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fractint-digest         Friday, April 16 1999         Volume 01 : Number 381




----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 19:08:51 -0600
From: "Tim Wegner" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) Fractint video board

>   The Millennium G200 AGP (8mb) supports 1600x1200x64k colors at 60 Hz,
> 1280x1024x64k, 1024x768x16.8M.

This is good except for the 60 Hz.

>   It doesn't seem to have Linux support (the CD has drivers for Dos, OS2,
> Win 3.1/95/NT).

Manufacturers don't generally provide Linux support - but the army
of open source developers do. I checked at www.xfree86.org, and
the Millenium is definitely supported. Most boards are except the
very newest ones.

> >> It is really hard to get good technical information. Any suggestions?
>
>   A visit to the site of Matrox?

Amazingly, VERY few manufacturer web sites list VESA modes.

Tim


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------------------------------

Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 17:17:03 -0700 (PDT)
From: Rob Fargher <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: (fractint) Fractint video board

On 13-Apr-99 Sylvie Gallet wrote:

>   The Millennium G200 AGP (8mb) supports 1600x1200x64k colors
> at 60 Hz,
> 1280x1024x64k, 1024x768x16.8M.

  In OS/2 + Win98, I run my G200 at 1600 x1200, 24 bit colour at
65 Hz.  Haven't yet figured out how to do it in Linux yet.


> 4. Must have good Linux support.
>
>   It doesn't seem to have Linux support (the CD has drivers for
> Dos, OS2,> Win 3.1/95/NT).

  It has excellent Linux support in XFree86 3.3.3.1.  Matrox
released the specs for the G200; I expect that very shortly it
will be *the* best supported card in Linux.

  Matox announced the G400 chip recently.  It's gonna be a
killer! :-)

Cheers,
Rob


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Date: 13-Apr-99
Time: 17:14:04

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------------------------------

Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 20:50:17 -0400
From: Bill Jemison <[e-mail]>
Subject: (fractint) Fractint video board

Tim,

The specs that I have on the Matrox Millenium G200 8M AGP card list
1600x1200 @ 75 - 113 hz. I have one, but have only used it about two week=
s
between the first and (now) second RMA's. While it was working, it was
really nice, and I can't wait to get it back. I think the refresh rate is=

partially dependant on your monitor capabilities. My NOKIA 21" used
something in the upper 70's at 1600x1200x24bit, and it was not at all har=
d
on the eyes, flicker-wise. (Sylvie - is the 60hz @ 1600x you mentioned th=
e
best for your monitor, or the card?).

The docs also mention a dos utility on the install CD for adjusting the
refresh rate for the VESA modes. In 1600x1200 it supports VESA modes 11C
(256), 11D (32K), and 11E (65K).

Are you getting or have an AGP capable mb?

Bill

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------------------------------

Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 22:50:02 -1000
From: "David Jones" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) 1600x1200

On 13 Apr 99 at 19:08, Tim Wegner wrote:

> I'm going to ask. UNIVBE seems oriented to lower
> resolutions, probably because there aren't any 1600x1200
> games.

Maybe when intel comes out with their 1GHZ+ chip, they'll
finally have a processor fast enough to *run* a game at
that resolution. 8-)

Another blast of bits from David
http://www.aloha.net/~shauna/   http://www.hawastsoc.org/
For the best Hawaii & Pacific Basin surf forecast:
    http://www.surfreporthawaii.com

Random Thought for this Nanosecond
There once was a man named Lum
Who always had flies on his thumb.
When people asked why,
He said, 'I'm so sly:
They like the sweet music I hum.' (D.Jones)



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------------------------------

Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 22:50:03 -1000
From: "David Jones" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) Fractint video board

On 13 Apr 99 at 17:35, Sylvie Gallet wrote:

> >> 1. Must support 1600x1200 up to 15 bit color, and lower rez modes  up to
> >> 24 bit color, with vertical refresh 75 hz or better. This means  an 4 mb
> >> board at least, though I prefer 8 mb.
>
> The Millennium G200 AGP (8mb) supports 1600x1200x64k
> colors at 60 Hz, 1280x1024x64k, 1024x768x16.8M.

Our ELSA GLoria Synergy supports up to 1920x1536 at 256
colors at 75Hz refresh, which would finally let me see
something close to Fractint's max image size.

