Tim, I know you're not arguing with me :-). ...and yes, I'm not putting time into fractint, other than participating in this developer's list. I have put time into xfractint in the past, and I hope to resume that once the tome is out ;-). One benefit for fractint of my book project is that once I'm done with the book, I'll be introducing more 3D stuff into fractint. That means a DirectX port has to come first, which will happen all in the "fullness of time". In article <3DCB11D4.20714.3DC4ED@localhost>, Tim Wegner <twegner@swbell.net> writes:
The technology future versions of fractint use will depend in large part on skill, willingness to understand the program, and the willingness and ability to invest time.
I definately agree on this. I can't understand large programs by looking at them on the screen. I need to see a printout so that I can spread out the pages and have many different pieces of code in front of me at a glance. Doing this with fractint resulted in a printout that was about 6 inches thick, double-sided! I studied that code long and hard in order to figure out how I could insert an abstraction layer between the application processing and the UI. That's why I think its really important that anyone interested in adding new UI ports or working on the UI problem consult the code that I contributed. The implementation is done; its the testing and debugging that came up a little short before I had to deprioritize it for my book. If noone else makes progress by the time I'm done with the book, then that will be where I pick up... its a necessary first step towards many of the things we all want to do. But it -does- take a fair amount of studying the existing code base to see where this layer can be inserted. -- 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>