<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <!-- This file copyright Persistence of Vision Raytracer Pty. Ltd. 2009-2011 --> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"> <title>Reference Section 1</title> <link rel="StyleSheet" href="povray37.css" type="text/css"> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico"> <!-- NOTE: In order to help users find information about POV-Ray using web --> <!-- search engines, we ask that you *not* let them index documentation --> <!-- mirrors because effectively, when searching, users will get hundreds of --> <!-- results containing the same information! For this reason, these meta tags --> <!-- below disable archiving of this page by search engines. --> <meta name="robots" content="noarchive"> <meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache"> <meta http-equiv="expires" content="0"> </head> <body> <div class="Page"> <!-- NavPanel Begin --> <div class="NavPanel"> <table class="NavTable"> <tr> <td class="FixedPanelHeading"><a title="3.1" href="#r3_1">Introduction</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td><div class="divh1"> </div></td> </tr> <tr> <td><div class="divh1"> </div></td> </tr> </table> </div> <!-- NavPanel End --> <div class="Content"> <table class="HeaderFooter" width="100%"> <tr> <td colspan=5 align="left" class="HeaderFooter"> POV-Ray for Unix <strong class="HeaderFooter">version 3.7</strong> </td> </tr> <tr > <td colspan=5> <hr align="right" width="70%"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="30%"></td> <td class="NavBar"><a href="index.html" title="The Front Door">Home</a></td> <td class="NavBar"><a href="u1_0.html" title="Unix Table of Contents">POV-Ray for Unix</a></td> <td class="NavBar"><a href="t2_0.html" title="Tutorial Table of Contents">POV-Ray Tutorial</a></td> <td class="NavBar"><a href="r3_0.html" title="Reference Table of Contents">POV-Ray Reference</a></td> </tr> </table> <a name="r3_1"></a> <div class="content-level-h2" contains="Introduction" id="r3_1"> <h2>3.1 Introduction</h2> <p>This is the <em>Reference</em> section, and it applies to all platforms for which this version of POV-Ray has been ported. The platform-specific documentation is available in a separate section.</p> <p>Excluding this introduction, the reference section is divided into three main parts.</p> <ol> <li>The <a href="r3_2.html#r3_2">Command-line Options</a> section for controlling and configuring POV-Ray.</li> <li>The <a href="r3_3.html#r3_3">Scene Description Language</a> section for the programming rules and syntax used in POV-Ray.</li> <li>The <a href="r3_4.html#r3_4">Scene File Elements</a> section that details the <em>camera</em> and <em>lighting</em> types that are available,<br>and the vast array of built-in <em>objects</em>, <em>patterns</em> and <em>textures</em> used to construct scene files.</li> </ol> <p>New users may find it more convenient to begin with the <em>Introduction to Pov-Ray</em> or <a href="t2_1.html#t2_1">tutorial</a> section, followed by the platform-specific documentation, in order to become more familiar your versions platform-specific features.</p> <p>Additional notes about this documentation are as follows:</p> <ol> <li><em>Windows</em> documentation is accessible using the POV-Ray program's <em>Help</em> menu or by pressing the F1 key.</li> <li><em>Mac OS</em> documentation is also available via the <em>Help</em> menu and for viewing with a web browser.</li> <li><em>Unix/Linux</em> documentation is available in <em>html only</em> and by default is typically found in <code>/usr/local/share/povray-3.?/html</code></li> <li>See the section <a href="r3_3.html#r3_3_1_1">Notation and Basic Assumptions</a> for more about the notation used throughout this documentation.</li> </ol></div> </div> </div> </body> </html>