T H E F R A C T A L G R A F I C S O N - D I S K M A N U A L Copyright, 1990 by Dick Oliver Cedar Software, Morrisville, VT 05661-9605 (802) 888-5275 Version 1.0, May, 1990 Compatibility: Required: * IBM-PC, XT, AT, PS/2, or compatible * DOS version 2.0 or higher * CGA, EGA, or VGA graphics adapter * Minimum of 384K of memory Optional: * Microsoft compatible mouse * Math co-processor For file compatibility, this product uses the PCX Programmer's Toolkit, Copyright 1989 by Genus Microprogramming, Inc. Other products mentioned are trademarks of their respective companies. CONTENTS -------- I. What is Fractal Grafics? II. What Can I Do With It? III. Getting Started IV. The Fractal Grafics Guidebook V. Installation VI. Running the Program VII. Alternate Video Modes VIII. Start-up Files IX. The Juliman Program X. Tips on File Management XI. Features and Frustrations XII. Registration I. WHAT IS FRACTAL GRAFICS? --------------------------- Fractal Grafics is a drawing program. As with any drawing program, you use the mouse and keyboard to create pictures on the screen from dots and lines, with full control over coloring and shading. The images you design are limited only by your artistic skill and imagination. Fractal Grafics gives you a new, powerful drawing tool called a "fractal template". You use the template to create complex shapes with rich detail, and assemble these shapes into eye-catching, colorful images. With practice, you will be able to make pictures more realistic than anything you've ever created on a computer (or, more than likely, on paper). Many of the most difficult things to draw with other programs (like plants, landscapes, and other flowing natural forms) can be drawn in great detail in seconds with a single "imprint" of a fractal template. But realism is only half the story. Even before you build your drawing skills enough to mimic the "real" world, you'll embark on a breathtaking journey into the fantastic world of fractal geometry. The easiest shapes to create are spiraling vortexes, other-worldly plants, enchanting galaxies of color, and dazzling portraits of infinity. Fractal Grafics is designed to be intuitive and easy to use for anyone: you don't need to know any mathematics, or be any good at art--though you'll find plenty of chances to use both skills if you have them! The mission of Fractal Grafics is to let YOU get creative with the geometry that has revitalized both science and art, from the prediction of earthquakes to state-of-the-art motion picture special effects. II. WHAT CAN I DO WITH IT? -------------------------- Fractals are beautiful and fascinating, and you're sure to get a great deal of entertainment from using Fractal Grafics. You can also do some very practical things with it: --You will learn through hands-on exploration about fractal geometry and "chaos" theory, which are revolutionizing many fields of science. Here are just a few examples: * See with your own eyes why traditional linear systems go belly up when applied to most natural phenomena. * "Grow" plants on the screen by designing your own geometric genetic codes, and learn to reconstruct the genetics of real plants. * Learn to create visual graphs and models of non-linear dynamical data. --You can also create spectacular artwork and graphics designs. A sampling of your new artistic repertoire: * Sculpt a fractal mimicry of any existing (or imagined) image, and add coloring and shading highlights. All shapes can be re-sized without loss of textural detail. * Then apply some of these effects: Irregular or spiraling zooms, complex "cracks" and fragmentation, spray, blur, winding tendrils, fuzz, or anything you can imagine (and lots you can't)! * Tile any shape with copies of itself for dizzying "off to infinity" effects. * Exchange images with other "draw", "paint", and desktop publishing programs via built-in compatibility with the PCX file format. III. GETTING STARTED -------------------- What should I do to get How long going with Fractal Grafics? will it take? 1. Install the program, and get 10 to 20 minutes it running. (The following two sections tell you how.) 2. Follow the on-line help 1 to 2 hours topics 0 through 9 to get familiar with the program. (Just run the program, press the letter H and follow the instructions that appear.) 3. Create some fractals! At least an hour Play, explore, and practice. 4. Follow the rest of the 1 to 2 hours on-line help topics to learn all the features of the program. 5. Practice some more. Try to At least an hour imagine a shape and see if you can create it on the screen. If you wish to continue using the program at this point, you are asked register your use with the author. You will be sent a Guidebook which picks up where the on-line tutorial leaves off. IV. THE FRACTAL GRAFICS GUIDEBOOK --------------------------------- When you register, you'll get a guided tour of the fractal universe, with six educational sections and more than 150 hands-on examples. The following topics are covered: 1. ART You'll master the use of fractal templates to create breathtaking images. Learn how to produce any design you can imagine, and a world of shapes beyond imagination. 2. SCIENCE Fractals have revolutionized almost every branch of science. By modelling the natural world, you will discover the deep simplicity behind Nature's complex face. You'll also learn to graph fractal curves to fit actual data. 3. MATH Step into infinity and learn how fractals work. If you want to see the equations and algorithms, they're all here. If you don't, everything is explained visually and intuitively. 