BCI NET/BCI NET Dec 94.iso/archives/grafix/misc/smartfractalv1_2.lha/SmartDistribution/SmartFractal/SmartFractal.doc

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                             Smart Fractal V1.2
                                     by
                              Avogadro Simone

                         V 1.2 release in 20/9/94



                               USER'S MANUAL


 IMPORTANT:  THIS PRODUCT IS SHAREWARE, IF YOU USE AND LIKE IT PLEASE SEND
$10 TO THE AUTHOR. IF YOU DO  NOT KNOW WHAT SHAREWARE IS, PLEASE READ  THE
SHAREWARE.DOC  FILE FIRST, YOU FIND  IT IN THE SAME  ARCHIVE OF THIS FILE.
ALSO  NOTE  'REQTOOLS'   IS  WORK  OF   NICO  FRANCOIS,  REGISTERING   FOR
'SMARTFRACTAL' YOU DON'T REGISTER FOR 'REQTOOLS'.


                                   INDEX

                Chapter 1: The philosophy of the program

       1.1     What's a fractal ?
       1.2     Introduction to Smartfractal
       1.3     What's different (and some background story)
       1.4     Some known spots


                     Chapter 2: The program's menu

       2.1     Project
       2.1.1     Informations
       2.1.2     Loading/saving files
       2.1.3     Exiting the program

       2.2     Controls
       2.2.1     Graphic controls
       2.2.2     Methods tuning
       2.2.3     Zoom control
       2.2.4     Extra controls

       2.3     Math
       2.3.1     Editing parameters
       2.3.2     Selecting the fractal type
       2.3.3     Determining the type of math
       2.3.4     Regenerating the image

       2.4     Colors
       2.4.1     File operations
       2.4.2     Palette editor
       2.4.3     Choosing the rendering methods !!
       2.4.4     Cycling

                  Chapter 3: Other features

       3.1     Commands of the toolbar
       3.2     Keyboard commands
       3.3     Preferences and setup

                  Chapter 4: Miscellaneous informations

       4.1     How to contact the author
       4.2     Improvements
       4.3     Known bugs
       4.4     History
       4.5     People I wish to thank
       4.6     Bibliography






                Chapter 1: The philosophy of the program

 This chapter contains all the informations needed to use Smartfractal. It
briefly  illustrates the main  features of the  program and gives the user
tips  on  how  to  obtain  some  beautiful  images.  Also gives some basic
informations on what the fractals are.

       1.1     What's a fractal ?

 A  fractal is ... Ehrm... It's a fractal! Just kidding, if you don't know
what a fractal is you will still be able to use Smartfractal but maybe you
will not understand the meaning of some of the options. I won't explain in
depth what a fractal is as this  would require too much space and this  is
not  the  purpose  of  this  documentation.  However there are some simple
things about  fractals anyone  can understand  even without  reading whole
(sometimes  boring) books of  math. First of  all the name: Fractals, what
does this name mean? Basically this refers to the fact that measuring  the
number  of dimensions of one of these 'things' with some modern math techs
(measuring the Hausdorff's dimension)  would give a 'weird'  number (maybe
an  irrational number  or a  fraction, so  'fractal'). This means that the
thing you see on a 2-dimensional sheet of paper has a different  dimension
(Eg.: log(4/3)). Fun, and so? Well, that's difficult to interpret but this
usually  derives from the fact that these  objects are defined by means of
infinite recursion and so you can cut 1/4 of the object and it will occupy
1/3 (!!!)  of the  space of  the original  (that's the  case of the Kock's
curve that you can find on the books used in secondary schools). We talked
about  recursion, together  with infinity  it is  one of  the 'secrets' of
fractals, the beauty of  these object derives from  the fact that you  can
theorically  zoom-in forever  and always  discover new  zones, all of them
will  look  like  the  ones  you  saw  before  but will always be somewhat
different.  The graphical representation  of fractals is  done iterating a
mathematical formula and studying its behaviour for each single point.  As
we cannot afford to examine an infinite number of values for each point on
the screen we usually stop after a finite number of iterations, the higher
the number of steps before stopping, the more precise the drawing will be.
The  fractals you can explore with  Smartfractal are all point-based, this
means that the color  of a single point  depends only on the  behaviour of
that single point. For each point we study the convergence/divergence of a
series defined by the type of fractal and by the point itself, we say that
the  point is in  the set if  the series converges,  otherwise we say that
it's out of the set. The deeper we go into the set and the harder will  be
to  determine if a point generates a series that diverges or converges and
so  the  higher  will  be  the  number  of  iterations needed to obtain an
acceptable image of that zone.

