Maxwell Render | Official public forum

Hello,

I need to clarify a few things, regarding the plugin's support for the Rhino V5 WIP. Specifically:

• Rhino V5 WIP is USE AT YOUR OWN RISK SOFTWARE
• by using Rhino V5 WIP, you are agreeing to help find bugs it may contain
• this is a privilege, and a responsibility, which you have not paid for

If you do not accept this responsibility, you should continue to use Rhino V4, which is the only version of Rhino that is officially supported.

Now, how does this bear on the Maxwell for Rhino plugin?

• support for Rhino V5 WIP is a LUXURY, not an entitlement
• priority in development cannot be given to this support

What does this mean? It means, development effort must always focus on support for officially-released softwares, for which people have paid good money; Rhino V5 WIP is not paid-for software, and therefore, support for it can neither supersede support for Rhino V4, nor for any other officially-released software for which I am responsible.

As such, if you find what appear to be plugin bugs when using Rhino V5 WIP, job #1 is confirming whether or not they are plugin bugs, or Rhino V5 WIP bugs; this is done by reproducing them on Rhino V4. This is an integral part of the responsibility that you accept by using Rhino V5 WIP.

If a bug is not reproducible on Rhino V4, it can mean one of two things:

1. you have found a bug in Rhino V5 WIP
2. you have found something which works differently in Rhino V5 WIP than in Rhino V4

In the first case, nothing should be done; any effort from the plugin's side would be time twice-wasted: firstly in working around the bug and releasing an update, and secondly in undoing the workaround once the source of the bug is fixed. In the second case, nothing will likely be done, until an official Rhino V5 release is imminent, since until such time, the same principle is likely to apply as does in the first case.

If, however, you find a bug which is reproducible both on Rhino V4 and Rhino V5 WIP, you have definitely found a plugin bug, and this will be addressed as quickly as possible.

Again, please regard the plugin's support for Rhino V5 WIP as a luxury; I do not make it a policy to support alpha/beta releases of any software other than Rhino. I only do so here because Rhino WIPs are outstandingly stable, and because McNeel places a high priority on backward-compatibility with respect to plugins.

So, here is the checklist for reporting bugs when using Rhino V5 WIP:

1. is it reproducible on Rhino V4?
2. can you provide specific steps for reproducing it on Rhino V5 WIP?

If one of these is not true, and if the official release of Rhino V5 is not imminent, then I simply cannot justify spending time on chasing it down. If the first is true, I will fix it ASAP. If only the second is true, I will check into whether it appears to be a plugin bug or not, and fix it if it is, but only if the steps are quite specific.

Thanks for reading,

JD