4. PHILOSOPHY You'll discover the startling revelations of "non-linear" thinking, and the intimate connections between fractals and Chaos theory. Is the universe a fractal? Are YOU? 5. HISTORY You'll retrace the evolution of a new geometry, and find out how "pathological" shapes which appalled their inventors have revitalized science, mathematics, and art. 6. LITERATURE You'll also get a complete bibliography of fractal books, articles, software, and videos. There's also advice on how to use Fractal Grafics as a companion to several books. And all the examples used in the Guidebook are indexed in the back so you can browse through them on disk and then read about the ones that intrigue you the most. V. INSTALLATION --------------- You should follow these steps before you run Fractal Grafics for the first time: 1. Back up the Fractal Grafics disk(s). Use the back up copy from now on, and put the original in a safe place. If you're not sure how to back up a disk, here's how: --Insert a blank floppy disk in drive A. --Type FORMAT A: at the DOS prompt, and press Enter. If you're sure you've inserted a blank disk, tell DOS by pressing Enter again. --When the formatting is done, take out the blank and insert the Fractal Grafics disk --Type DISKCOPY A: A: and press Enter --Follow the computer's instructions for inserting disks during the copy --Label the copy, and stash the original 2. Insert the back-up copy of the Fractal Grafics disk in drive A, type A: (the letter A and a colon), and press the Enter key. (The DOS prompt should now say A>) If, for some reason, you can't use drive A, just type the letter of the drive you will be using, followed by a colon, and press Enter. (Example: To use drive B, type B:). If you want to copy the disk to a drive other than A (for example, drive B), use this command: XCOPY A:*.* B: /S NOTE: A "double-density" 3.5 inch disk holds twice as much as a "double density" 5.25 inch disk. Therefore, you can not backup a 3.5" disk to a 5.25" disk, unless the 5.25" disk is "high density". You CAN copy two 5.25" disks onto one 3.5" disk if you want, though. Just use the XCOPY command above twice. If this all sounds confusing, just use one disk drive and the DISKCOPY command! 3. Type INSTALL and press Enter. Follow the instructions that appear on the screen. The installation is done by several batch files which will tell you exactly what they are doing before they do it. If you're a DOS expert, you can modify these batch files to suit any special need or unusual system configuration you may have. VI. RUNNING THE PROGRAM ----------------------- Once you've installed Fractal Grafics (see the previous page for installation instructions), you can run it by entering FG from the directory where the program resides. For example: --To run from a floppy disk, type this (pressing Enter after each line): A: FG --To run from the default hard drive directory: C: CD \FRACTAL FG --To run from another directory (if you specified one during installation): (drive letter): CD \(directory name) FG NOTE FOR MOUSE USERS: If you wish to use your Microsoft-compatible mouse with Fractal Grafics, you must be sure to install your mouse driver before running the program. In many cases, the driver is installed automatically when you start the computer, so you may not need to take any additional steps. See your mouse manual for more instructions. The next page explains some advanced tricks for running Fractal Grafics. You don't need to read it until you've used the program for a while. VII. STARTING IN AN ALTERNATE VIDEO MODE ---------------------------------------- To force Fractal Grafics to start in a particular video mode, type one of the following switches after the FG command. (For example, to start a VGA in 640 by 350 mode, enter FG /E) If you don't specify a mode, you will get mode /C (if you have a CGA), /E (with EGA), or /V (with VGA). Switch: Resolution: Colors: /L 320 by 200 Green/Red/Brown /L2 320 by 200 Green/Red/Yellow /L3 320 by 200 Cyan/Magenta/White /C 640 by 200 Black & White /E 640 by 350 16-Color Palette /V 640 by 480 16-Color Palette NOTE: There is no on-line help in /L modes, and many coloring features require 16-color modes. Templates can be saved in one mode and loaded in another. Picture files, however, may look wrong when saved and loaded in different video modes. VIII. STARTUP FILES ------------------- Whenever you run Fractal Grafics, it automatically loads a picture file named STARTUP.PCX and a template file named STARTUP.FRT if they exist in the current directory. You can save any picture and/or template under the name STARTUP and they will come up every time you start the program. You can specify another start-up file name on the command line. For example, to start Fractal Grafics in 320 by 200 mode and bring up the picture and template named CGASTART, enter: FG CGASTART /L To start up without loading any files, either delete the files named STARTUP or specify a non-existent name (example: FG NOFILE). The picture will come up blank and a simple triangular template will be centered on the screen. IX. THE JULIMAN PROGRAM ----------------------- The JULIMAN.EXE file on this disk is a simple program to generate pictures of the Mandelbrot Set and Julia Sets. These are famous mathematical fractals which are drawn by