Re: [Fractint] CompuServe Requiem

Lee wrote:

> And neither will I. But in the eighties, most of the Fractint
> developers and artists used compuserve.

That's for sure! When I first ran into fractint, it could write but
not read GIF files, and did not save any fractal info. I vaguely
remember (and might have this wrong) that I cajoled Bert Tyler to get
developer access to the GraphDev forum precisely so he could get
access to GIF source code. At that time all you had to do is ask. In
short order we had devised a way to write all the fractal info after
the GIF terminator, and could read it back in along with the image.
Compuserve foiled us by scrubbing the "garbage" at the end of the
files when users like Lee Skinner uploaded images. Then when there
was work going on with the "new" GIF89a format, we were instrumental
in getting CompuServe to add extension blocks in which we could
safely store the data.

There were a lot of pioneering developers hanging out in the graphics
forum, includsing the PovRay team.

CompuServe had it's annoying aspects, but certainly facilitated a lot
of collaborative software development of considerable importance.

tim