Unfortunately, the best Fractint can do with the board is
640x480x256 (We tried VESA2CFG on it, and it doesn't find any VESA
modes higher than that). Of course, the board would quite
happily run that rez at a 300Hz refresh rate - if I had a
monitor that could handle it!



Another blast of bits from David
http://www.aloha.net/~shauna/   http://www.hawastsoc.org/
For the best Hawaii & Pacific Basin surf forecast:
    http://www.surfreporthawaii.com

Random Thought for this Nanosecond
Did you file an EIR before taking off that shoe? (D.Jones)



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------------------------------

Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 06:20:07 -0400
From: Sylvie Gallet <[e-mail]>
Subject: (fractint) Fractint video board

Hi Bill,

>> Sylvie - is the 60hz @ 1600x you mentioned the best for your monitor, =
or
>> the card?

  I don't know.  I never bothered to read the docs!!!!!!

  Cheers,

        - Sylvie

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------------------------------

Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 08:41:56 -0400
From: "Eric Litwak" <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: (fractint) Fractint video board

While we're on the subject, does anyone know of a dos utility to control the
refresh rate of a 3DFX Voodoo Banshee in dos?
Except for that I believe the Banshee meets all your criteria for a video
card, 16Mb memory, built in VESA support, refresh rates to 120 MHz,
resolution to 1600 x 1200, true color, etc., and its inexpensive! I love
this card.

Eric Litwak


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------------------------------

Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 09:47:14 -0400
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: (fractint) Fractint video board

Hi Tim,

Regarding your search for a video board, I would recommend a Matrox. They are
widely respected for their rock-solid drivers. I have been using the original
Millenium in DOS, NT, and OS/2 and it is the most solid card I've ever used.
However, I don't know if it meets all your requirements. The following web site
has lots of Matrox technical info: http://grafi.ii.pw.edu.pl/gbm/matrox/  Go
there and click on InDepth tech info. You can also look at
http://www.matroxusers.com which is another site run by Matrox users (not
affiliation with Matrox).

Nick



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------------------------------

Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 15:17:52 GMT
From: "Jack Baker" <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: (fractint) Fractint video board

You should be able to get the DOS utilities from the manufacturer's
website, assuming that they (like diamond) choose to support DOS.  It
is sometime possible to get another manufacturers drivers for the
same chipset to work, but that is not guaranteed.

- -Jack


- ----Original Message Follows----
From: "Eric Litwak" <[e-mail]>
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While we're on the subject, does anyone know of a dos utility to
control the
refresh rate of a 3DFX Voodoo Banshee in dos?
Except for that I believe the Banshee meets all your criteria for a
video
card, 16Mb memory, built in VESA support, refresh rates to 120 MHz,
resolution to 1600 x 1200, true color, etc., and its inexpensive! I
love
this card.

Eric Litwak


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------------------------------

Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 17:41:33 -0600
From: "Tim Wegner" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) Fractint video board

Phil and everybody,

> The Viper 550 from Diamond satisfies most, if not all, of your requirements, I
> believe.   According to the specs, it will support up to 1920x1200 in 24 bit
> at a refresh rate of 85 hz.   Vesa 3.0 support for 1600x1200x256 is built in,
> and fractint runs fine either in plain DOS or windows 9x.

The Viper 550 is what I got. As you said, support for 1600x1200 for
Fractint is great. Thanks for the advice!

I am now (finally!) a member of the 1600x1200 club. I'll bet it cost
me a bit less than it cost those who did this several years ago.
Now I need to dig out the CDs various folks have sent me full of
1600x1200 images :-)

As with other Diamond boards, the documentation for the Viper 550
is very slim. I had a very frustrating time installing the board,
because my system refused to abandon 640x480x16. Finally I read
the FAQ at the Diamond website, and discovered that an IRQ is
needed for this board. My BIOS has a setting for enabling or
disabling an IRQ fotr VGA. Once I enabled it, all was well.

The documentation indicates that the control software is supposed
to have a way to set the vertical refresh. This dialogue box does not
exist for my system. Fortunately, the software appears to have
detected my monitor (an Optiquest V95 19 inch monitor which I
bought for $440 from NECX), and automatically chose a reasonably
high refresh. Under DOS I can see the flicker, but it's not TOO bad.
I'll investigate ways to set the refresh under both Windows and
DOS.