       1.2     Introduction to Smartfractal

 The  very first time  you will run  Smartfractal (Smart from  now on) you
will probably want  to setup the  preferences as the  default behaviour of
Smart  is to use parameters acceptable on  the most basic machine (like my
A500 :-),  just browse  the control  menu to  set the  desidered number of
colors, the correct image size and the most suitable number of iterations,
if  you don't know  what this means  then you'd better  read the whole 1st
chapter before beginning for better results. Now go to the colors menu and
set the internal and the external coloring methods (these are peculiar  to
Smart!),  now choose the fractal type  you prefer and save the preferences
in the 'S:' directory, call them 'SmartFractal.prefs'. Done? O.K. You just
finished  the  basic  setup!  From  now  on  Smart  will  start  with your
preferences. Maybe you now want to zoom in, if so just click in the center
of  the zone you want to zoom, adjust the box size with the gadgets on the
right side and click on the zoom gadget (or select the zoom option in  the
control  menu), Smart will  start to calculate  that area. After a certain
number of  zooms you  will probably  decide to  zoom out,  just select the
unzoom  menu!  If  you  cannot  find  anything beautiful you may decide to
render pre-determined zones, if so just read paragraph 4!

       1.3     What's different (and some background story)

 What you have been  doing up to now  was possible even in  the most basic
fractal  generator, so what  does Smart do  that others don't?  I chose to
write Smart after re-reading a  book talking about fractals, the  pictures
on that book looked somewhat nicer than the ones I could generate with the
available  programs. The main difference was that these pictures were also
colored  internally,  this  gave  them  a  totally  different  look. I was
disappointed not to have a program to do that, unfortunately the tech used
to  color that  pictures was  really time  consuming and would have slowed
down  the  generation  of  images  to  an  unacceptable rate even on 68040
machines,  so I gave off for some  time. Sometime later I happened to look
again at that book and noticed that  some figures used a tech to draw  the
external  part that was  quite simple to  implement but still  I could not
find any program able to do that, what a shame, I thought, but then I  had
an  idea: Why not to  create my own rendering  tech for the internal zones
and use  the one  seen in  the book  for the  external ones  ? I  began to
program  and in less than  a week I discovered  that my techs worked quite
good, I just had to  write everything except from the  rendering routines,
but  I were so  happy that the  things went on  by themselves. Some months
after (I  had some  exams to  do so  I left  the project  for some time) I
stumbled  into a disk with the word "Smartfractal" written on it, I picked
it up, created the  user interface, added many  features and after a  hard
work  I came up with  the very first beta  version. Some month have passed
from that day and with the new versions I have added anything I could find
useful to the program.  The program you are  using now is the  result of a
hard  work and  so I  would appreciate  any form  of encouragement as I am
human too  :-). Just  write a  postcard if  you really  do not think to be
worth supporting me ;-( that postcard will let me know that there's people
out there that appreciates my work !


       1.4     Some known spots

 If  you ever happened  to read a  book about fractals  surely you'll have
desired to render the same  pictures, apart from the problem  mentioned in
the  previous paragraph,  sometimes the  informations on  how to  get that
pictures are omitted! So I  decided to include a directory  containing the
preference  files needed  to render  some very  known images and some less
known ones that  I think to  be worth a  look! If you  want to render such
zones  just  select  'Prefs->Load  spot'  and  than  look into the 'Spots'
directory in the same directory of Smart. You'll notice that the spots are
divided according to the type of  fractal. If you want to render  an image
never  seen on books just enter the 'Volterra' dir and load the 'Seahorse'
spot! Other unknown spots are found  in the dirs of the inverted  sets (by
now  Julia, Mandelbrot and Julia parameter  plane), you can also find some
beautyful spots in the 'Weird' directory, these are funny images  obtained
by setting 'not too meaningful' parameters, most of them can be considered
interference  images, because  of this  most of  the spots  in the 'Weird'
drawer should be loaded as preferences.


                     Chapter 2: The program's menu

 This chapter explains the meaning and the use of the various voices found
in the menus.

       2.1     Project

 This menu contains all the controls concerning general operations.

