New Features in Version 19.5

Version 19.5 is a bug-fix release for version 19.4 based on the developer's version 19.40 patch 11. As always, we added a few new features along with the bug fixes.

• New Comment= command . You can automatically set any of the four PAR comments, and can include variables in the comments such as the much-requested $calctime$ and $date$. Fractint now writes ';;' for empty comments above the last comment from the comment= command. This prevents comments from moving positions when the PAR is reloaded.

• New recordcolors= command . If you place recordcolors=y in your SSTOOLS.INI, compressed colors will always be written in your PARS. If you want to remember what the map file was (assuming the colors were loaded from one), try recordcolors=c. This is exactly like recordcolors=y except that the map file (if any) is written to a parfile comment.

• Added new parser constants:

      1. whitesq parser constant = (row+col)&1
  
      2. scrnpix parser constant = (col,row)
      3. scrnmax parser constant = (xdots, ydots)
      4. maxit   parser constant = (maxit,0)
  

• Added "\" linewrap for formula files.

• Made the round function consistent in all modes. Now round(z) is always (floor(x+.5)+i*floor(y+.5)). In version 19.4, in floating point mode with type=formula, round() used the coprocessor "nearest or even" rounding. Version 19.5 always rounds xxx.5 up.

• Fixed a bug that caused a crash when zooming out with certain functions in integer mode.

• Fixed a bug that caused a crash when attempting 3d=overlay without a filename in batch mode.

• Fixed a bug that caused part of the video table to not show when compiled by Borland.

• Fixed a bug that kept the last image browsed from showing up when you regenerate an image and then start the browser again.

• Fixed a bug that loaded images with the wrong aspect ratio when using the browser with the view window turned on, and the file image size was not the same as the screen image size.

Changes from Version 19.3 to 19.4

Version 19.4 is a bug-fix release for version 19.3 based on the developer's version 19.30 patch 18. But a few new features did slip in when we weren't looking.

• New functions are now available for type=formula and general function variable use. They are the rounding functions: floor(), ceil(), trunc(), and round()
• New larger showdot "turtle" to enable better seeing which pixel is currently being calculated. The syntax is showdot=<color>/<size> , but the color parameter can now be one of auto, bright, medium, and dark in addition to the previously-supported color number value.
• The [g] command now remembers the last command.
• Added the ability to load images into a view window. This can be used with the browser to browse images larger than the current image.
• Added George Martin's new integrated entry-finding code. Fractint is now more tolerant of text between entries, and the internal code is much cleaner than before.
• Added Bert Tyler's new VESA truecolor video drivers. These don't do anything yet; we've just added the video drivers for testing. Work goes on ...
  To test out the new modes, try fractint debug=500 type=test and select a new truecolor mode. They only work with video boards having VESA truecolor support. Some "non-standard VESA" modes (an unfortunate oxymoron if there ever was one) can also be supported by editing FRACTINT.CFG. These vendor-specific "VESA" modes tend to make Bert, our video expert, real grumpy ...

Now for the squashed bugs report:

• Ranges is working again.
• Fixed a browser bug that caused a crash when the browser cross-hairs become too small.
• Fixed a bug which put the browser into an infinite loop if the history feature was used to try and access a deleted or renamed image that was still in the history stack.
• Fixed bug that caused any command with greater than 16 parameters to fail, most notably textcolors and ranges.
• Fixed a center-mag<->corners conversion bug that occurred with rotated images. arbitrary precision also (test with debug=3200).
• Fixed bug that allowed the matherr debugging file to grow arbitrarily large. Matherr file is limited to 100 messages for each fractal.
• Fixed bug that affected some Icons3d types, which were broken due to a very subtle bug in apparently good code caused compiler optimizer.

Version 19.3 release changes

Version 19.3 is a bug-fix release for version 19.2 based on the developer's version 19.21 patch 30.

The biggest changes from 19.2 to 19.3 are the fixing of the color logmap function for maximum iterations greater than 32K, and a large increase in the maximum size of an individual formula and the maximum number of entries in formula, parameter, ifs, and lsystem files.

