1:
On your homepage there is only version 1.4 mentioned. When I google I find docs about 1.9 and in the sourceforge repository I find a release 2.0 and not 1.9.
So what is a good version to get started?

1.4 is the last “stable” version. 2.0 is the next “stable” version, but not released yet. 1.9 is still what the development version (SVN trunk) is called...

To get started, the version doesn't matter _that_ much. However, 1.9 and 2.0 have seen more features etc. and work better with modern hardware, so starting with these may simplify some things in the future.

2:
Checking out the CS_latest stops when loading data/water.zip. SVN is still running, but doesn't continue. I had to kill is hard by "-9" to get it stopped. I am running Ubuntu 10.4, which should be up to date.

You considered that it may simply take very long, right? That file isn't small.

[Simple]

please tell me is it possible we write a Simple Direct3d renderer plugin for CrystalSpace ?

It's possible.

It is, basically, in the construction of the mesh.

IIRC Smoothing affects the _normals_ of the mesh: when enabled, they're computed from combining the normals of neighbouring triangles; when disabled, the triangle normal is simply taken.

Note that CS works differently: it always expects one normal per vertex. Smooth or not smooth looks depend on how the mesh is constructed. (Smooth: a vertex is shared by multiple triangle corners; not smooth: each corner has it's own vertex.)
So it's kind of weird that you get _more_ vertices with smoothing, as typically smoothing means less vertices needed. Can't say what the issue is (maybe a real bug, maybe there is something else that makes the exporter split vertices.)

Look at the callstack to see which memory deallocation causes the message.
Also, I'd guess the background color is _not_ the root cause, it just happens to expose it (by causing different order of memory allocations).

The Windows DLL loader just works this way: DLLs either have to be in the local directory or in a directory listed in the PATH environment variable.

4) Started build using "Debug (with DLLs)" setting. 174 succeeded, 12 failed. All errors had to do with python.h not being found. Don't think that's a problem, I never installed it because I'm not sure I need it, I can always do this later right? Everything else seemed to be built fine.

The "py" in wkspytypical means it includes Python-related projects. But yes, as long as you don't need/want these, you can ignore these errors.

Am I ready to start developing my own applications now?

Yes.

I saw some similar posts talking about setting environmental variables, I never saw anything like that in the manual.

This will be going to be relevant, as the environment variable (CRYSTAL_1_4 or CRYSTAL) tells CS where to find plugins as well as data files.

When I do start my own project, I just need to include the header files in the include directory and the library files in the out/debug8/lib folder, right? Again, sorry for any redundant questions but this whole thing is pretty confusing to me until I can just get to the actual coding part. Thanks in advance for the help.

The manual contains a step-by-step guide to set up a VC project: http://www.crystalspace3d.org/docs/online/1.4/manual/HOWTO-Creating-External-MSVC-Application.html#0

You need to provide the right path to CS in the installer and you need to install “VC support”.

Also, you didn't say what version of CS. The CS and cs-winlibs versions have to match up - i.e. cs-winlibs 1.4* for CS 1.4, cs-winlibs 1.9* for CS 1.9.

IM = “input method” here, software such as SCIM.

I don't use an IM myself so I can't tell you how to enable/disable/look for one. Maybe Google can help: http://www.google.de/search?q=linux+input+method&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.gentoo:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a

Do you have an IM running? Tried to disable that?

This is a bug in gcc 4.5 (see http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=43801). You will need to use either a newer (4.5.1) or older (4.4.x) version of gcc.

If you're using MSVS 2008, you need to open the solution from the msvc9 directory.
(“2008” is a marketing number. The real version number is 9.)

CS 1.4 or SVN trunk?

CS 1.4: set shader of type 'standard' to 'fullbright'

SVN trunk: Set the shader of type 'base' to 'lighting_fullbright', 'diffuse' to '*null'.

Is there a way to access the current view/camera from anywhere? I suppose I could make a Singleton that holds the view/camera if I needed to. Oh, and I do realize that I could do the whole 'pass the app and use an inline function like app->getView()... But I'm trying to avoid having to send my app around everywhere.

There is no “current view” as such: it's perfectly possible multiple iView implementations are instantiated at the same time and multiple, different views can be rendered in one frame. CS doesn't provide access to the “currently” or “last” used view (which might be some internally-used view anyway, and not the one you expect).

Maybe Cygwin has a package for a “a mingw-targeted cross-compiler”; that might work as well.

Note that MinGW/MSYS is the recommended way to build with gcc on Windows anyway. Building on Cygwin is rarely done (and may be broken).

Possible, sure.

How? Well, you could write a new canvas plugin for embedding in Qt, for example as done for wxWidgets with the wxgl plugin in CS.

Alternatively, CS has a “generic” embedding canvas plugin embedgl; it does pretty much nothing, so it's the applications responsibility to set up a GL context and whatnot.