multiplying points on the "complex plane" by themselves or each other over and over again. Pictures of these sets take quite a while to produce (up to several hours per picture on an "AT" class computer). The "Escape-Time Algorithm" used to draw these sets is explained in the Guidebook (which you get when you register), with illustrations and commented pseudo-code. To use the Juliman program, install Fractal Grafics and type JULIMAN at the DOS prompt instead of FG. If you have VGA graphics, you may want to force the program to run in the lower EGA resolution mode by typing JULIMAN /E. (Images take less time to generate in the lower resolution.) JULIMAN will ask for several numbers. If you're not familiar with x,y coordinates and that sort of thing, just keep pressing Enter to use the default values. To get you started, here are a few interesting parameters: Mandelbrot Set: From x = y = To x = y = -------------------------------------------- -0.95 -0.32 -0.85 -0.22 -0.2 1.02 -0.13 1.07 -0.7 0.5 -0.4 0.7 -1.78 0 -1.76 0.013 Julia Sets for the points: x = y = ------------------------ 0.11031 -0.67037 0.27334 0.00742 -1.25 0 0 1 -0.39054 -0.58679 All Julia sets are from (x = -1.5, y = -1.5) to (x = 1.5, y = 1.5). You can "zoom in" by using numbers in between, for example: (x = -1, y = -1) to (x = -0.25, y = 0.25) zooms into the top left corner. In most cases, 30 is a good number of iterations. More iterations will show greater detail, less will go faster. Control over colors and palettes is very limited in Juliman, but the images are saved as PCX files, so you can load them into Fractal Grafics (or another graphics program) to adjust the colors as you wish. X. TIPS ON FILE MANAGEMENT -------------------------- Fractal Grafics comes with many examples, and you'll create hundreds more in no time. Organizing so many files, and finding the ones you want amongst the multitudes, can be a challenge. Everyone has their own methods of file managament, and you can use the same techniques you use with files from other programs to keep track of fractal templates and pictures. Here are some suggested techniques: * Use DOS. You're probably already familiar with DOS commands and directory structure. Fractal Grafics lets you go into DOS temporarily, without losing your on-screen work, to change directories, delete files, etc. * Or use a dedicated file management program (such as PC-Tools or Norton Commander). You can either run these programs within Fractal Grafics from the temporary DOS prompt, or load them as TSR's to be popped-up any time. * Make separate directories for various types of fractals you might design (e.g. MD PLANTS, and store all models of plants there). You can then use the DOS command CD to change between them. * You can Load templates without paging through a directory listing by pressing T at the main menu. For example, if you had your plants in the \FRACTAL\PLANTS sub-directory (and the current DOS directory was \FRACTAL), you could Load the Template BIGTREE by pressing T and entering PLANTS\BIGTREE for the filename. Fractal Grafics can find on-line help from within any sub-directory of FRACTAL, but may not be able to locate the help files from other directories or drives. If you're new to file management, your DOS manual will provide more tips. FEATURES AND FRUSTRATIONS ------------------------- Fractal Grafics has been thoroughly beta-tested, and has no major bugs. However, there's no such thing as a perfect program. There will always be potentially confusing features and stubborn bugs, and you should know about them! Planned future enchancements are also listed--expect most of them in the next program update (which you get free when you register.) MORE VIDEO MODES: Expect support for Hercules and super-VGA modes soon. ENHANCED TEMPLATE MANIPULATION: Sometimes, it would be nice to be able to rotate all parts around the seed, or move the seed independantly of the parts. This is easy to program, but difficult to make comprehensible in a user- interface. Any suggestions on how you'd like this implemented? MOUSING FEATURES: Future releases will feature more mousing shortcuts, such as mouse-oriented filing, second color selection on Blend Colors, etc. MOUSING ACCURACY: Manipulating the template with the mouse is not as accurate as I'd like, due to floating-point precision. (Better accuracy slows down the program a LOT.) Use the menu with the Precision command for fine work. TOO BIG: If you grow the template a hundred times or so, it will eventually get too big for the program to handle. You will NOT get a friendly message to this effect, but the program will crash and report a math error. (You could never use a template that big, since it would take hours to Draw or Paint.) CONTROL-C: If you press Ctrl-C, or Ctrl-Break, a familiar "STOP!" command, the whole program will stop and return to DOS. (This isn't a bug, but you might expect it to just stop Painting instead. Use the Esc key for that.) PAINT AND FILL TUNING: Determining exactly how long to Paint or Fill a shape can be tricky in some rare situations. If Paint or Draw keeps going after a shape is well-defined, hit Esc. If it's too brief, do it more than once. In most cases, Adjusting the Fill setting will work just fine. DRAWING ORDER: The order which the Draw command builds parts on top of one another is predictable. Parts will be drawn in the same order you see when browsing through them with NextPart. In some