July 2004 - Fractdev - mailman.xmission.com

Athlon woes
by Tim Wegner 03 Sep '08

03 Sep '08

I built a computer last year using an Athlon with a Gigabyte motherboard. I had troubles with Fractint - with any SVGA mode the computer would hang after the completion of the image. I always assumed this was an Windows XP issue. Today I tried Fractint with freedos on the same computer, with the same results. So apparently it's an incompatability bgetween fractint and my compuiter. Truecolor, 320x200, diskvideo, and even tweaked modes work. SCGA modes fail, and only after the image completes. This behavior appears to have nothing to do with recent versions. Has anyone else had trouble with Athlon? Hmm, maybe I need to look at bios settings. Tim

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Patch 6
by Jonathan Osuch 03 Jul '05

03 Jul '05

Tim, I'm going to try to wrap up patch 6 this week. So far, this is what I have: Fixed FPUcplxdiv and FPUcplxlog routines in fpu087.c to match assembler code. Fixed it so spaces are recognized in PAR entry names. Fixed evolver parameter entry. Fixed hypercomplex fractal type to turn off symmetry when a cj parameter is used. Fixed the plasma type to show the value of the parameter that is actually used in the image generation. Fixed the plasma type so that a parameter file uses the included colors instead of the default colors. Revised the plasma type prompt to reflect the values that could actually be used. Fixed inside=atan and outside=atan to use the full color palette instead of limiting to 180 colors. Modified the resume code to remove the Xfractint specific sections since they are no longer needed. I still need to move all this over to DOS and make sure nothing is broken. There are other fixes I would like to include, but haven't done them yet. Jonathan

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Fractint vs XP, redux
by Edwin 01 Aug '04

01 Aug '04

I've read with some interest the discussions on the difficulty of getting the DOS version of Fractint running under Windows XP. While there are obviously solutions around using DOS, FreeDOS, bootable CDs, etc, I can't help thinking that the hassle involved in rebooting is too great for this to be viable. Long-term, some sort of rewrite to make Fractint more environment-neutral so it can have DOS, Windows, X11, etc, flavors built from a largely common code base, would seem to be ideal. But, as has also been pointed out numerous times, this would be a huge undertaking and no-one seems to have the time. I wonder if the more limited goal of getting Fractint and Windows to 'play nice' is more achievable? That is, keep the existing interface and make the minimal changes possible so Fractint will run under XP. It sounds like the major problem is graphics card support - are there any other major gotchas people know about? If that's the main problem, the simplest approach I can think of is: 1) Get Fractint compiling with a modern C compiler toolchain (eg Visual C++) to produce a Win32 executable. 2) Modify the display-driver code to use DirectX, so that Windows supplies the video-card handling. Otherwise leave as a full-screen, character-mode app. (This would of course be IFDEF'ed to leave the existing code intact). That still sounds like a lot of effort, but perhaps a bit more achievable than the 'major rewrite' approach. Does this sound interesting? Plausible? Can anyone think of anything simpler? Would it be simplest to start with the DOS code, or XFractint (or one of the other branches I've heard mentioned)? Regards, -- Edwin

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Re: [Fractint] The Hefty Edition of FracTint (Advanced Paint By Number)
by Paul N. Lee 21 Jul '04

21 Jul '04

SherLok Merfy wrote: > > Paul N. Lee wrote: > > > > Even uncompressed as plain text, the whole > > FractInt Discussion List from1997 to present > > is only about 65-MB (which is only about > > 24-MB in the .ZIP format). > > The remaining question is what format the > zipfile should expand to. One single mail > file? Divided into months? A Database? > ........ > Storing the messages in a format for Structured > Query Language might be just what some Doctor > of Philosophy (PhD) in Mathematics would order.. > > Perhaps it could be done with a script that > would turn the mail file into that databasing > format, but don't expect that to be rendered > any time soon, unless it happens to be old hat > to someone on the list. Actually, putting the emails into a database would be quite simple and easy. Probably only takes about 6 to 10 short lines of code, even in something like VBA under MS-Access. But would the increased size of an indexed database be worth it for searching through email postings from the FractInt List?? And which database format would be decided upon?? Personally, I can find things just as good with my old 1997 Netscape 3.04-Gold. :-) Sincerely, P.N.L. ------------------------------------------------- http://home.att.net/~Paul.N.Lee/PNL_Fractals.html http://www.Nahee.com/Fractals/

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Fractal Creations OCR
by Tim Wegner 10 Jul '04

10 Jul '04

Re scanning Fractal Creations 2nd Edition: John Wilson did what in my opinion is a very successful experiment scanning the first few pages of Fractal Creations 2nd Edition (FC2). With a quick spot check of his results, I couldn't see any obvious typos. I expected much worse. John, could you tell us what OCR software you used? And thanks to John for his effort in this regard. John initially posted his results on his web site and I may have embarressed him because I was a bit panicked that I hadn't thought through my policy on allowing book drafts on the internet, and I asked him to take the web site down. He graciously did so and emailed the files to me so I could look at them. I've now thought about the policy for publically posting FC2 and this is the result. My concern is that I don't want poor quality or incomplete copies spread around without a clear statment of the legal status of the copies. I don't anticipate trying to make another commercial publication of FC2, and I certainly favor "publishing" a free copy in electronic form. I'll need to give some thought to the legal status of the eventual complete copy. I'll want to retain the copyright in some form. I would like any working copies of FC2 to be posted only with my permission, and with the following readme: <start README start:> 1. These files represent a work in progress of a volunteer effort to scan the book "Fractal Creations Second Edition" with the permission of the author and copyright holder Tim Wegner, who does not give up his rights by the posting of these files. 2. Because these files represent a work in progress, they necessarily have a short life and will be replaced with better/more complete versions, they should not be posted elsewhere without permission of Tim Wegner, twegnerATfractint.org. <end README> I hereby grant John Wilson permission to post the FC2 files he has already created and any others he cares to create. I'll extend the same permission to anyone else who wants to contribute work to this effort and post the results, but please ask me first so we can keep the effort reasonably centralized. I don't mind if the files are publically viewable on the internet as long as the README above is present. I've had offers of FTP access with login for a few team members, but I don't think this degree of security is needed. On the other hand, I don't think we should publicize this effort more broadly than this list until it's done. Followups to the FC2 OCR discussion and the related "Fractint CD" topic should be on the fractdev list, since the discussion will only be pertinent to those who actually want to contribute, and would be wasted bandwidth for others. So if you want to discuss or lurk, you should join that list. Tim

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Scans of FC2
by Tim Wegner 10 Jul '04

10 Jul '04

I have posted John Wilson's scans here: http://www.fractint.org/ftp/experimental/fc2e/ Feel free to download, but please don't repost the files anywhere. I can see some editing is needed. Here's what John said about how he scanned the files: "If someone else wishes to work on it I can very highly recommend my OCR software. Its called "ABBYY" and is based on some AI work done by a Russian company and called "Fine Reader". Unfortunately, it seems to have vanished from the WWW at this time. I hope it will be back, as it's a remarkable piece of work. It reads in many languages, and analyzes both content and style! It therefore reproduces fonts and font sizes throughout a document, takes care of illustrations and layout, and does it all almost automatically...and pretty accurately. Its only disadvantage was that it was rather expensive." A quick web search turned up http://www.abbyy.com/. It's $300, but does have a trial version as John said. Tim

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