Being completely unbiased ;-) I would go for Java, and reap the platform independance that goes with it. Nothing is to be gained by C# (the evil empires java clone), except platform lockin (and you still end up with an interpreted language). C++ would be faster, but very much harder to get working on multiple platforms. I think the best option is to write a pure java version and add platform specific C++ (or even assembler with C++ shell) native calls for specific OSs to speedup the actual calcs. Best of both worlds then, all the advantages of java maintainability and ease of development, with speed when needed. I have spent more than 200 hours putting together a java fractal app (FractalCanvas - see qlt.net.au/canvas - but not for a few days). I didn't intend on making a fractint clone, but have come closer than I thought I would. Because I decided to use a collection of fractint pars to test my formula parser, I ended up implementing a lot of fractint functionality in the same mode. I currently get about a 60% hit rate for my test set of 1500 pars/images, that is about 60% of them generate images that look the same as fractint generates, about another 20% get similar results, and the rest do not do much at all. The reasons for a lot of that is the post-processing options (such as logmap, continuous potential, periodicity etc) I have implemented are not complete, or simply do not work correctly yet. Added to which I haven't implemented any of the backwards compatibility features from fractint at all (yet). I will probably ask some precific questions about these algorithms (when I have time to figure out what it is I don't understand). I will put a version on the net soon, the current net version hasn't been updated for a while and doesn't have the formula parsing in it. I just have to write a UI for editing a formula (and a few hundred more things no doubt ;-)..... David -----Original Message----- From: fractdev-bounces+dburnett=avaya.com@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:fractdev-bounces+dburnett=avaya.com@mailman.xmission.com]On Behalf Of Tim Wegner Sent: Sunday, 20 June 2004 1:05 PM To: Fractint developer's list Subject: Re: [Fractdev] Request for reflections on a .Net port Greg wrote:

I think it's great that you want to modernize Fractint, and I would like to definitely help with this, but .NET is the devil. Microsoft and open-source really shouldn't go in the same sentance. Think Java or C++. C++ would be very nice because it would be easier to port the existing code, as well as performance considerations.

You may be right, but discussions about platform mean nothing without skill, time, and commitment. We're talking 2000 to 4000 hours. Tim _______________________________________________ Fractdev mailing list Fractdev@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fractdev