       2.1.1     Informations

 There are two voices giving informations  in this menu. The first one  is
"info",  it gives  informations on  the type  of fractal that is currently
set, the window being drawn, the number of colors, iterations and the type
of math that had been used to render the current image (useful in case you
are using  the "auto"  mode), it  also states  if the  selected fractal is
parametric  and if it's  parametric it shows  the value of the parameters.
The second voice  giving informations is  "about", this shows  the program
name, version and revision, a shareware message and my contact address.

       2.1.2     Loading/saving files

 With  the  "project"  menu  you  can  either  save  the current situation
(comprehending  all  of  the  preferences)  together  with the image being
displayed,  or save  only the  current settings  (comprehending the window
position, fractal type, math, colors etc.). If you want to save everything
(ie.: Image+settings) choose the "save" option directly in the main  menu,
the  situation will be saved as a standard iff image followed by a special
field added by Smart to be able to recall the infos about that image. Once
you want to recall that situation just select "load" in the main menu  and
the  situation  will  be  restored.  If  you  want  to  save/load just the
situation  but  not  the  image  choose  the voice "prefs" and than select
"load"  or "save". Note  that you CANNOT  recall only the situation (saved
with the "prefs"  voice) using the  "load" in the  main menu, this  is the
case  of the spots present  in this package, you  must use the "load spot"
option from the "prefs" voice. Before saving the whole image you can go to
the options an turn iff compression on/off, note that if you are saving to
an autocompressing device  you'd better leave  it off as  the standard iff
compression  method is run-length 1, that's quite inefficient. Please note
that if you load an image saved with Smart in an art package and than save
it back the package will NOT  retain the information about the fractal  so
you won't be able to reload it with Smart, so when you do retouch an image
do  not save it over the original or  you'll not be able to reload it with
Smart!

       2.1.3     Exiting the program

 This  is  the  simplest  thing,  just  select  "Quit"  and you will see a
requester  come up to ask you if you  really want to exit, just select yes
and you  will terminate  Smart. Please  read the  known bugs section about
problems  with  this  voice  in  case  you  use  a  promotor for a graphic
enancher.

       2.2     Controls

 This menu contains  all the controls  concerning the aspect  of the image
and giving controls about the zoom method and options.

       2.2.1     Graphic controls

 There  are four  voices controlling  the appearance  of the  image on the
screen. The first one is "Size", this  enables you to set the size of  the
image  to render, there are  4 predefined sizes and  a "custom" option. If
you chose the  "custom" option you'll  get a requester,  if you are  using
Kickstart  V2.0+ you'll get  a ScreenMode requester  and you'll be able to
select any available resolution (comprehending any non-standard resolution
available via third-party Monitor Types) and number of colors, please note
that  you's  better  NOT  select  special  modes or non-proportional modes
unless  you  want  to  make  some  weird tests (non-proportional modes are
1280x512  and  640x256),  so  if  you  wand  to  create a backdrop for the
Workbench  you should  select Laced-Hi  Res and  than convert the image to
non-laced hi res with a graphic package (Dpaint will do). If you are using
KS1.3 or less you'll  get a string requester  and you'll be able  to enter
the  desidered vertical size, the horizontal one will be determined by the
"aspect" option, if you choose a vertical size lesser then or equal to 256
the screen size will  be 320x256 and your  selection will affect only  the
size of the image. If you choose a number greater than 256 you'll also set
the  size of the screen,  remember that the screen  will always have a 5/4
aspect (that's the default on PAL machines), if you choose a vertical size
greater or equal to 400 you'll get a hi-res interlaced screen. The  second
voice influencing the image is "aspect", you can select either "square" or
"rectangular"  to set the aspect to 4:4  or to 5:4 (like the screen). Than
there is the "colors" option, you can there choose the number of colors on
the screen, please note  that Smart will try  to open the screen  with the
desidered  number of colors even if your machine has not the capability to
display them, this will blank the  screen if you select 64 colors  (that's
extra  half bright) or  more and hi-res  on a non  AGA machine with KS1.3,
this causes you  not to be  able to see  anything on the  screen, the only
solution  is to terminate  the drawing pressing  Amiga-X and after a while
pressing  return,  then  press  Amiga-Q  and  finally  'Y'  to quit Smart.
Surprisingly  selecting 256 colors on KS1.3 in low-res will result in just
32 being displayed but 8 being stored in memory, so you can draw and  than
store  256 color images that you'll be  able to display on AGA machines or
with video  enanchers. Please  note that  some resolutions  will slow down
significantly  the drawing on non-AGA machine,  that's not a bug, it's due
to the internal multiprocessing architecture of the amiga that assigns too
few time to the 680x0 (ie.: that's  the case of 16 color hi-res where  the
machine almost stops). Then there is the "title" toggle, with this one you
can  turn on/off the screen  title (if you turned  it off, selected a full
screen image and turned on autozoom  then use Amiga-N and Amiga-M to  move
the screen to front/back without zooming).

