Seeking beta testers for fractal program
Hi, Over the past five years I've been slowly developing a fractal program for Unix- and Linux-based systems called Gnofract 4D. I'm now almost ready to release version 2.0, which is a major improvement over the previous releases. The main new feature is that it can load Fractint .FRM files (but not yet .PAR files), which is why it may be of interest to some folks on this list. Brief feature list: - GTK-based GUI (screenshots at: http://gnofract4d.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html) - 24bit color and antialiasing - named parameters + separate colorfuncs as in UltraFractal Obviously there are many Fractint features which are NOT supported, including logmap, stereo, 3D, L-systems, DOS or Windows support, periodicity-checking, IFS, etc, etc. Anyway, if you're familiar enough with Linux to compile from source, willing to put up with flaky, beta-quality software, and interested in trying out a new fractal package, please download the beta from: http://www.bathysphere.org/gnofract4d-2.0.tar.gz And do let me know any bugs, suggestions or feature requests! Since this is only marginally related to Fractint I shan't announce future releases here - if you want to hear about them please subscribe at http://freshmeat.net/projects/gnofract4d/ Thanks, -- Edwin
On 6 Jun 2004, Edwin wrote: (...)
Brief feature list: - GTK-based GUI (screenshots at: http://gnofract4d.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html) - 24bit color and antialiasing - named parameters + separate colorfuncs as in UltraFractal
Obviously there are many Fractint features which are NOT supported, including logmap, stereo, 3D, L-systems, DOS or Windows support, periodicity-checking, IFS, etc, etc.
Before I presume to speak for Stone Soup, you'll notice that FRACTINT/DOS comes with a necessarily incomplete list of contributors, including e-mail addresses, and that there is an XWindows version of FRACTINT. Depending on some wrangling you might want to pursue with the developers, especially Tim Wegner and Jason Osuch... M$ likes talking about integration. What they are talking about, really, is collaboration that they've been denied in the courtroom. Jason Osuch compiled the last release of FRACTINT/DOS that I know of, and last time I read anything about it, he was having trouble maintaining his operating system. (Aren't we all?!) Try giving him a summary of what you've done with gnofract besides reinvent the wheel. Perhaps XFractint can be an alias for gnofract, but like I said, there are people who might want to steer besides me.
I take it windows folk (who aren't programmers) won't be able to run this? I couldn't see a binary that looked suitable.. Or am I just being very dense? -----Original Message----- From: fractint-bounces+peter=getitonbangagong.biz@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:fractint-bounces+peter=getitonbangagong.biz@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of SherLok Merfy Sent: 11 November 2004 10:21 To: Fractint and General Fractals Discussion Cc: edwin@bathysphere.org Subject: [Fractint] Re: Seeking beta testers for gnofract 4D On 6 Jun 2004, Edwin wrote: (...)
Brief feature list: - GTK-based GUI (screenshots at: http://gnofract4d.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html) - 24bit color and antialiasing - named parameters + separate colorfuncs as in UltraFractal
Obviously there are many Fractint features which are NOT supported, including logmap, stereo, 3D, L-systems, DOS or Windows support, periodicity-checking, IFS, etc, etc.
Before I presume to speak for Stone Soup, you'll notice that FRACTINT/DOS comes with a necessarily incomplete list of contributors, including e-mail addresses, and that there is an XWindows version of FRACTINT. Depending on some wrangling you might want to pursue with the developers, especially Tim Wegner and Jason Osuch... M$ likes talking about integration. What they are talking about, really, is collaboration that they've been denied in the courtroom. Jason Osuch compiled the last release of FRACTINT/DOS that I know of, and last time I read anything about it, he was having trouble maintaining his operating system. (Aren't we all?!) Try giving him a summary of what you've done with gnofract besides reinvent the wheel. Perhaps XFractint can be an alias for gnofract, but like I said, there are people who might want to steer besides me. _______________________________________________ Fractint mailing list Fractint@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fractint
On Thu, 11 Nov 2004, Peter Moreland wrote:
I take it windows folk (who aren't programmers) won't be able to run this? I couldn't see a binary that looked suitable.. Or am I just being very dense?
Compilation Recommended. Under Windows, if the author doesn't have Windows 32s, then you might be up against the Windows peering in at how people make these things, and with no access to the program at all. With source code, if it hasn't been compiled to run under your kernel and under your version of XWindows, then it might work, anyway. The same code might even have provisions for a Mac or a Dec Alpha, such is the portability of UNIX. Plus, if you see a lot of red print go by during the compilation, then you can expect some flakiness, and you might even figure out how to fix it. I heartily recommend compiling it, because every computer programmer in the world has seen a message that she didn't understand. That's why she became a programmer...so that she could make the message go away, even if the error was still there. _______ Wyszkowski's Second Law: Anything can be made to work if you fiddle with it long enough.
Sherlock, I have to admit I'm not really sure what you mean (what does Microsoft have to do with anything?). I thought Gnofract 4D's existence might be of interest to some XFractint users, for the reasons in my original mail. I think an XFractint/Gnofract4D merge (if that's what you're suggesting) would be very difficult since the code-bases are basically unrelated. Regards, -- Edwin PS Gnofract 4D's out of beta and currently on version 2.2 ----- Original Message ----- From: "SherLok Merfy" <brewhaha@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> To: "Fractint and General Fractals Discussion" <fractint@mailman.xmission.com> Cc: <edwin@bathysphere.org> Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2004 2:20 AM Subject: Re: Seeking beta testers for gnofract 4D
On 6 Jun 2004, Edwin wrote: (...)