Now that I have gone through this experience I have learned a lot,
and we should be able to support your video configurations beytter
in the future. As I wrote earlier, I will try to add automatic
configuration for non-standard VESA modes such as 1600x1200.
But it will still be up to users to get hardware that supports VESA.
As I discovered, accurate technical information is hard to find.

Tim


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------------------------------

Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 14:20:50 GMT
From: "Andrew Coppin" <[e-mail]>
Subject: (fractint) Benchmark

I've been using a program called "NBench" to do some benchmarking for
an assignment I've got from Uni. I tried running NBench on its own,
and then again with FractInt running disk video in a DOS shell. The
image it was generating is given below.

FractInt caused about an 83% speed decrease in the integer speed of
the processor. On a Pentium 90MHz, it caused a 90% decrease in
floating point speed. However, on a Pentium II 400MHz it only caused
a 78% speed decrease for floating point.

I don't suppose this is of the slightest interest to anyone, but the
image takes over an hour to generate on a P400 (it's not really that
good either). "AF6" is supposed to be that 2048x0248 disk video mode
(in case you've changed your keys).

ArbTest1           { ; Major M-Set Zoom
                     ; Arbitrary Precision: 17 decimals!
                     ; Use it to test CPU usage!
  reset=1960 type=mandel
  center-mag=-1.76863032411305468/0.001309533846159061/2.095308e+013
  params=0/0 float=y maxiter=65536 inside=255 colors=@volcano.map
  passes=g video=AF6 }


- ---------------------------------
Nam et ipsa scientia potestus est!
(Sir Francis Bacon)
Andrew Orphi Coppin
DMU MK.

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------------------------------

Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 16:55:17 -0500
From: "Adam Leggett" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) 1600x1200

> > I'm going to ask. UNIVBE seems oriented to lower
> > resolutions, probably because there aren't any 1600x1200
> > games.
>
> Maybe when intel comes out with their 1GHZ+ chip, they'll
> finally have a processor fast enough to *run* a game at
> that resolution. 8-)

There are plenty of games that run at 1600x1200.  None of them run on DOS.
Neither should fractint :>.


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------------------------------

Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 20:26:02 -0400
From: Lee Skinner <[e-mail]>
Subject: (fractint) 1600x1200

Adam wrote:

>> There are plenty of games that run at 1600x1200.  None of them run on
DOS. Neither should fractint :>. <<

On the contrary, Fractint should run under as many different operating
systems as possible.  Fractint was created and evolved under DOS.  It sti=
ll
runs faster under DOS than any GUI system that I know of.  And Fractint
runs 1600x1200 just fine under DOS. I certainly appreciate the aesthetic
capability of being able to view an entire 1600x1200 image on my screen
with no other Window-type clutter.  I don't think that this is yet possib=
le
with Ultra Fractal, but I'd love someone to prove me wrong.

Lee Skinner

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------------------------------

Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 20:48:04 -0400
From: Gedeon Peteri <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) 1600x1200

Lee Skinner wrote:

> ...I certainly appreciate the aesthetic capability of being able to view an
> entire 1600x1200 image on my screen with no other Window-type clutter.  I
> don't think that this is yet possible with Ultra Fractal, but I'd love
> someone to prove me wrong.
>
> Lee Skinner

On the menu go to Fractal > Full Screen.

Gedeon
- --
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Member Infinite Fractal Loop
Last updated: April 5, 1999 - new images - Euler2 & Curves1
Photography: http://members.xoom.com/gedeonp/index.html
Last updated: February 23, 1999 - three new pages
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------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 00:54:33 GMT
From: "Jack Baker" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) 1600x1200

I do not believe that it is possible under Ultra Fractal, but it is
possible under Fractal Extreme, and zooming at very high iterations is
almost, but not quite as fast as in Fractint.

