Discontinuity is a tool written in Java to help make non-linear 
animations using the POV-Ray raytracer. The project is now looking for 
developers and other team members to help transform it from its current 
half-formed state into a user-friendly, powerful program.

Quite some time ago, I started working on Discontinuity to help ease the 
cumbersome efforts required to hand-code a POV-Ray animation. 
Unfortunately, I no longer have time to work on the project. I have, 
therefore, put it up on Sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/) in the 
hope that others will take up this worthwhile project.

I am a bit of a lazy programmer, so even though I tried to keep 
Discontinuity's code in a readable form, considering its large size, it 
was still somewhat of a mess. However, I've changed it considerably 
since version 0.0, especially in the organization of the underlying 
code. The current CVS version is now (somewhat) nicely organized, 
contains Javadoc (although that needs to be greatly improved), and 
contains Open, Save, and Export dialog boxes instead of defaulting to my 
home directory (Oh no! If you look at the 0.0 code, you'll be able to 
find my username!). Additionally, the generated Javadoc is available 
from the project website.

However, there's still lots of work to do. Many (if not most) of 
Discontinuity's professed features do not even exist. It would be quite 
difficult to actually make a useful animation with the current version. 
My GUI-building skills aren't so great (although I don't feel too 
guilty; from my experience with most software made entirely by 
programmers, most programmers can't design either), so it would be nice 
if people could fix up the NetBeans-created user interface and the 
website. Documentation is badly needed (though I don't know how anyone 
can explain how to use a program that they themselves don't know how to 
use, since I'm so bad at explaining). Perhaps most importantly, I am 
moving in a couple of months and will have to leave the position of 
project administrator.

So, what's in it for you? Truthfully, absolutely nothing. I have no idea 
why I wrote Discontinuity, or, in fact, why any open source programmers 
do what they do. Obviously, some people find it rewarding. If you are 
one of those people, Discontinuity is a very worthwhile project to work 
on (assuming you are into POV-Ray). As a side point (*cough* *cough*), 
on the rare chance someone donates to the project, those that contribute 
significantly to Discontinuity will get a share...

Please look at http://discontinuity.sourceforge.net/ and 
http://discontinuity.sourceforge.net/contribute for more information.

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Was there something wrong with my news submission that it wasn't 
included? Or is it just that a news update hasn't occurred since I 
submitted it. I guess the POV-Ray team has been busy publishing POV-Ray 
3.6.0, but I'm a bit concerned that there was something that wasn't 
liked about my submission, perhaps something I can improve.

Shalom Naumann

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