- Fractdev - mailman.xmission.com

CVS repository
by Rich 16 Aug '04

16 Aug '04

OK, I think I've got it figured out. If you set it up to use ssh, then if you have the public key on the server's authorized_keys file, then you can execute any command on the server. So the downside to using this technique for fractint developers is that you are trusting those developers to arbitrary shell commands on the server. I could enquire at XMission about an account just for fractint developers and there would be minimal side effects to allowing open ssh access to developers. XMission provides free 50 MB accounts to non-profit organizations. It would be better if we just setup sourceforge with fractint using some license that's more permissive than the GPL. Then we could do the same thing on sourceforge and wouldn't have to setup anything weird. Can't we be covered under the X Window System license? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline"-- code samples, sample chapter, FAQ: <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/> Pilgrimage: Utah's annual demoparty <http://pilgrimage.scene.org>

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gmane
by Tim Wegner 15 Aug '04

15 Aug '04

I got an email suggesting our lists be registered with gmane.org. Gmane is a mailing list to newsgroup gateway. Does anyone know anything about this? I queried the fellow who suggested it and the answers to my questions are below. Tim >Would gmane subscribers be able to post to fractint without being >fractint members? You can choose whether people are allowed to post through Gmane. If you do allow Gmane postings, you can still configure your mail server to reject messages from nonsubscribers - so someone would have to subscribe to the list even if they were using Gmane to post messages. This seems a bit icky to me but some do it. >Would people's emails be exposed? You can choose this too - Gmane has address encryption, which is real encryption rather than obfuscation. Each address is replaced with one @gmane.org, and mail sent to that address goes through a challenge-response check before being forwarded to the real address. See <http://gmane.org/tmda.php>. >What are the pros and cons of doing this? Many people find using a newsreader more convenient than subscribing to the list with a mail client - you can see the threads more clearly, it doesn't get mixed in with your other mail (or require you to set up filters), and the messages are there for you to browse when you want. Gmane is also an archive and doesn't delete messages (although it does label those likely to be spam so you can make your newsreader skip them). This is a 'pro' for most technical discussion lists but for more personal lists some think it a 'con'.

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New passes option
by Jonathan Osuch 10 Aug '04

10 Aug '04

Tim, I've incorporated a new passes option that plots the orbits and leaves them on the screen. It works for all escape time fractals. There are some backwards compatibility issues because the per_pixel routines for the mandel types do not currently initialize the y value, and need to. Also, the formula types appear to be plotting the orbits with the y-axis reversed. This feature works like the mandelcloud fractal type, which happens to be coded incorrectly. The magnitude is compared to 2, not 4. I don't plan on fixing it. Jonathan

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Allegro version now up-to-date
by Jonathan Osuch 01 Aug '04

01 Aug '04

Tim, I've brought the experimental Allegro port up to the current revision level. The Allegro portion of it works as well as it ever has. I've imported it into my CVS repository. Now, how can we make the CVS repository accessible to others? 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 20 Jul '04

20 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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Some grist for the mill.
by Rana Ian 23 Jun '04