- -Jack Baker


- ----Original Message Follows----
From: Lee Skinner <[e-mail]>
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Subject: (fractint) 1600x1200
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Adam wrote:

>> There are plenty of games that run at 1600x1200.  None of them run
on
DOS. Neither should fractint :>. <<

On the contrary, Fractint should run under as many different operating
systems as possible.  Fractint was created and evolved under DOS.  It
still
runs faster under DOS than any GUI system that I know of.  And
Fractint
runs 1600x1200 just fine under DOS. I certainly appreciate the
aesthetic
capability of being able to view an entire 1600x1200 image on my
screen
with no other Window-type clutter.  I don't think that this is yet
possible
with Ultra Fractal, but I'd love someone to prove me wrong.

Lee Skinner

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------------------------------

Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 21:25:30 EDT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: (fractint) beginner

  Is there a list or web page that deals with fractint and/or winfract
  that is in plain english?  I  would like to learn more about it but do not
  know the lingo.  How about a fractals for dummys?  :o)  Thank you.
  Chris

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Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 21:41:08 -0400
From: Lee Skinner <[e-mail]>
Subject: (fractint) 1600x1200

>> On the menu go to Fractal > Full Screen. <<

Thank you, Gedeon!

Lee

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Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 21:05:48 -0500
From: "Adam Leggett" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) 1600x1200

>> There are plenty of games that run at 1600x1200.  None of them run on
DOS. Neither should fractint :>. <<

On the contrary, Fractint should run under as many different operating
systems as possible.  Fractint was created and evolved under DOS.  It still
runs faster under DOS than any GUI system that I know of.  And Fractint
runs 1600x1200 just fine under DOS. I certainly appreciate the aesthetic
capability of being able to view an entire 1600x1200 image on my screen
with no other Window-type clutter.  I don't think that this is yet possible
with Ultra Fractal, but I'd love someone to prove me wrong.


Of course Fractint should run on as many platforms as possible.  I didn't
mean it the way I said it, what I really meant was that it's completely
silly for the base Fractint distribution to be DOS-only.  It would make more
sense to have one portable set of source code on a CVS server somewhere, and
binaries available simultaneously for all platforms.  A lot of stuff can't
be trusted to run just fine under DOS - I tend to consider running DOS
programs under modern operating systems kind of a hack anyhow.  More
reliable for it to run natively.  And every GUI based operating system (yes,
all of them) allow programs to run as full screen.  I just think that it
would save a lot of headaches to not have to mess around with UniVBE and
such crap.  It also discourages the nubies.  And I know I mentioned this
before but it would kick ass if Fractint supported OpenGL accelerated 3D,
multimonitor, and other stuff that would have to be hacked to run under DOS.

Adam


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Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 03:06:50 GMT
From: "Jack Baker" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) beginner

Chris;
There are a couple of pages.  Try
WIZZLE.SIMPLENET.COM/FRACTALS/HINTS/TIPS-FRACTINT.HTML
On this page you will find links to Gumbycat's tutorials as well.
Both are excellently written, in plain English.

  Is there a list or web page that deals with fractint and/or winfract
  that is in plain english?  I  would like to learn more about it but
do not
  know the lingo.  How about a fractals for dummys?  :o)  Thank you.
  Chris


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Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 03:12:08 GMT
From: "Jack Baker" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) 1600x1200

Excellent ideas, all, Adam.  Probably be easier to implement in Linux
than in any other OS.  As the source code to Fractint is available,
what is keeping the hackers from working their magic on the program?
(Maybe just to busy "playing" with the software to adapt it...)

Jack
- ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> There are plenty of games that run at 1600x1200.  None of them run
on
DOS. Neither should fractint :>. <<

On the contrary, Fractint should run under as many different operating
systems as possible.  Fractint was created and evolved under DOS.  It
still
runs faster under DOS than any GUI system that I know of.  And
Fractint
runs 1600x1200 just fine under DOS. I certainly appreciate the
aesthetic
capability of being able to view an entire 1600x1200 image on my
screen
with no other Window-type clutter.  I don't think that this is yet
possible
with Ultra Fractal, but I'd love someone to prove me wrong.