       2.2.2     Methods tuning

 In this menu you can set two options to control the methods to render the
image,  both  of  them  will  give  you  control  on  the  accuracy of the
representation. The first one is  "Depth", with this voice you  can select
how  many  iterations  to  take  before  deciding that a point generates a
series  that  converges.  Keep  this  number  high to have a more accurate
representation of the image, keep it low to have a fast one, note that the
deeper you go into the image the higher will have to be this number to get
a realistic representation. The second voice is "Blocks", it allows you to
set  how big the blocks will be and so how many passes will the image take
to complete.  This gives  you control  on the  degree of  approximation in
drawing the image, the bigger the blocks, the faster will be the rendering
and the more you are like to lose some details. This option should be used
with  care as it  has a big  potential, there are  zones where setting the
blocks to 8x8 will not affect the  quality of the image but will speed  up
its  generation more than  10 times, in  other zones even  setting the 2x2
option will give  you a quite  inaccurate representation of  the image and
will not be significantly faster than the pixel-perfect 1x1 mode. There is
no  way to  tell what  the best  block size  is, generally  4x4 should not
affect  significantly  the  image  integrity  but  will give a great speed
improvement.  If you use the 8x8 option  be careful to set a higher number
of iterations to compensate the possible imprecisions.

       2.2.3     Zoom control

 There are four voices concerning zooming  in this menu. The first one  is
"zoomrate",  it allows you to set how much you will zoom, that is how much
of the zone around the point  you selected will be zoomed. The  second one
is  "autozoom", just select "on" or "off". If you turn it on each time you
want to zoom you'll just have to click in the center of the zone you  wish
to  zoom and the  zoom will take  automatically place even  if you did not
select  the  voice  "zoom".  The  voice  "zoom"  is used when the autozoom
feature is off to zoom in a zone, just select this voice and than click in
the  center of the  zone you want  to see, if  you want to cancel the zoom
just click outside of the image or press the right mouse button. The  last
option  "unzoom" lets you zoom  off the current image,  just select it and
the image will be recalculated automatically without further actions.

       2.2.4     Extra controls

 There are four more toggles providing generic controls on the setup. This
toggles are "Autoredraw", "Pack iff", "Be quiet" and "Toolbar", the  first
one  let's you  disable the  auto-update function  that redraws  the image
after any change in the settings, when this is off the redraw will  happen
only  if the screen had been rebuilt and the image disappeared. The second
toggle is to turn on/off the  iff compression (see above for more  infos).
When  the "Be quiet" switch is on you won't be prompted before overwriting
existing files and you won't be presented a requester once the drawing had
terminated (this will also turn off the screen-to-front feature). The last
toggle  is  "Toolbox"  and  when  activated  (by default) will turn on the
toolbar.

       2.3     Math

 This  menu  contains  all  the  voices  that  involve  direct  control of
mathematical aspects of the drawing.

       2.3.1     Editing parameters

 As Smart  features parametric  fractals (Julia,  Volterra-Lotka and Julia
Parameter  plane)  it  also  enables  you  to  specify  the value of these
parameters. Julia, JuliaPP and Volterra do use 2 parameters, in the  Julia
sets  the  parameter  is  a  complex  number  and indicates a point of the
corresponding Mandelbrot set,  if while examining  the Mandelbrot set  you
wish  to pick  a point  and set  the Julia  parameters to  that point just
select the "set point" voice and click in the Mandelbrot set on the  point
you  wish to use  (Tip: just after  setting the point  switch to the Julia
set, you'll get a view of the  same window as it appears in the  Julia set
and  it will  look similar  to the  region you  picked the point from, the
nearer to  the point  you'll go  the lesser  the differences  will be :-).
However  you may  know some  values (maybe  you have  a book)  and want to
introduce them  manually, if  so just  choose the  "edit point" option and
you'll  get a requester asking for the real part of the parameter and then
for the imaginary one. If you changed your mind and no longer want to edit
the parameters just hit return  twice. Maybe you got also  the coordinates
of  the window you have to zoom, if so just choose the "edit window" voice
and enter the value you wish to  use (once again press return to keep  the
actual  values).  Note  that  the  window  requester will not allow you to
specify all  the four  values as  you may  have expected,  this is because
Smart  does not want you to get weird  image aspect (after all who wants a
Mandelbrot set that looks deformed ??).

