiance. So
please, let's be a little more mature and stop discussing platform as soon
as the win32 question comes up...

imho, Radiance on wintel isn't _nearly_ as crippled as suggested... 
And honestly, I'm really irritated of this win32 bashing. First of all, its
simply _not_ true. Radiance runs smooth on win32, and fast as well.
If you need to address more than 2GB of memory you really shouldn't be on
win32, otherwise its just fine.

I've used it extensively on both linux and win32 and since most CAD packages
run on win32, it's a very important platform for Radiance to run on. Big up
to Francesco for making the new binaries happen, his binaries are _such_ a
major update in comparison to dtp-rad.

Can we all please get to agree to __stop__ redirecting win32 newbies to
ancient, seriously outdated binaries, part of a project that did not reach a
mature level at all? Seriously dtp-rad does is not representative of the
status of where Radiance is and a dead project is __not__ at all
representative of the vivid Radiance community we are. 

Dtp-Rad is DEAD, long live Francesco's binaries!
Oh, while I'm at it, I think dtp-rad is a monstrosity, and am happy to see
it gone. Using Radiance isn't easy and perhaps shouldn't even have to be
easy. It's a tool for experts, right! So there's no point in suggesting no
expertise is required to use these tools, the truth is quite the contrary.

Oh, and to throw oil on these flames, please, I understand unix-evangelism
and all, but really; Radiance SUCKS on cygwin, I'm sorry, but I consider
this as quite an objective fact. A part from dtp-rad, cygwin is the worst
user-experience of Radiance one can obtain IMHO. Also bash isn't a nessecity
for running Radiance at all. Personally I much prefer python for doing so.
There are many ways of interfacing with Radiance, and unix-shells are just
one way of doing so.

A lot of potential Radiance users are on win32, so let's get some kind of
coherent advice on how to use Radiance on this platform rather than reaching
out trying to have these users chance platform. 

If you don't have any real experience in working with Radiance on windows,
please stop giving this really bad advice and let's try to settle on more
intelligent advice.

-jelle