templates, having the shapes in a different order creates quite a different picture. Use Insert and Delete to control the order your parts will be drawn. I'm working on a slower but more dramatic routine to "grow" the shape one level at a time (like a tree). SMUDGES: The template leaves smudges all over everything. These can be erased with Restore, but they can still be annoying sometimes. They can also be helpful, because they make it easier to see the template. Expect anti-smudge templates in future updates. PICTURE SIZE: Picture size is limited to the size of your screen. You can use another program (like PC Paintbrush) to piece screens together into full-page artwork. You can even Paint the top and bottom half of a template onto seperate screens and put them together with a page layout program. I'd like to incorporate oversized pictures directly into Fractal Grafics, but this will involve a major re-write of the program, and may not happen soon. MENU HILITING: If you're in a hurry, it's easy to goof and pick the wrong menu item with the mouse (like Delete instead of Insert--Oops). Enhanced visual feedback will make this easier in the future. Until then, be careful! BACKGROUND COLOR VS. DON'T DRAW: If you assign the background color to a part of the template, that part will not be drawn at all; EXCEPT for the seed, which actually draws over the picture in the background color (erasing anything underneath). This discrepancy was put there on purpose so you can use the seed as an "eraser", but you can also make a template partly "transparent". CAPTION GROUPING: Consecutive caption characters form a group, which moves together when you Insert or Delete within it. Spaces typed with the spacebar are considered caption characters: they are different than "blank" areas, because they cover up the picture underneath them. CAPTION CURSOR DISAPPEARS: Once in a while, the caption cursor just vanishes. Don't worry, it's still there. Press a key, and it comes back. I'll fix this. FILL NOT WITHIN LINES: When you Draw, the fill pattern does not always stay within your outline (As in the F- examples). I'll fix this, too. EGA COLORS: EGA cards support only 64 possible colors, which means the Red, Green, and Blue Adjustments should move in 4 steps. I have purposefully allowed VGA precision in EGA mode, so the color bars must be moved quite a bit to actually change the colors on a real EGA. I did this so that VGA users can work in the faster lower resolution EGA mode without losing color capabilities. WARNING: Fractal Grafics will not warn you if you Quit without having saved your work. This is a bug or a feature, depending on how annoyed you get with being warned about things all the time. MAXIMUM NUMBER OF POINTS AND PARTS: You can have up to 19 of each. I've occasionally run into templates where I'd like more, but it doesn't seem worth the extra memory you'd need to support them. AUTOPOINTS: A new feature is in the works which automatically changes the shape of the seed so that it approximates the finished fractal as you change the parts around. This should be fun and useful. SPEED: Let's be honest: fancy graphics of any sort take a LONG TIME on an "XT" class computer. You may need to use the menu instead of the mouse. Future versions will be faster, but you'll still wish you had a '386! MOUNTAINS, STRANGE ATTRACTORS, AND MORE: I'm now writing several specialized programs which make certain well-known fractals that Fractal Grafics can't do (such as dramatic 3-D mountainscapes, Newton's method fractals, strange attractors in turbulent fluids, etc.). These will be incorporated as special drawing tools within Fractal Grafics itself in the future. XII. REGISTRATION ----------------- This is an unregistered "shareware" copy of Fractal Grafics. You are encouraged to copy and distribute this program freely, but it is NOT in the public domain. If you continue to use the software in any way, you must "register" (i.e. buy) it by sending $59 to the author at: Cedar Software, Morrisville, Vermont 05661-9605 When you register, you will receive the most recent version of the program, a 120-page printed Manual and Guidebook, and over 150 fractal template files used as examples in the Guidebook. The Guidebook includes in-depth sections on fractal art, science, philosophy, math, history, and literature. You will also receive product support, the next update free, future updates at the cost of distribution, and other periodic bonuses (such as additional templates, pictures, and specialized fractal programs). The shareware arrangement allows free information exchange while enabling authors to focus on development and support of quality software without huge advertising budgets, and resulting high prices. The success of shareware, and the freedom and benefits it offers all of us, depend on the honesty and integrity of users, distributors, and authors alike. Thank you for supporting the shareware concept. An order form/invoice is provided on the disk for your convenience. To print it, get to the disk and directory where the FG program is, and enter this command: COPY ORDER.TXT PRN Phone orders are accepted at (802) 888-5275, although you may need to leave a message on an answering machine. Visa, MasterCard, and P.O.s are welcome, or you may send a check or money order for $59. We pay shipping in North America (add $20 overseas, and 4% tax in Vermont). Thanks for trying Fractal Grafics. We hope to hear from you soon!