       2.3.2     Selecting the fractal type

 This is  easily done  by selecting  the "set  fractal" voice  and then by
choosing  the fractal you  prefer. Mandelbrot and  Julia are the classical
ones  found  in  almost  any  fractal generator, Volterra-Lotka is fractal
taken  from  the  book  I  have  (see bibliography for more informations),
Inverted Mandelbrot and Inverted Julia  are the Mandelbrot and Julia  sets
projected into an inverted space (again see bibliography).

       2.3.3     Determining the type of math

 While  exploring fractals one of the most important problems is to choose
a precision that enables to draw an image that is free of defects, but  at
the  same time it's important not to  exaggerate not to slow down too much
the calculation (I won't tell how long does a double precision image  take
to  render in  640x512 on  an A500  but know  that I  care too much for my
computer  to  risk  leaving  it  on  the  whole  night).  So you'll surely
comprehend  that the more precisions are  available the better it is. Some
programs (ehrm...  Actually I  know only  of Mand2000  that's a commercial
program!)  do offer  special routines  to handle  almost any precision but
you'll usually find that even on  fast machines (68040 33Mhz I mean!)  any
precision  higher than  the extended  FPU precision  will result quite too
slow to  use in  non-background situations.  Smart offers  you 6 different
precisions,  they are  (in order  from the  fastest to  the most precise):
Turbo integer, integer, big integer, floating point, double precision  and
extended  FPU precision.  The first  five are  available to  anyone on any
machine, the sixth one  is only available to  FPU owners and 68040  owners
with  fpu-patches (see below).  Smart offers you  to do the selection work
for you,  just choose  the "auto"  option and  you'll never  have to worry
about  the type of math  used (Tip: when drawing  the starting image of an
inverted  Julia  force  the  precision  to  integer, the zones near to the
borders  will be pixelized but the effect may  be fine (I like it!) and it
will also be faster (unless you have an FPU!), Smart had been designed  to
be  as precise as reasonable so I did not set that tip into the program as
default). Please note that if you are  drawing a zone on the border of  an
inverted  Julia that is quite big (the  set not the region!) Smart may get
confused and select the wrong precision, you'll notice it as you'll get  a
pixelization  effect! In these cases you can  use the other options of the
"precision" voice to  force Smart to  use a specific  precision, note that
you  cannot force the Turbo integer precision  as it's useful only on some
occasions and Smart will activate it automatically while using the  'auto'
mode,  also note that  if you don't  have an FPU  and try to force the FPU
routines Smart will complain, if you decide to go ahead anyway expect your
machine to crash as I wrote  the FPU routines in assembler using  directly
the  coprocessor istructions and  not the library  calls that are too slow
(but useful  if you  need to  write a  single source  that uses either the
emulation  routines either the FPU,  in this case I  wrote a separate code
for  processor-based  calculation  and   so  there's  no  reason   to  use
libraries).  Tech note  on how  Smart decides  the precision to use: While
developing Smart I assumed that anyone owning an FPU also owns a processor
that will  compute faster  in integer  (and turbo  integer!) than  the FPU
(that's true if you have a 68020 or more, if you have a FPU and a 68010 or
less  always force the precision to FPU, by the way: why did you do such a
strange thing as connecting a 32 bit FPU to a 16 bit bus ?). Note to 68040
owners: Before  using Smart  you must  run a  system patcher  to trap  the
line-f  exceptions generated by the FPU istructions not supported by 68040
internal FPU, once done this (you probably yet installed it in the startup
:-) you can safely run Smart  and enjoy your machine's FPU speed!,  if you
don't install the patch you'll still be able to use Smart but you won't be
able to use FPU mode.

       2.3.4     Regenerating the image

 There  are two options to regenerate the image, the first one is "redraw"
and will redraw exactly the selected window with the selected  parameters,
this  is  useful  when  after  changing  the  coloring methods you want to
regenerate the image with the new routines. The second option is "restart"
and as  you'll have  guessed selects  the default  starting window for the
selected type of set before redrawing.

       2.4     Colors

 As  beauty is a subjective idea people  may wish to change the appearance
of the fractals on the screen, this menu does this but it also allows  you
to select the coloring methods of internal and of the external part of the
various  sets.  Note  that  this  is  not  just  an exterior change as the
different  methods  give  different  informations  on the behaviour of the
single points.