Of course Fractint should run on as many platforms as possible.  I
didn't
mean it the way I said it, what I really meant was that it's
completely
silly for the base Fractint distribution to be DOS-only.  It would
make more
sense to have one portable set of source code on a CVS server
somewhere, and
binaries available simultaneously for all platforms.  A lot of stuff
can't
be trusted to run just fine under DOS - I tend to consider running DOS
programs under modern operating systems kind of a hack anyhow.  More
reliable for it to run natively.  And every GUI based operating system
(yes,
all of them) allow programs to run as full screen.  I just think that
it
would save a lot of headaches to not have to mess around with UniVBE
and
such crap.  It also discourages the nubies.  And I know I mentioned
this
before but it would kick ass if Fractint supported OpenGL accelerated
3D,
multimonitor, and other stuff that would have to be hacked to run
under DOS.

Adam


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Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 22:56:42 -0600
From: "Tim Wegner" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) 1600x1200

Jack wrote:

> Excellent ideas, all, Adam.  Probably be easier to implement in Linux
> than in any other OS.  As the source code to Fractint is available,
> what is keeping the hackers from working their magic on the program?
> (Maybe just to busy "playing" with the software to adapt it...)

Fractint has had a Linux port for years. It is called Xfractint. We are
actively improving it now.

Tim


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Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 23:31:38 -0500
From: "Adam Leggett" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) 1600x1200

Uh, I don't see any reason why implementing it would be any more or less
difficult on Windows, Linux, Be, Mac OS X, whatever..

I think the entire codebase needs a big overhaul.  That would be the hardest
part.  On the bright side there would be a hell of a lot more deleting than
writing.  I can't believe they're still compiling 19.6 with Turbo C++.
Christ, does anybody even care about Fractint anymore?  Obviously the people
on this list do but I don't know about the people who are supposed to be
maintaining the thing.  I wouldn't even touch it unless I thought I could
get rid of the 16 bit crap.

As far as GUIs go, that stuff would all have to be abstracted (second
hardest part).  Still no big deal, even I could probably find the time to do
that.  For DOS either the default textmode GUI or some hacked up window
manager would have to be used.  For Windows you'd probably want to write
straight to the Win32 API since MFC sucks and most of the Fractint code is
already in C (good thing) anyhow, you want to stay consistent and not start
farting around with C++ unless there's a good reason.  There is a GTK+
implementation for Win32 that is kind of interesting but it looks all weird
and unixy unless you package a "theme" with the app (that would actually be
cool).  For X Windows you'd want to use GTK+ (with or without gnome), it's
becoming kind of a "standard" toolkit.  For Mac OS X, NeXTStep, etc. you
would write to OpenStep (you could also use this on X Windows I guess); you
have to learn to code in Objective C for that.

As far as video, you'd want SciTech MGL for DOS and Linux without a doubt.
No more hacking video mode settings and all that ridiculous shit.  I know it
means using a library, but it's a free library with source code.  For
Windows there's SciTech MGL, DirectDraw, or DIBSections.  As of Windows 98
there is multimonitor support in the OS, there are a lot of ways to take
advantage of that (if you have the right combination of video cards).

For graphics files, am I correct in assuming there is still no PNG support?
The time is pretty ripe for that.

Also like I said before, the code should be put on a CVS server somewhere so
people can synchronize whatever stuff they're doing to it.

Anyway, the bottom line on why hardly anybody is hacking Fractint is that
the code has been allowed to rot and code rots just like a dead animal on
the desert pavement if you don't keep it up to date.  If someone does what I
said above, and then some, fractint will kick ass again just like when it
was new.

That's the biggest e-mail I've ever written.  Time to breathe.

cya
Adam


- ----- Original Message -----
From: Jack Baker <[e-mail]>
To: <[e-mail]>
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 1999 10:12 PM
Subject: Re: (fractint) 1600x1200


