How important is keeping the fractint.cfg facility for listing video modes? It doesn't really make much sense in the driver model because these video modes aren't associated with any particular driver. At the moment, the driver adds the video modes it supports to the global table used by the code. When you select video modes, you're selecting the modes in the current driver. I will add some way to switch drivers at some point, but for now you just have the one and its modes. How upset would people be if fractint.cfg went by the wayside? What value are you getting out of it in a world where image dimensions are arbitrary and video modes are generally just a glorified way of specifying image dimensions? -- "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/>
I'm back home from a holiday trip. Rich asked:
How upset would people be if fractint.cfg went by the wayside?
Not too upset. Fractint.cfg really doesn't make sense except for the DOS video environment. My only concern is whether we might want to use the video abstraction to support non-GUI graphics or not. Tim
In article <45942BB9.17447.186F10@twegner.swbell.net>, "Tim Wegner" <twegner@swbell.net> writes:
Rich asked:
How upset would people be if fractint.cfg went by the wayside?
Not too upset. Fractint.cfg really doesn't make sense except for the DOS video environment. My only concern is whether we might want to use the video abstraction to support non-GUI graphics or not.
The rest of the code isn't changing, we're just not loading the video table from fractint.cfg -- its loaded by asking each driver to add its video modes to the table. At the moment, when you switch video modes it doesn't switch drivers, which it will need to do. When I add in the logic for multiple drivers, this will happen. As you recall the driver interface routes everything through a set of function pointers for the basic operations of I/O: getting a key press, plotting a pixel, etc. To switch drivers, you switch the global pointer g_driver to point to another driver structure and all the vectors are changed for the basic I/O. So I need to add a little bit of code to the video mode select screen to switch the driver pointer if the current driver is not the one providing the video mode. -- "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/>
Richard said:
How important is keeping the fractint.cfg facility for listing video modes?
I use the fractint.cfg facility to create additional high resolution 'disk' video modes that are multiples of two greater than standard video modes. I then use a graphics utility to average four or 16 pixels in these higher resolution images to do a kind of anti-aliasing down to a standard resolution when I want to create a jpeg-encoded fractal with thinner lines and smoother curves than the standard resolution Fractint images have. Why don't I just create a final image of higher resolution? Because I want to make wallpaper of a particular resolution, but with better appearance than a .gif image generated at that resolution. Here's part of my FRACTINT.CFG: ,Disk/RAM 'Video' ... 2048,1536,256,/For Bkgnd 2*(1024 x 768) ,Disk/RAM 'Video' ... 4096,3072,256,/For Bkgnd 4*(1024 x 768) ,Disk/RAM 'Video' ... 1280,1024,256,For Background Fractals ,Disk/RAM 'Video' ... 2560,2048,256,/For Bkgnd 2*(1280 x 1024) ,Disk/RAM 'Video' ... 5120,4096,256,/For Bkgnd 4*(1280 x 1024) It may be that I could achieve the same result by using the <b> key to write out multiple parameter files that create my high-res image in pieces and then use a graphics utility or SIMPLGIF.EXE to stitch the pieces together although I have not tried this. From the 20.0 docs: "...you might want to make an image greater than 2048 x 2048, the old pixel limit for Fractint. The parameters for this feature are: X Multiples - How many divisions of final image in the x direction Y Multiples - How many divisions of final image in the y direction Video mode - Fractint video mode for each piece (e.g. "F3")" I like this feature of Fractint -- of using fractint.cfg to be able to specify a 'disk' video mode of arbitrary size. It allows you to match an externally-imposed requirement on the fractal creator. I seem to remember that the images on the cover of the "Fractal Creations" book were created at extremely high resolution. I don't have enough knowledge of how fractint.cfg is used in Fractint to offer advice about whether to keep fractint.cfg for other reasons. - Hal Lane ######################### # hallane@earthlink.net <mailto:hallane@earthlink.net> # #########################
-----Original Message----- From: fractdev-bounces+hallane=earthlink.net@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:fractdev-bounces+hallane=earthlink.net@mailman.xmission.com]On Behalf Of Richard Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2006 7:41 PM To: fractdev@mailman.xmission.com Subject: [Fractdev] video modes in fractint.cfg
How important is keeping the fractint.cfg facility for listing video modes? It doesn't really make much sense in the driver model because these video modes aren't associated with any particular driver.
At the moment, the driver adds the video modes it supports to the global table used by the code. When you select video modes, you're selecting the modes in the current driver. I will add some way to switch drivers at some point, but for now you just have the one and its modes.
How upset would people be if fractint.cfg went by the wayside?
What value are you getting out of it in a world where image dimensions are arbitrary and video modes are generally just a glorified way of specifying image dimensions? --
-- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.409 / Virus Database: 268.15.29/608 - Release Date: 12/29/06
In article <MDBBJLBFBICIIEIHFBMECEAICPAA.hallane@earthlink.net>, "Hal Lane" <hallane@earthlink.net> writes:
Richard said:
How important is keeping the fractint.cfg facility for listing video modes?
I use the fractint.cfg facility to create additional high resolution 'disk' video modes that are multiples of two greater than standard video modes. [...]