Changes from 19.2 to 19.3 include:

• Added better math function error trapping for the formula parser. This can change the rendering of some PAR files using type=formula. If reset=1920 is included in the PAR file, the new error trapping is disabled.
• Fixed an old, rare, but nasty bug that stripped trailing zeros from the exponents of floating point numbers written to PAR files.
• Ctrl-ins and Ctrl-Del now change the browser frame colors.
• Fixed bug that occurred when writing PAR files containing a video= line with a four character video mode.
• Added batch facility to copy fractal information and color in GIFs to PAR format.
• Added current column to the <tab> screen.
• Removed support for reading Targa files.
• Added backwards compatibility for the fractal type fn(z*z).
• Added support for expanded and extended memory to the browser. Use expanded memory if you don't have at least 4 MB of extended memory.
• Added pi and e to constants that the formula parser recognizes. Fixed parser so that constants are recognized correctly.
• Added docs for freestyle mode in the colour editor.
• Fixed bug involving comments between formula entries.
• Allow renaming Fractint.exe without losing access to fractint's help files.
• Center-mag is now the default method for storing coordinates in PAR files.
• Increased limit on number of operations in a formula entry from 250 to over 2000. In most cases memory use is actually less than before because of use of existing memory arrays.
• Fixed a bug that caused the image to regenerate when the <y> screen was accessed, but nothing was changed (or color cycle range was changed).
• Fixed a bug that caused saved partial images that used logmap to use the incorrect logmap routine when restored (GIFs & PARs).
• Made the solid guessing stop pass parameter save to GIFs and PARS.
• Added truecolor=yes command. This causes the iterations for each point to be written to a 24-bit Targa truecolor file called iterates.tga. Maxiter is also written to the file. This allows a simple outboard program to assign truecolors to iterations. Passes=1 is forced, but symmetry works. (This function may go away in the future when real truecolor support is implemented.)
• Fixed bug that caused PARs to have incorrect number of parameters when a formula based GIF was loaded and a PAR made immediately.
• Added additional bailout tests manh and manr. See Bailout Test .
• Fixed <Z> screen so bailout test can be changed when potential is being used.
• Fixed bug that caused large filename numbers to increment incorrectly.
• Added new guessing options g1, g2, etc. that cause guessing to terminate before the last pass.
• Added new orbitsave=sound option that causes orbits with sound on to write to a file sound.txt. The values written are the Hertz values for each orbit point. The time is written out in milliseconds once per pixel.
• Added documentation for making demm images to match ones made prior to version 16.
• Added key pressed check to autologmap so it is possible to bailout with a high maxit value.
• Made all floating point types capable of zooming out past (32,32).
• Added the formula parameters p1, p2, and p3 to the <tab> screen.
• Added stereo pair feature to stereo options menu.
• Fixed a bug that caused julia_inverse to continue after completed.
• Bignumber library rearranged. DOS midnight bug fix, so total time of images run overnight is now correct.
• Added logmap backwards compatibility for pre-version 19.2 images.
• Browser problem with flipped images fixed.
• Changed default corners to 4:3 aspect for types sierpinski, popcorn, pickover, popcornjul, tim's_error, martin, and halley.
• Added a range check for type=ants numants parameter.
• RDS save command is no longer case sensitive.
• Added the color number to the status area in the palette editor.
• Changed logmap and distest to a long variable to accomodate the version 19.0 change to long maxit.
• Added a pixel-at-a-time routine to calculate the logmap values on the fly when memory is low or maxit > 32767. Use logmode=fly to use with maxit < 32767. Note: ranges still doesn't work with maxit > 32767.
• Extended error checking to set the overflow variable when a zero denominator is found. Added checking of overflow in a few places where it is needed.
• Added backwards compatibility for the old "broken" integer parser mod function.
• Fixed the maximum zoom out of the integer type fn(z*z) (and others) so the user doesn't get thrown out to DOS.
• Fixed writing of olddemmcolors variable to PAR file.

Version 19.2 is a bug-fix release for version 19.1. Changes from 19.1 to 19.2 include:

• Fixed the 3D function, which was broken in 19.1 due to a side-effect of a repair of a minor bug in 19.0. Arrgghh! This is the main reason for the release of this version so quickly.
• Fixed a bug that caused the Julia inverse window and the orbits window to lose their place after loading a color map.
• Fixed a bug that causes corners to be lost when too many digits are entered.
• Added an enhanced ants automaton by Luciano Genero and Fulvio Cappelli.
• New showorbit command allows orbits-during-generation feature to be turned on by default. Expanded limits of Hertz command to 20 to 15000.
• Targa 3D files are now correctly written to workdir rather than tempdir.
• Uncommented garbage between file entries is now ignored. (But note that "{" must be on same line as entry name.)
• Fixed savename update logic.