> Excellent ideas, all, Adam.  Probably be easier to implement in Linux
> than in any other OS.  As the source code to Fractint is available,
> what is keeping the hackers from working their magic on the program?
> (Maybe just to busy "playing" with the software to adapt it...)
>
> Jack
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> There are plenty of games that run at 1600x1200.  None of them run
> on
> DOS. Neither should fractint :>. <<
>
> On the contrary, Fractint should run under as many different operating
> systems as possible.  Fractint was created and evolved under DOS.  It
> still
> runs faster under DOS than any GUI system that I know of.  And
> Fractint
> runs 1600x1200 just fine under DOS. I certainly appreciate the
> aesthetic
> capability of being able to view an entire 1600x1200 image on my
> screen
> with no other Window-type clutter.  I don't think that this is yet
> possible
> with Ultra Fractal, but I'd love someone to prove me wrong.
>
>
> Of course Fractint should run on as many platforms as possible.  I
> didn't
> mean it the way I said it, what I really meant was that it's
> completely
> silly for the base Fractint distribution to be DOS-only.  It would
> make more
> sense to have one portable set of source code on a CVS server
> somewhere, and
> binaries available simultaneously for all platforms.  A lot of stuff
> can't
> be trusted to run just fine under DOS - I tend to consider running DOS
> programs under modern operating systems kind of a hack anyhow.  More
> reliable for it to run natively.  And every GUI based operating system
> (yes,
> all of them) allow programs to run as full screen.  I just think that
> it
> would save a lot of headaches to not have to mess around with UniVBE
> and
> such crap.  It also discourages the nubies.  And I know I mentioned
> this
> before but it would kick ass if Fractint supported OpenGL accelerated
> 3D,
> multimonitor, and other stuff that would have to be hacked to run
> under DOS.
>
> Adam
>
>
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Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 23:36:37 -0500
From: "Adam Leggett" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) 1600x1200

> Jack wrote:
>
> > Excellent ideas, all, Adam.  Probably be easier to implement in Linux
> > than in any other OS.  As the source code to Fractint is available,
> > what is keeping the hackers from working their magic on the program?
> > (Maybe just to busy "playing" with the software to adapt it...)
>
> Fractint has had a Linux port for years. It is called Xfractint. We are
> actively improving it now.

Yeah, maybe it's high time to improve everything.  It's not just about
porting to Linux and making that version cool.

Adam


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Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 22:31:05 -0700 (PDT)
From: Kenneth Childress <[e-mail]>
Subject: (fractint) UF 1600 x 1200

> with no other Window-type clutter.  I don't think that this is yet
> possible
> with Ultra Fractal, but I'd love someone to prove me wrong.

UF has a full screen viewing mode, so if your system can support
1600x1200, you can view an image without window clutter.  You can't
currently zoom, etc. in that mode, but the viewing capability is
there.



Ken...




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Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 00:06:11 -0700
From: "Mike and Linda Allison" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (fractint) beginner

Hi, Chris!  Welcome!

Try:
http://www.geocities.com/~gumbycat/mirror.html

Hope that helps!
Linda


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Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 09:07:13 GMT
From: "Andrew Coppin" <[e-mail]>
Subject: (fractint) FractInt source

I know I've probably said this before, but has anyone thought of
porting FractInt to Java? It would then run on most systems.

On the down side, I've now got over my initial excitement about using
Java (it's the first OOP language I ever used), and I'm beginning to
see its limitations. The JDK, as it arrives from Sun, contains no
"developement" tools at all, just a compiler. Java is based on C
syntax (which I *HATE*... why the hell do I have to put brackets
around the expressing in an 'if' statment?). The compiler only runs
from DOS, and Java programs can only be started from DOS, but even
DOS-based Java programs require that Windows is running (some garbage
about long filenames or something). And you seem to spend the whole
time writing empty error-trapping blocks. Oh, and the graphics
library sucks.

Maybe this is why no one has ported it yet. Mmm. I certainly think
that writing a fractal generator in an object-oriented language would
be extreamly cool. FractInt's stuff about the built-in fractal types
having tree method pointers is basically a simulation of object
orientation. You could perhaps do the same thing with many other
aspects of FractInt (bailout tests, symmetry, passes options, new
inside/outside options, file formats...). At one point I was trying
to do all this myself, but it seems I am too poor a programmer to do
it with Java (and I've been programming day and night, every waking
hour since I was 9 years old... no wonder no-one uses Java!).

Having bored you all with that mound of rubbish, I was wondering if
someone could make it so that FractInt can superimpose a fractal
orbit over a finished fractal. Currently (v19.6) you can put the
orbit in a window, or you can have it fullscreen and put the fractal
in a window. Annoying/unnessesary. And if anyone is interested in
MIDI support (I can't imagine what for in a graphics program but
there we are) then let me know. I'm into that stuff.

[e-mail]

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Nam et ipsa scientia potestus est!
(Sir Francis Bacon)
Andrew Orphi Coppin
DMU MK.

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End of fractint-digest V1 #381
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