Rich asked:
In looking at differences between the float-only version and the head, I'm seeing a number of changes relating to recognizing the '*' at the start of the fractal name.
What is the nature of this change and what does it do?
The asterisk makes the fractal type invisible in the list of fractal types shown to the user. The original reason for this was that each different type of math requires an entry in the fractalspecific structure, so only one record should be without an asterisk. Otherwise the user would see multiple instances of the same fractal. Keep in mind that the index in the structure has to be maintained for backwards compatability. So if you look in my float only code, I had to leave blank entries in the structure for the integer versions that I removed. I would like to totally revisit this in the future, but now is not the time. If at all possible your version should save the same fractal information as the DOS version so a fractal is generated with your version should be loadable in any other version with the fractal info intact. The Xwindows and old WInfract do this pretty well. Once your version is working, we can revisit how fractal information is stored.
Should I prefer the float-only code which doesn't check for names starting with *, or should I prefer the code on the head?
I hope my above discussion answers this. Just make sure each fractal type is displayed exactly once in the user list. This should be obvious, but it's really great you are taking on this daunting task. Tim