       2.4.1     File operations

 The  two voices "save"  and "load" allow  you to save  and load the whole
color palette used by the program  (all 256 colors) in iff format  so that
you'll  be able to use palettes  edited in your favourite drawing package.
If  you  use  24  bit  palette  (AGA  machines) please read the known bugs
section (that's not properly a bug but I placed the note there as I had no
idea of where to put it).

       2.4.2     Palette editor

 Just  choose "edit" from the  menu and you'll be  faced with the standard
color requester of the ReqTools library, freely edit the palette and  than
choose 'ok' or 'cancel' to confirm the changes or to discard them.

       2.4.3     Choosing the rendering methods !!

 As I wrote before, this is the main difference with all the other fractal
generators  I could find on Amiga, Smart can assign a color also to points
internal to the set  !. There are two  menus concerning this options,  the
first  one is "external" that  allows you to specify  the type of coloring
you want  in the  external regions.  Here you  have six  choices: "Solid",
"Smooth",  "Binary", "2Binary",  "Checked1" and  "Checked2". The first one
will assign to all  the points not in  the set the same  color. The second
one will assign the usual coloring that's based on the speed of divergence
(this evidences the level curves). The third one is the one I talked about
in chapter one, this is a simple method that assigns to each point outside
the  set a color depending on where the point was when it exited the limit
circle of  divergence, the  color depends  on the  argument of the complex
number,  this brings in evidence the  Hubbard's angles of various point of
the Mandelbrot and Julia sets.  The fourth method is a  personal variation
of  the  third  that's  based  on  a  different  assignment  of the colors
depending an the argument. The fifth and sixth are obtained by mixing  the
"Smooth"  and  "Binary"  options,  they  are  very  impressive  if cycled,
otherwise  they  look  almost  like  "Smooth". The second voice concerning
coloring (and the most important in my opinion :-) is "internal" that lets
you  specify  five  types  of  coloring, they are: "Solid", "Logarithmic",
"Smooth type 1", "Smooth type 2"  and "Logarithmic type 2". The first  one
works as the corresponding one in the external menu, the second, third and
fourth  one give you an idea of how much difference there is in the module
of point end of its (probable) attractor, the fifth one gives you an  idea
of how far the point is from its attractor. The second and the fifth adopt
a  logarithmic  scale  so  to  allow  you  to  see with the same precision
attractors of different orders, the third and fourth do adopt a  corrected
proportional  method, that's less efficient than the logarithmic scale but
it's more colorful and in some cases gives you more informations. The most
significant method in terms of math is the fifth one that does its  better
to  evidence the internal level curves (that's  how fast a point gets near
to its attractor), this is the most similar to the one I found on the book
I wrote about in the previous chapter,  I cannot be sure if it's the  same
but  I believe it to be, the real  problem is the nature of the attractors
that  present  a  periodical  nature,  to  evidence  the biggest number of
attractors  the number of iterations should  be equal to ((K!)-1) that's a
number too high even with K=10 (K=10 -> depth should be = 3628799, too big
for me!). This is a common problem with all the internal coloring methods,
if you use it just select at  least an odd number (that's due to  the fact
that  on some fractals, like Mandelbrot,  the main attractor (that's 0+i0,
the origin of  Gauss' plane) is  present in all  the periodical orbits  so
that  if you choose an even  number all the point will  look to be part of
the domain of the origin!.

       2.4.4     Cycling

 From V1.1 Smart offers the cycling option, you can use the voices of  the
"Cycle"  item to  turn on/off  cycling, select  the direction  of cycleing
(forward or  backward) and  to speed  up or  slow down  the cycling of the
colors.  You can change the direction of cycling while it's on without any
problem. If you stop  the cycling the colors  will remain the ones  of the
moment  you stopped  it, if  you want  to revert  to the  original palette
select the "Reset" option, if you want to let the actual palette be  fixed
just select "Edit" and click on "Ok" without modifying anything.


                  Chapter 3: Other features

       3.1     Commands of the toolbar

 From  V1.2 on Smart features a toolbar that holds buttons for some of the
most used  commands, it  also offers  a couple  of functions NOT available
from  the menu. The top two gadgets are used to increase/decrease the size
of the zoombox (and so to control the zoomrate), the two just below  allow
to  zoom/unzoom and  the first  of the  next line  let's the user hide the
zoombox (not available from menu). The one immediately on the right  let's
the  user turn  on/off the  coordinate disply  option, when this option is
active  if  the  cursor  passes  on  the  image  the  coordinates  of  the
underlaying point will be displayed, this is really useful while using the
"Set  point" option. The four  buttons below these ones  allow the user to
turn on/off the color cycling, change its direction, speed up or slow down
it. There are  than two icons  to show the  information box and  the about
message. The last two buttons will let the user save/load everything.

