On 2013-10-29 8:04 PM, Richard wrote:
In article <526D3A63.70002@spamcop.net>, Jay Litwyn <brewjay@spamcop.net> writes:
Nothing new since 2009/Apr. Maybe we've lost him. Nope. My time has been sprinkled around other projects, such as my Computer Graphics Museum, and I continue to do some design and research work on id that hasn't resulted in checkins to the repository for a while.
He wrote something about people here being interested in maintaining a DOS program. Tim and Jonathan have expressed their interest in maintaining the existing DOS-based fractint. They have an X Window System port, xfractint, and a 16/32-bit MS Windows port, winfract, as well. I seem to recall that chunks of fractint are turned off in these ports, but it's been a few years since I was working on the code.
I contributed to their source repository the source code that is used to build what I called "FractInt for Windows beta 5" as described in this blog post: <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/2007/04/13/fractint-for-windows-beta-5/>
They are free to take the beta 5 code and enhance/extend/improve it.
Some time after that, we disagreed on the future direction for the code base, so in the tradition of open source projects, I forked the code and created the Iterated Dynamics project. On what basis were the arguments? Compilers? SDK? GTK? DirectX? Whether to rewrite assembler az C? I don't discuss id on this mailing list because I consider that impolite. I withheld a remark on that. I did not think it wuz prudent to rename the product, when it so closely mirrors the DOS version, that a copy *should* be on the FTP site (http://www.fractint.org/ftp/current/). In my arrogant opinion, it duz not really matter what you call it if it's a DOS-version workalike, and some people care about the name of a rose, so to some people "id" wuz not politically sound.
Even the 2048*2048 version of Tesseral renderings requires four MB of address space, though, so even if your jumps are sixteen bit (or eight, plus lots of 8bit data access), it's awkward to be using anything less than a thirty-two bit data segment. I am still not sure if Andrew Schulman got hiz wish for mixed-mode code in Windows. I just know that Windows eight duz not support DOS off the shelf. Intel's design wuz always intended to be compact (az a bonus, they've managed to make *most* 8, 16, and 32 bit register to register operations happen in one cycle for over twenty years). It's a wonder that M$ can put twenty-five gigabytes of OEM installation on my machine that duz *less* than Windows XP, and send me three gigabytes of update (Windows 8.1), for which I see pozitive change, but uh...I would rather see WMP come up with a visualizer when I hit a link to an MP3. The important thing about forks iz that not only are people free to build on one, they are also free to port, and it helps if people *know* where the other forks are, which means pretty much keeping them together on directories (and mailing lists). If UltraFractal were open source, I am sure it would be easy to see where he ripped code from :). A top row of menu options makes it inviting to new users. A keyboard interface makes it inviting to experienced users. Add documentation of the keys, and more space is for that at 16:9, then new users can learn how to use their fingers to write things more beautiful than (H8 windozer).
There is a discussion area on the id project site: <https://iteratedynamics.codeplex.com/discussions>