23 Jun '04

Tim, Greg, Rich and All, Its wonderful to see interest in making updates. David already seems to have something in hand =). I can easily see how a rewrite of Fractint might consume ~2,000 to ~4,000 developer hours. Its of course up to contributing developers to figure out how much can be given. I cut out a philosophical paragraph on choosing technology from my last email since it seems to dig up strong opinions =). I'll give my opinion about it here since it seems some technology would need to be chosen to carry on! I don't know what particular language and design experiences everyone has. It seems we all come together with an interest in fractals and perhaps differing experience in various technologies. Naturally everyone's made choices and time commitments to learn and apply a specific set of knowledge. Naturally any one of us can contribute with what we know. Tim, your point is well received, "discussions about platform mean nothing without skill, time, and commitment." How can Fractint bring forth new features with available skills? Is C and assembly going to be able to evolve Fractint into the future? What is maintainable? Does Fractint need a new language to provide new features? If yes, should we talk about a Fractint technological upgrade path? Do we evaluate top features we want to see and pick a technology? Does that make any sense? Who really wants to learn a new language or technology for an open source project? Every technology is gonna have different benefits, drawbacks and mindshare. I fully expect the C programmer to recommend C. The Java programmer to recommend Java, and the C# programmer to recommend C#. So if that's the case, where does that put a Fractint development effort? Is Fractint going to be able to evolve? Does it make sense to continue the banner of Fractint? What makes Fractint? People of course! But is it a name? Is it set of core features? Is it the persistence of a group of people over time? A maintainable code base? Is it a community of energized users? Yes, yes, yes and some more yesses. I think its all worth cultivating. Theres something to be said for Rich's comment on having an individual foraging ahead, independently, and developing what he thinks is best. Desire and action and results, plain and simple. Then I go back to "What is Fractint?" David has running Java app. And I'm ready to go out and make my own. You know YAFA (Yet another fractal app) has gone through my mind enough times to give me pause. We recognize the need to share design patterns and still move ahead. I use to develop Java web apps and now moved to .Net and c#. I can see how managed c# is a specific technological gravity well that many are rolling to. I also see how specific .net technologies can be applied to offer a modern application that can develop great features. Windows Forms provides a modern windows interface, Distributed calculation can be implemented through remoting, video card pixel shaders can be written with the support of DirectX for real-time calculation of entire frames, Video animation technologies can be integrated with Windows Media, we can update the arbitrary precision libraries or use existing, .Net arbitrary precision libraries, peer-to-peer can be implemented with web services, etc, etc. Man, I sound like a walking talking Microsoft ad, all this coming from someone who spent 12K+ on his mac addiction and worked for Apple! Well what about C++, or Java? What can be maintained? David, I agree with you, there are already a lot of good fractal apps already out there. Tierazon has some great zooming capabilities. Very easy to navigate the zoom and canvas size. Kai Power Tools has, in one version, excellent gradient designer and random seed parameter mutation which made for a high degree of usability for the non-technical. Ultra Fractal has interesting layering capabilities, Adobe Photoshop like interface, and an online formula database to receive new formulas from. So theres innovation all around. Many of the apps are purchasable products. What's kept people coming back to Fractint? Has it been the free availability? The website? The features? Are those the items to build on? I want to see the Uber, the Ultimate, the Unitive fractal app. There are a lot of neat features that can go in that no one has ever done before. What do you guys think are the best fractal apps out there (besides Fractint)? Best features? Should I be helping in the future development of Fractint? Should there be some new open source project? I'm trying to explore all avenues and see what sticks. Whats worth what. And where to go. I'm just some guy who wrote an email and wants to write an app. Fractint has been around quite awhile, has a userbase, and people happily volunteering. Whats the vision? Whos gonna drive it? Whos gonna decide on the future technological path of Fractint? How does any technological choice meet development objectives and bring developers together? I don't know what to do. Help! =) Thanks! Rana

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RE: [Fractdev] Some grist for the mill.
by Burnett, David (David) ** CTR ** 22 Jun '04

