• The Slave automatically detects your installed floating-point equipment and takes the fastest case (SoftwareFPU is ignored on 68k systems, but not on PowerPC systems). Sorry, no fat binary yet.
• The Master displays the names of the Macintoshes it’s connected to in the Slaves window.
• Both applications are scriptable via Apple Script. However, only the Required Suite is supported, so this feature isn’t very useful yet.
The Preferences Dialog
You get the Preferences Dialog by selecting ‘Preferences…’ from the ‘Edit’ menu. It’s divided into two sections, named ‘Coloring’ and ‘Switches’. You can switch between these sections using the popup menu.
The Coloring section allows you to customize the coloring scheme used for the fractals. This setting is global to the application (all open documents will use it) and is remembered between sessions.
The Switches section offers some options for your convenience. ‘Auto-Save’ makes MandelNet Master save documents that have changed automatically when you close them or quit the application. ‘Use Dither’ makes MandelNet Master use dithering when it displays fractals. The ‘Auto-Launch Slave’ feature is explained in the ‘How It Works’ chapter. The ‘Zoom Proportional’ option fixes the width:height ratio of the zoom box that you draw up. The ‘Zoom Centered’ option allows you to draw up a zoom box symmetrically around a interresting spot more easily. Try it and you will know what that means.
Notes
• You may quit a Slave at any time, even while it’s busy calculating. The Master will automatically reschedule the chunk that was appointed to the Slave for calculation. The same is true for closing a connection.
• The file format has changed in version 1.2 (the image data is compressed now). Files in the old format can still be opened and will be converted to the new format when they are saved.
• If you already have a Master running on a machine and launch a Slave, the Slave will switch the Master to the front immediately after startup. This feature is there for your convenience, especially in conjunction with the ‘Auto-Launch Slave’ feature of the Master.