       3.2     Keyboard commands

 Many  menu options do  have a keyboard  shortcut, and can  so be used via
keyboard, however there is a simply trick available only from keyboard, if
autozoom is off and the zoombox is  visible you can use the arrow keys  to
move it around the image.


       3.3     Preferences and setup

 If  you want Smart  to start with  your configuration as  default you may
save your  preferences as  "SmartFractal.prefs" either  the "S:" directory
either  in the same directory of Smart,  note: if you run Smart from SHELL
you'll have to save the  preferences in the 'current' directory,  I.E.: if
you  are  in  directory  "HD1:Utils/"  and  Smart  is  in  directory "HD2:
Utils/Math/SmartFractal" (and it is the path) you can run Smart by  typing
"SmartFractal",  but  if  your  preferences  are not in "HD1:Utils/" Smart
won't use them.  So if you  frequently use Smart  from SHELL you'd  better
place  the preferences in  the "S:" directory.  An other feature that will
surely be appreciated by  someone is that you  can use any image  obtained
with  Smart as default one, just save it as "SmartFractal.iff" in the same
directory of Smart (the notes for SHELL  users about preferences are still
valid).
 Another feature that SHELL users will appreciate is that from V1.1  Smart
will  auto-detach  from  the  current  process,  running in background and
letting  you  close  the  Shell  whenever  you want without having to quit
Smart.


                  Chapter 4: Miscellaneous informations

       4.1     How to contact the author

 Well, if you have been reading the document you'll probably have also the
program and my contact address but anyway here it is:

 Mail to:      Simone Avogadro
               viale Rimembranze, 33
               Appiano Gentile
                 22070 (CO)
                  ITALY

 E-mail on Internet to: [e-mail]

 If  you cannot access the internet but have access to the Fidonet you can
use a  gateway to  Internet, if  you don't  know how  to do  that ask your
sysop,  as I don't have direct access to  Fidonet I cannot tell you how to
do it (sorry:-),  but note that  this method is  slow (usually it  takes a
month or more for the mail to arrive to me!).
 There  are no known bugs in Smart but  I can't tell if there are not bugs
or if  we simply  don't now  about them  :-}, if  you find  any bug please
report  it to me, possibly with a  clear description of how to recreate it
(please state the  machine configuration you  have, etc.). Reporting  bugs
helps me to keep the program safe so, expecially if you found a nasty one,
report it to me as soon as possible.

       4.2     Improvements

 Here  I give a  list of improvements  that I'd like  to add to Smart if I
have time (Ie: If I successfully take my exams) and if I feel Smart to  be
appreciated (feedback is important, even an E-mail makes the difference!):


 o Support for xpklibrary de/compression
 o A "Pickup" menu so that you can stop drawing, save the partial work
   and than pickup your work later (very useful for time-consuming
   drawings!)
 o A speedup buffer, so you can zoom faster
 o Faster rendering routines
 o Better color cycling feature
 o 3D mapping of fractals (spherical and axonometrical)
 o More types of fractals
 o More coloring techs

 Changes that will take a bit more to be done:

 o Arexx support (I got the documentation for it and I will do it as
   soon as I have enough time)
 o Real-time zoom (like Mand2000)

 As you see I have a lot of ideas and so there are a lot of possibilities,
let  me know  your preferences  and if  you have  any proposal for special
features not mentioned here (please don't just say: "I want Smart to  draw
in  real time, support  custom fractals and  display images directly on my
Virtual reality glasses" :-).

       4.3     Known bugs

 No known bug, but I know of a problem with the 'quit' option, it  appears
not to be active (!!) when you use some screen promotors to force Smart to
work  with a weird graphic adaptor, that's not a problem with Smart it may
be due to ReqTools (I doubt this as it always worked perfectly) or to some
tricky tech used by the promotor (that's more like to be this), form  V1.2
this  should be completely resolved as  you shouldn't need promotors. Also
know that  V1.2 does  not have  yet full  support for  24 bit palette (the
compiler  is too old  and I could  not find a  clean way to handle the new
KS3.0 functions), on AGA machines you can display in 256 colors with a  24
bit  palette but when saving the palette  saved in the file will be scaled
to 12 bit (sorry, will search  for someone with a recent compiler  as soon
as possible). From V1.2 the info window also displays infos on the machine
it detects, CPU+FPU are OK but I don't know a SAFE way for identifying AGA
and  so if the 15th bit of the AttnFlag is set Smart thinks AGA-chipset to
be there.