OK, so let me paraphrase a bit to make sure I get it: - You want to specify resolution of video disk modes. - You currently use fractint.cfg for this purpose Do you then interactively select the video mode, or are you using a par file to specify it? If a par file, what command are you using in the par? -- "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/>
Richard said (to Hal):
Do you then interactively select the video mode, or are you using a par file to specify it? If a par file, what command are you using in the par? <<
You can specify the video mode in a par file with VIDEO=SF7, but the .cfg file defines what SF7 is. I don't think there is another way to specify the video resolution in a par. With the new system for Windows, a command specifying the number of x and y pixels would be an asset, or just y pixels and an aspect ratio, or just x pixels and an aspect ratio. Lee
Lee,
Do you then interactively select the video mode, or are you using a par file to specify it? If a par file, what command are you using in the par? <<
You can specify the video mode in a par file with VIDEO=SF7, but the .cfg file defines what SF7 is. I don't think there is another way to specify the video resolution in a par. With the new system for Windows, a command specifying the number of x and y pixels would be an asset, or just y pixels and an aspect ratio, or just x pixels and an aspect ratio.
The viewwindows= command is nearly what we need for this. Jonathan
In article <1167446780.3500.2.camel@linux.site>, Jonathan Osuch <osuchj@avalon.net> writes:
The viewwindows= command is nearly what we need for this.
I'll have a look at that, thanks. -- "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/>
In article <4595C8C2.1010803@thuntek.net>, "Lee H. Skinner" <skinner@thuntek.net> writes:
You can specify the video mode in a par file with VIDEO=SF7, but the .cfg file defines what SF7 is.
Perhaps an extension to the fractint.cfg file would allow you to say "mode F1 means disk,640x480". That might be better. Right now if I load fractint.cfg the modes aren't associated with any driver and that's a problem in the new world as video modes are many-to-1 with drivers. If I do that, then its the least amount of change from the "old world", which is probably good. Currently the video mode screen shows the comment field and a description of the mode. I can add a new driver field to the fractint.cfg, omit any video modes during read-in which don't have a driver field and then display the driver field in lieu of the comment field on the select video mode screen. Your existing par files still work; they specify video=SF7 and that looks up into the fractint.cfg file as it does now, only the cfg file also specifies a driver and optional driver parameters. In fact the whole ax, bx, cx, dx fields can be used as driver parameters since the driver doesn't do BIOS style mode switching. How does that sound? -- "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/>
Sounds great to me! We'll need to make sure that the VIEWWINDOWS command still works the same. Lee ------------------------------------ Original message from Richard ---------------------- Perhaps an extension to the fractint.cfg file would allow you to say "mode F1 means disk,640x480". That might be better. Right now if I load fractint.cfg the modes aren't associated with any driver and that's a problem in the new world as video modes are many-to-1 with drivers. If I do that, then its the least amount of change from the "old world", which is probably good. Currently the video mode screen shows the comment field and a description of the mode. I can add a new driver field to the fractint.cfg, omit any video modes during read-in which don't have a driver field and then display the driver field in lieu of the comment field on the select video mode screen. Your existing par files still work; they specify video=SF7 and that looks up into the fractint.cfg file as it does now, only the cfg file also specifies a driver and optional driver parameters. In fact the whole ax, bx, cx, dx fields can be used as driver parameters since the driver doesn't do BIOS style mode switching. How does that sound?
On Fri, 2006-12-29 at 21:18 -0700, Richard wrote:
Currently the video mode screen shows the comment field and a description of the mode. I can add a new driver field to the fractint.cfg, omit any video modes during read-in which don't have a driver field and then display the driver field in lieu of the comment field on the select video mode screen.
Your existing par files still work; they specify video=SF7 and that looks up into the fractint.cfg file as it does now, only the cfg file also specifies a driver and optional driver parameters. In fact the whole ax, bx, cx, dx fields can be used as driver parameters since the driver doesn't do BIOS style mode switching.
Take a look at the Allegro source, in drivers.c. I worked on this for a bit, but didn't get it to work. Jonathan
Richard said:
- You want to specify resolution of video disk modes. - You currently use fractint.cfg for this purpose
Do you then interactively select the video mode, or are you using a par file to specify it? If a par file, what command are you using in the par?
I happen to most often hit <del> and interactively select the video mode; but as Lee Skinner said, "You can specify the video mode in a par file with VIDEO=SF7" And you can use FRACTINT.CFG to specify that SF7 is your new hand-entered non-standard X and Y 'disk' video resolution. In other words, you can change the image resolution that a particular Function key invokes. I have avoided changing the meaning of any of the more commonly used Function keys in my FRACTINT.CFG file. - Hal Lane ######################### # hallane@earthlink.net <mailto:hallane@earthlink.net> # #########################
-----Original Message----- From: fractdev-bounces+hallane=earthlink.net@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:fractdev-bounces+hallane=earthlink.net@mailman.xmission.com]On Behalf Of Richard Sent: Friday, December 29, 2006 8:48 PM To: Fractint developer's list Subject: Re: [Fractdev] RE: <Richard> video modes in fractint.cfg
In article <MDBBJLBFBICIIEIHFBMECEAICPAA.hallane@earthlink.net>, "Hal Lane" <hallane@earthlink.net> writes:
Richard said:
How important is keeping the fractint.cfg facility for listing video modes?
I use the fractint.cfg facility to create additional high resolution 'disk' video modes that are multiples of two greater than standard video modes. [...]
OK, so let me paraphrase a bit to make sure I get it:
- You want to specify resolution of video disk modes. - You currently use fractint.cfg for this purpose
Do you then interactively select the video mode, or are you using a par file to specify it? If a par file, what command are you using in the par? --
-- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.409 / Virus Database: 268.15.29/608 - Release Date: 12/29/06
participants (5)
-
Hal Lane -
Jonathan Osuch -
Lee H. Skinner -
Richard -
Tim Wegner