Re: Notes from Paul de Leeuw et al regarding WinFract
I've been running FractInt formulas and Par's in a program I built in Visual
(and Power) Basic.
Before anybody laughs, I should point at that this is no Mickey-Mouse
program at all!
I divided the project into 4 distinct components:
1. Fractal Engine - raw calculations
2. Formula interpreter
2. Display/graphics
3. Front-end, UI
VB's IDE made the engine development easy to modify and test. Once I had a
good initial version I then switched it into PowerBasic (which runs
VB-syntax code much faster and makes DLL's).
All other functions are done by VB (using API for graphics, of course). I
don't need anything fancy, as my preferred mode of operation is to use
online display as a guide only - I save images (like Fractint does with the
"saveiter"), and have a separate render program for experimenting with
colouring.
It's all floating-point, I use 80-bit FP in the Engine (PowerBasic has an
"Ext" datatype for this), and am currently looking at GMP/MPFR as an
arbitrary-precision option.
The advantage of all this is that front-end changes and extensions are very
easy to do in VB, and I don't have to deal with MFC at all, VB does it for
me.
Jim White
MathImagics, Uki NSW, Australia
Jim.White(a)defra.gsi.gov.uk
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
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