22 Jun '04

Hi All, I think one of the best things we could start with is generating some design doc for the main algorithms used in fractint. Then, no matter what platform we are writing for, we will all have something we can make use of. I can't believe you guys actually wrote all this without design doc, that would make it an even more difficult task. Perhaps you no longer have the docs you used (maybe they weren't even committed to computer). It is difficult to interpret reasons from uncommented code, and copying it has only given me mostly similar functionality. I imagine that anyone else porting into another language will run into the same problems, or maybe they won't make the mistakes i have. I could start by documenting the way I have understood the post-processing features such as continuous potential, logmap etc. which I have a current interest in getting running correctly, which should motivate swift action. Rana, I liked your collection of enhancements (a few of which I have already done) which look like they could be fun to get into. David -----Original Message----- From: Rana Ian Tim, Greg, Rich and All, Its wonderful to see interest in making updates. David already seems to have something in hand =). I can easily see how a rewrite of Fractint might consume ~2,000 to ~4,000 developer hours. Its of course up to contributing developers to figure out how much can be given. I cut out a philosophical paragraph on choosing technology from my last email since it seems to dig up strong opinions =). I'll give my opinion about it here since it seems some technology would need to be chosen to carry on! I don't know what particular language and design experiences everyone has. It seems we all come together with an interest in fractals and perhaps differing experience in various technologies. Naturally everyone's made choices and time commitments to learn and apply a specific set of knowledge. Naturally any one of us can contribute with what we know. Tim, your point is well received, "discussions about platform mean nothing without skill, time, and commitment." How can Fractint bring forth new features with available skills? Is C and assembly going to be able to evolve Fractint into the future? What is maintainable? Does Fractint need a new language to provide new features? If yes, should we talk about a Fractint technological upgrade path? Do we evaluate top features we want to see and pick a technology? Does that make any sense? Who really wants to learn a new language or technology for an open source project? Every technology is gonna have different benefits, drawbacks and mindshare. I fully expect the C programmer to recommend C. The Java programmer to recommend Java, and the C# programmer to recommend C#. So if that's the case, where does that put a Fractint development effort? Is Fractint going to be able to evolve? Does it make sense to continue the banner of Fractint? What makes Fractint? People of course! But is it a name? Is it set of core features? Is it the persistence of a group of people over time? A maintainable code base? Is it a community of energized users? Yes, yes, yes and some more yesses. I think its all worth cultivating. Theres something to be said for Rich's comment on having an individual foraging ahead, independently, and developing what he thinks is best. Desire and action and results, plain and simple. Then I go back to "What is Fractint?" David has running Java app. And I'm ready to go out and make my own. You know YAFA (Yet another fractal app) has gone through my mind enough times to give me pause. We recognize the need to share design patterns and still move ahead. I use to develop Java web apps and now moved to .Net and c#. I can see how managed c# is a specific technological gravity well that many are rolling to. I also see how specific .net technologies can be applied to offer a modern application that can develop great features. Windows Forms provides a modern windows interface, Distributed calculation can be implemented through remoting, video card pixel shaders can be written with the support of DirectX for real-time calculation of entire frames, Video animation technologies can be integrated with Windows Media, we can update the arbitrary precision libraries or use existing, .Net arbitrary precision libraries, peer-to-peer can be implemented with web services, etc, etc. Man, I sound like a walking talking Microsoft ad, all this coming from someone who spent 12K+ on his mac addiction and worked for Apple! Well what about C++, or Java? What can be maintained? David, I agree with you, there are already a lot of good fractal apps already out there. Tierazon has some great zooming capabilities. Very easy to navigate the zoom and canvas size. Kai Power Tools has, in one version, excellent gradient designer and random seed parameter mutation which made for a high degree of usability for the non-technical. Ultra Fractal has interesting layering capabilities, Adobe Photoshop like interface, and an online formula database to receive new formulas from. So theres innovation all around. Many of the apps are purchasable products. What's kept people coming back to Fractint? Has it been the free availability? The website? The features? Are those the items to build on? I want to see the Uber, the Ultimate, the Unitive fractal app. There are a lot of neat features that can go in that no one has ever done before. What do you guys think are the best fractal apps out there (besides Fractint)? Best features? Should I be helping in the future development of Fractint? Should there be some new open source project? I'm trying to explore all avenues and see what sticks. Whats worth what. And where to go. I'm just some guy who wrote an email and wants to write an app. Fractint has been around quite awhile, has a userbase, and people happily volunteering. Whats the vision? Whos gonna drive it? Whos gonna decide on the future technological path of Fractint? How does any technological choice meet development objectives and bring developers together? I don't know what to do. Help! =) Thanks! Rana

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