- Fractdev - mailman.xmission.com

Access to CVS
by Jean-Pierre Demailly 18 Jan '03

18 Jan '03

Hi, I just realize that CVS has become the preferred way of getting (x)fractint's code. I'd like to have access to it. Thanks, Jean-Pierre Demailly <demailly(a)fourier.ujf-grenoble.fr>

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Jonathan and I just missed each other ...
by Tim Wegner 31 Dec '02

31 Dec '02

I am home safe and sound from a trip north top Minnesota from Texas, Jonathan and I nearly met in Iowa, but at the last minute, nearly everyone who attended a family gathering came down with the 24 hour flu, including those in my immediate family. Must be really contagious, we finally figured out that one of the folks had been exposed to the flu just a few days before. So we thought better of meeting up with Jonathan, though in retrospect it appears that this flu spreads while one is coming down with it, not after it is caught, so maybe Jonathan would have been safe!! In any case I am back home. Tim

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Virtual screens don't finish
by Jonathan Osuch 14 Dec '02

14 Dec '02

Tim, Set up a virtual screen, and then before it finishes drawing the image, press <TAB>. When you return to the image, the top half of the image will finish drawing, but not the bottom half. Sheesh! Jonathan

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Fractint near memory
by Jonathan Osuch 12 Dec '02

12 Dec '02

Tim, Did you know that there is a #define DEBUG in extern.h (along with the one in prototyp.h)? If you undefine it, you get about 900 bytes more near memory. Don't know if it's related, but the latest Fractint executable I sent you doesn't save the virtual GIF images correctly. I wonder what I screwed up. Jonathan

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Re: [Fractdev] Patch 5 and 6
by Tim Wegner 07 Dec '02

07 Dec '02

(Moving this thread back to the list - it only left the list because I was careless addressing my email.) Jonathan wrote: > Patch 5 works fine on one of the computers at my parents house and > mostly fine on the other. The one that has problems is running XP and > displays a line down the right hand side of the image. There is also a > problem with fuzzy lines at the color boundaries. I suspect it is a > problem with the 32-bit pixels versus 24-bit pixels. > > Looks like patch 5 will be delayed a while longer. If the problem is a shortage of free near memory, that can be highly dependent on the local environment because we have no control over the memory usage in VESA bioses. It has been many years since I attempted this, but if the diagnosis is right, the cure is to free up a little near memory, maybe by being a tad more aggressive with overlays. Of course the problem could also be being TOO aggressive with overlays. Tim

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Simple DirectMedia Layer
by Jonathan Osuch 24 Nov '02

24 Nov '02

Tim, Take a look at: http://www.libsdl.org/ This would be another option for expanding the portablility of Xfractint. Jonathan

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more 3d stuff ideas
by Rich 21 Nov '02

21 Nov '02

This is a better example than my dinky hack :) <http://www.theory.org/software/qfe/> I don't have the ability to run it on my machine, but this is another good example: 4D fractals polygonized by implicit surface methods into objects you can view, colorize, texture, etc. -- Ask me about my upcoming book on Direct3D from Addison-Wesley! Direct3D Book <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/> izfree: Open source tools for Windows Installer <http://izfree.sourceforge.net>

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3d possibilities
by Rich 20 Nov '02

20 Nov '02

OK, here's a quick hack that might give you an idea of what's possible with 3D... <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/fractals/mandelspire.zip> It contains a single EXE. You will need the DirectX 8.1 runtime installed in order to run the program. It computes a static model from the orbits of points iterated on the M-set. You can rotate the model around with the arrow keys. F2 or File / Config Display... will let you switch to full screen display if you want (also you can change multisampling for antialiasing if your card supports it). This is just a -very- simple example, but going to 3D means that there are many more interesting ways you can 'visualize' the orbits of iterated complex plane fractals, not to mention the fancy things you can do with texturing support. The main fractal part of the code just computes the spires from the orbits of individual points. -- Ask me about my upcoming book on Direct3D from Addison-Wesley! Direct3D Book <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/> izfree: Open source tools for Windows Installer <http://izfree.sourceforge.net>

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Allegro port and other stuff
by Jonathan Osuch 20 Nov '02

20 Nov '02

Tim, I managed to get the Allegro port working again. I'm using version 4.0.0, and they are already up to 4.1.4. My version of the Xfractint float only source does not have a problem with the switch to arbitrary precision. Took a look at boundary tracing in Xfractint, but got no insight. Made no progress with the DOS version's virtual screens. Jonathan

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Floating Point problem in XFract
by Cute Skunk 15 Nov '02

15 Nov '02

By the way, I don't know if anyone else has noticed this before, but in XFractint if you zoom in and zoom in, eventually your (X) resolution drops and drops to 1 (or 0?), so that you just get abunch of horizontal lines. I havn't tracked it down yet, but it happens in Xfract 20.2.x and does *not* happen in Dos fractint 20.2.x. It does seem to correlate with about the time that the dos version switches over to using arbitrary precision. The XFractint version doesn't stop using floating point at the same magnifications. (Like around 10e14 to 10e15) The easiest way to see this bug is, from the first Mandelbrot set, just zoom in on your favorite feature all the way about 11 times, and the (X) resulution should start to drop. (By zoom in all the way, I mean hold <page up> until the zoom box gets as small as it does)

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