I just got the following email, which I found very touching: ================= Dear Mr. Wegner, I am writing on behalf of of my 91-year-old father. He has been using Fractint for decades to create art like the attached. Unfortunately, computers breakdown and we have been trying, unsuccessfully, to create a vintage/legacy system that will run the DOS version of Fractint. I recently purchased a vintage Dell laptop running windows 95 from eBay. It is not working for him. My father seems to remember a command using the keystroke B which removes the color from the fractal and only leaves an outline. He then imports this image into Windows Paint in order to resize it for the canvas. We cannot find that functionality now. So, my questions to you are: can you recommend the components of a system that we could put together to get my father back in business using the DOS version of Fractint? Do you know of a command in the program that removes the color? And finally, are you the best person for us to consult with on this, or can you recommend someone? On behalf of my father and my four siblings who he has trying to tackle this problem, I thank you for your time. Sincerely, Rivka Morgan-Sherman ======================== I am telling him that a Win95 computer should work fine. I am not clear from his email why Win95 is not working for him. However, I am not sure what the "B" command is he is referring to. Any ideas? I am inviting him to join the list. I am willing to help but I suspect some of you who are currently using fractint might be better. Also, if any of you would like to correspond with this gentleman, just let me know off-list. Tim
Timothy Wegner wrote:
I just got the following email....
I recently purchased a vintage Dell laptop running windows 95 from eBay. It is not working for him. My father seems to remember a command using the keystroke B which removes the color from the fractal and only leaves an outline. He then imports this image into Windows Paint in order to resize it for the canvas.
I would think a Windows-98-SE environment would be better, as long as the graphics card was decent and capable. As to only having the outline of an image, and importing that into a graphic editor such as Microsoft's Paint, this does not seem like the best way. It sounds like what he wants to do is go from a raster type of image to a vector type, so that resizing would keep the original shapes without becoming pixelated. And I have done something similar many times. As to the "B" command... Boundary Tracing ("b"), which only works accurately with fractal types (such as the Mandelbrot set, but not the Newton type) that do not contain "islands" of colors, finds a color boundary, traces it around the screen, and then "blits" in the color over the enclosed area. Sincerely, P.N.L.
participants (2)
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Paul N. Lee -
Timothy Wegner