Paul, Here are my comments on what needs to happen to fractint before we introduce these: In article <011101c74570$a0ef27b0$0301a8c0@Production>, "Paul" <pdeleeuw@deleeuw.com.au> writes:
1. 24 bit colour
Oooh, big change here, I think. There is already some truecolor support in fractint, but I think its just supporting truecolor *modes* and doesn't get much deeper than that. I'm not 100% sure about that. What I always wanted to do for FractInt was extend the formula mechanism so that you write a formula that computes a color (RGB *plus* alpha) from the iteration count and other orbit information. The next natural thing is to have layers that blend together after you've got alpha flying around.
2. Colour modification (requires GUI)
Can you explain what this is a little more? Is it your truecolor ramps?
3. PNG files for true colour
This would be easy to add right now and wouldn't be affected by any of the big changes coming.
4. Animation script generation and running - Zooming in on most fractals - Julia animation - following linear, circle and cardioid (main bulk of mandelbrot set) paths
This would be good to add after the code is re-structured and separated.
5. A couple of silly plotting modes - horizontal blinds - vertical blinds
:-) These might also be easy to add into the existing plotting code -- where solid guessing, boundary trace, etc., are done.
6. Real time 3d generation (this is not as good as FRACTINT, but it saves a lot of tedious mucking about in hyperspace with files)
For 3D, fractint needs OpenGL or Direct3D IMO. This is also a fairly big change. The current 3D code is doing all the rendering in software, which is OK, but won't ever take advantage of that hardware just itching to be used.
7. Clipboard support
Can you elaborate on this? We could probably accommodate this now as its just processing the appropriate window messages, I think.
8. Undo (revert back to previous image)
FractInt has this now in its history mechanism. (Ctrl+H or Ctrl+\, I can't remember offhand right now.)
9. Use of WM_COPYDATA message to allow other programs to send FRACTINT fractal data and to allow FRACTINT to send back an image etc (This allows for fractal processing without needing to restart FRACTINT every time). I have a client that uses this for fractal evolution. He sends me the fractal parameters and screen size etc and I return the image. He can scan through large populations fairly quickly.
IMO, this would be better implemented by separating the engine into a library or a COM object. Using windows messages for IPC is a kinda Windows 3.1 style, although it is easy to implement. COM, or even web services, would be a better mechanism for implementing this now. Once the engine is separated out, wrapping a COM object or a web service around it should be fairly easy. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>