Hello all I have found Fractint works *better* under Windows XP than it ever did under 98 on the same computer (PIII 500MHz, 192 Mb Ram, AOpen PA3000) Unfortunately my experience will not help any of you as I didn't have to do anything to get it to start. Consequently I believe that hardware must play a large factor. The improvement over Win 98, is that when I'm in a high resolution video mode and I alt+tab to windows, when I return to Fractint, its text menus are now not corrupted. Now, does any one care what someone who can barely program thinks? As people want a native Windows version and Tim says that it cannot be GPLed without rewriting parts of it, I think perhaps rewriting it from scratch might be a good idea. The code could be object-oriented and typesafed. If this were to happen, I would help as much as I could, but I could probably only add new fractal types and write help. This might break backwards compatibility, but unless Fractint as it is can be kept alive indefinitely, it is something that has to be done sooner rather than later, before even more people aren't able to run the last version, before this new one. Ultimately, Frederick Slijkerman, whom I believe is only (ironic coming from someone 2/3rds his age!) 24, single handedly wrote a program better than fractint. Surely the people on this list, have at least a century of experience between them. In case any body needs it spelt out, I'm suggesting that we write an open source clone of Ultra Fractal, call it Fractint and run it on Linux and Windows. Everything couldn't come at once, but once the stone's in the pot, people will start contributing. :-) Rupert

From: John Lewis <jlewis@clara.net> Reply-To: fractint@mailman.xmission.com To: <fractint@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: Re: [Fractint] My two cents worth... Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 18:28:57 +0100

On Fri, 25 Oct 2002 12:17:55 -0400, nick.grasso@hrads.com wrote:

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Well, I would be willing to pay for an upgrade, but I don't think that's the main problem.

...

First of all, I think it's more of a problem with time rather than money. Anybody with the skill to rewrite Fractint probably already has a full-time, well-paying programming job. I don't think the job of rewriting Fractint can be done in any reasonable length of time by somebody (or even more than one person) working part-time in the evening. And I don't think anybody is going to quit their full-time job to do it as it is doubtful they would make much money with shareware revenue.

...

Secondly, and more important to me, is that Fractint is open source. I believe in the open source concept, *not* because it allows me to get free software, but because of all the other advantages it has. In fact, it would probably violate the copyright to turn Fractint into shareware. I doubt if Tim would allow it.

I think one problem that needs to be thought about is that most home PCs are now sold with Windows XP, and as has been indicated in recent correspondence, there seem to be problems with getting it to run under XP. It is not always convenient to have to specially install a second operating system, and if the price for using Fractint is to purchase an old copy of Windows (while it is still available), it does mean Fractint becomes quite expensive.

I am considering moving to XP in the hope that it will cure some of the Windows Me annoyances.

I would not wish to see Fractint disappear.

John -- John Lewis, jlewis@clara.net on 25/10/2002

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