       4.4     History

 V1.0 in 14/6/94 : First release
 V1.1 in 18/7/94 (Internal) : Never released but really stable.
   - When run from CLI/SHELL it now auto detaches and goes in background
   - Added two voices to Prefs menu to load separately Options and Spots
   - Added the option to compress images with standard Iff method
   - Added color cycling
   - Added "Be Quiet" toggle
   - Added the zoombox
 V1.2 in 20/9/94 : No known bugs.
   - Added support for any system monitor with a standard Screenmode
     requester
   - Added a toolbar to make interaction more immediate and intuitive :->
   - Added new fractals "JuliaPP" and "Inverted JuliaPP"
   - Added 64 bit integer math, about 3-4 times faster than "float" and
     90% of the times with equivalent precision, made separate versions
     for 68000-010 and 68020+
   - Added the ability to show cursor coordinates on the screen title
   - Fixed a bug in V1.1 that caused some problems with packed iff
   - Now Smart asks for confirmation before overwriting existing files
     this feature can be disabled with the "Be Quiet" switch
   - Fixed a bug that didn't allow to use more than 65535 iterations with
     FPU precision
   - Micro-buffering almost halves the time taken to render quite uniform
     areas.


       4.5     People I wish to thank

 Oh, well, there's  a lot of  people I should  thank, so in  no particular
order:  Mom, dad and  my brother for  supporting me and  being patient, my
friends for their interest and then in particular:
 Stefano Volponi for  correcting the errors  in this text  (as you'll have
supposed English is not my native language!)
 Donato  Corvi for beta-testing  on his fat  A1200+68030 33Mhz+68882 48Mhz
FPU +4Meg 32Bit fast. Also for letting  me work at his home in an  attempt
to  fix a nasty bug  with FPU (finally I  caught it!). Most of the awesome
new spots found in V1.2 are due to his research.
 Cristiano Preda for beta-testing  on his monster (A2000+8Meg  32bit fast,
68040  30Mhz, 2Meg Merlin  graphic adapter), and  for procuring me the iff
documentation.
 Other people I wish to thank:
 Fabrizio Sala (sysop of Fast Enough BBS) for spreading (I hope!) Smart on
Fidonet
 Nico François for  developing the ReqTools  library (req.library is  cool
but reqtools is cooler!) (if you want to know more about Reqtools read the
SHAREWARE.DOC file)
 Enrico  M. Ferrari for paying attention to SmartFactal and for his review
on MC MicroComputer
 And all the others I forgot!

       4.6     Bibliography

 The book I wrote about many times in this text is:
H.O.Peitgen  -  P.H.Richter,"The  Beauty  of  Fractals,  Images of Complex
Dynamical Systems",1986, Springer Verlang - Berlin, Heidelberg, New York.
 If  you have a secondary school preparation  and like math you'll be able
to comprehend the principles explained in this book and even if you  don't
understand  mathematics you'll find the  Interventions very interesting as
they are  comprehensible by  anyone and  express interesting philosophical
considerations;  you'll also find an interesting  appendix on how to write
simple  programs  to  generate  fractals,  if  you are a bit more advanced
there's  a  section  commenting  some  advanced  techs  you'll surely find
interesting (even if some do require too much computational power to adapt
them for our amigas). If you are  Italian (As I am!) you'll also find  the
Italian  translation of this book, it's  called "La Bellezza dei Frattali"
and  is  published  by  Bollati-Boringhieri,  I  found  it  to  be  a good
translation not presenting problems with traslation of mathematical therms
(thanks to the work of Umberto Sampietri).
 If you want to read something more practically-oriented you should try to
procure  old  numbers  of  "Scientific  American"  (or  translations) that
featured  interesting  articles   about  fractals  and   non-deterministic
dynamics.
 If,  instead,  you  are  more  interested  in the mathematical aspect you
should search for a book  of B.Mandelbrot that's considered the  father of
the modern theory of fractals. I just mention the most known:
 Benoit.B.Mandelbrot,"The   Fractal  Geometry  of  Nature",1982,  Freeman,
San Francisco.


 I hope you like Smartfractal  and find interesting images that  meet your
sense of beauty.
                                                  Simone Avogadro