Version 19.1 release changes

Version 19.1 is a bug-fix release for version 19.0. Changes from 19.0 to 19.1 include:

• Disabled the F6 (corners) key when in the parameters screen [z] for arbitrary precision.
• IFS formulas now show in [z] screen.
• Allow RDS image maps of arbitrary dimensions.
• Touched up Mandelbrot/Julia [Space] toggle logic.
• Fractint now remembers map name, and uses the mapfile path correctly, and now allows periods in directory names.
• Fixed tab bug that caused problems when interrupting a restore of an arbitrary precision image.
• Repaired savename logic. No longer show (usually truncated) full path of the saved file in the screen.
• Fixed double to arbitrary precision transition with 90 degree images. (This only failed before when the image was rotated exactly 90 degrees.)
• Corrected docs directory errors that reported several commands such as PARDIR= that were not implemented. Documented the color cycling HOME function.
• Fixed Mandelbrot/Julia types with bailout less than 4 (try it, results are interesting!)
• Fixed browser delete feature which left a box on the screen after deleting and exiting browser feature.
• More changes in filename processing logic. ".\" is now recognized as the current directory and is expanded to its full path name. It is now possible, although not recommended, to designate the root directory of a disk as the desired search directory.
• Fixed integer math Mandelbrot bug for 286 or lower machines.
• Fixed problem of reading some Lsys files incorrectly (distribution PENROSE.L file was broken unless first line was commented.)
• Fixed problem that caused endless loop in RDS with bad input values.
• Made reading the current directory first optional, added the new curdir=yes command for times when you want to use current directory files.
• Fixed problem with complexpower() function ("x^y" formula operator) in the case where x == 0. (Note that formulas where 0^0 appears for every every pixel are considered broken and no promises made.)
• Prevented aspect ratio drift as you zoom. If you want to make tiny adjustments, use new ASPECTDRIFT=0 command.
• Inside=bof60 and bof61 options now work correctly with the formula parser.
• We discovered the calculation time is no good after 24 days, so instead of the time you will now get the message "A Really Long Time!!! ( > 24.855 days)". We thought you'd like to know ... A prize for the first person who actually *sees* this message!

Version 19.0 release changes

• New arbitrary precision math allows types mandelbrot, julia, manzpower, and julzpower to zoom to 10^1600. See Arbitrary Precision and Deep Zooming
• New Random Dot Stereogram feature using [Ctrl]-[S]. Thanks to Paul De Leeuw for contributing this feature. For more, see Random Dot Stereograms (RDS).
• New browser invoked by the [l] command allows you to see the relationships of a family of images within the current corners values. See Browse Commands and Browser Parameters . Thanks to Robin Bussell for contributing this feature.
• Added four Bailout Tests, real, imag, or, and. These are set on the [Z] screen of the fractal types for which they work. The default is still mod.
• New asin, asinh, acos, acosh, atan, atanh, sqrt, abs (abs(x)+i*abs(y)), and cabs (sqrt(x*x + y*y)) functions added to function variables and parser.
• New fractal types types chip, quadruptwo, threeply, phoenixcplx, mandphoenixclx, and ant automaton.
• Increased maximum iterations to 2,147,483,647 and maximum bailout to 2,100,000,000 when using floating point math.
• New path/directory management. Fractint now remembers the pathname of command-line filenames. This means that you can specifiy directories where your files reside in SSTOOLS.INI. In what follows, [path] can be a directory, a filename, or a full path.

• If the directories do not exist, Fractint gives an error message on runup with the option to continue.
• Fractint now searches all FRM, IFS, LSYS, and PAR files in the designated directory for entries. The number of entries in files has been greatly increased from 200 to 2000. Comment support in these files is improved.
• Parameters shown in [z] screen now match those used in a formula.
• Distance estimator logic has been overhauled, with the variable olddemmcolors added for backward compatibility.
• New floating point code for Lsystems from Nick Wilt greatly speeds up image generation.
• Enhanced fast parser from Chuck Ebbert makes floating point formula fractals faster than built-in types.
• Enhanced the history command to include all parameters, colors, and even .frm, .l, and .ifs file names and entries. Number of history sets remembered can be set with the maxhistory=[nnn] command to save memory.
• Enhanced center-mag coordinates to support rotated/stretched/skewed zoom boxes.
• Added new parameter to built-in Halley for comparison with formula type, also added new parameter to Frothybasin type.
• Added color number to orbits numbers [n] display.
• Added two new parameters to distest= to allow specifying resolution. This allows making resolution-independent distance estimator images.
• Fixed bug that caused the "big red switch" bug if '(' appeared in random uncommented formula file text, but fair warning, we don't officially support uncommented text in FRM files.
• Symmetry now works for the Marksjulia type and Marksmandel types.
• Full path no longer written in PAR files with [b] command.
• Fixed fractal type fn(z*z) so that zooming out will no longer dump you out to DOS, affecting zoomed out integer images made with this type.
• Fixed a float to fudged integer conversion that affects integer fractal types fn(z*z) and fn*fn. This has only a minor impact on integer images made with these types.
• Default drive and directory restored after dropping to DOS, in case you changed it while under DOS.
• Added support for inversion to the formula parser (type=formula).
• Increased maximum number of files listed by [r] command to 2977 from 300.
• Added outside=atan option.

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