Brief feature list: - GTK-based GUI (screenshots at: http://gnofract4d.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html) - 24bit color and antialiasing - named parameters + separate colorfuncs as in UltraFractal
Obviously there are many Fractint features which are NOT supported, including logmap, stereo, 3D, L-systems, DOS or Windows support, periodicity-checking, IFS, etc, etc.
Before I presume to speak for Stone Soup, you'll notice that FRACTINT/DOS comes with a necessarily incomplete list of contributors, including e-mail addresses, and that there is an XWindows version of FRACTINT. Depending on some wrangling you might want to pursue with the developers, especially Tim Wegner and Jason Osuch...
M$ likes talking about integration. What they are talking about, really, is collaboration that they've been denied in the courtroom. Jason Osuch compiled the last release of FRACTINT/DOS that I know of, and last time I read anything about it, he was having trouble maintaining his operating system. (Aren't we all?!)
Try giving him a summary of what you've done with gnofract besides reinvent the wheel. Perhaps XFractint can be an alias for gnofract, but like I said, there are people who might want to steer besides me.
On Thu, 11 Nov 2004, Edwin Young wrote:
Sher[L]o[]k,
Capital el, no letter see.
I have to admit I'm not really sure what you mean (what does Microsoft have to do with anything?).
Most of the time, I don't care.
I thought Gnofract 4D's existence might be of interest to some XFractint users, for the reasons in my original mail. I think an XFractint/Gnofract4D merge (if that's what you're suggesting) would be very difficult since the code-bases are basically unrelated.
Are you writing in FORTRAN? I mean that both programs are free, and that both have ruthlessly stolen _some_ of their methods from paper publications. The copyright on FracTint, CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG, is mostly for authenticity, although some people are in it for the notoriety of being in the credits. So, basically, I would GUESS that you're more wary of the politics and accounting for credits than the practicality of improving XFractint with subroutines from Gnofract4D with the help of CVS (Cooperative Virtual Supervisor?...I don't know what that stands for) and Jason Osuch and then calling them identical. Vice-Versa might be better. I don't know. (Right now, I'm more interested in how I can import my cwbaudi3.ini from Windows to Linux. (It's full of detailed configuration for the mixer on my crystal codec sound card). It beats me what the protocol for that would be, because there are actually four lead programmers listed. _______ Give me a hay yoh if you're ever in Edmonton, ay? +780 472-7827 We are borg. Bill is irrelevant. Gates are not.
On Fri, 2004-11-19 at 18:58, brewhaha@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca wrote:
Are you writing in FORTRAN?
Gnofract 4D is written primarily in Python with some C++ extensions.
I mean that both programs are free, and that both have ruthlessly stolen _some_ of their methods from paper publications. The copyright on FracTint, CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG, is mostly for authenticity, although some people are in it for the notoriety of being in the credits.
So, basically, I would GUESS that you're more wary of the politics and accounting for credits than the practicality of improving XFractint with subroutines from Gnofract4D with the help of CVS (Cooperative Virtual Supervisor?...I don't know what that stands for) and Jason Osuch and then calling them identical. Vice-Versa might be better. I don't know.
No, I'm not too concerned about politics and credit (or copyright, for that matter). I've certainly stolen many ideas from Fractint (some via UltraFractal), including the formula parser language. I expect to continue to do so in future. Anyone who wants to take any code from Gnofract 4D for any purpose is free to do so, with or without attribution. The problems with a full-scale merge (IMHO) are primarily technical. Briefly, these are: o) Environment. XFractint is essentially a port of a text-based DOS package to run in an XWindow. I believe the Fractint folks would like to maintain some level of cross-platform portability (at least to DOS and Windows), hence it would be difficult to change this paradigm. o) Backwards Compatibility. It's extremely important that the huge numbers of extant .par files continue to produce the same images in the future. This means that changes to the Fractint code base have to be made very carefully, which makes it harder to make dramatic changes like changing the rendering model to create 24-bit images. o) Lack of Motivation. Frankly, attempting this would be man-years of painstaking effort. I write fractal software for fun, and have limited time available - I assume the same holds true for the Stone Soup guys. Attempting a merger with Fractint does not sound like enough fun for me to devote the next 5 years of weekends to it. If you read the Fractdev archives you'll see a long list of excitable proposals to radically revamp Fractint, all of which have foundered on this particular rock. Regards, -- Edwin PS Peter - no, Gnofract 4D doesn't work on Windows. It isn't likely to any time soon. Sorry :-( PPS CVS stands for 'Concurrent Versions System'
On 20 Nov 2004, Edwin wrote: (...)
o) Backwards Compatibility. It's extremely important that the huge numbers of extant .par files continue to produce the same images in the future. This means that changes to the Fractint code base have to be made very carefully, which makes it harder to make dramatic changes like changing the rendering model to create 24-bit images. (...) Methinks that your writing in Python probably explains a lot of difficulties that are hard to exaggerate in English, although I'm pretty sure you can link Python into C as easily as you can link FORTRAN into C (not that this is easy, when the programmers must know what they're doing).
As far as changing the rendering model for 24-bit images, I don't see much potential there. I've used one image as a mask on operations to another view of the same fractal to get 24bit images. One of my productions (http://ecn.ab.ca/~brewhaha/img/cards/heart.htm) even involves two masking procedures. So, rather than _changing_ the rendering model, I see options for complicating the one that exists to jenerate two or three different views of the same fractal and specifying a way for them to affect each other in a final 24bit product. The interface to such masking just about begs for numeric input in graphics designed for the web versus graphics designed for printing (the latter needs maximal contrast, while the former shouldn't make things hard to read). The beauty of having FracTint or GnoFract do it is speed, because you can calculate both outside=atan and outside=iter (for example) on the same pixel without re-doing the sequence of iterations.
participants (5)
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brewhaha＠freenet.edmonton.ab.ca -
Edwin -
Edwin Young
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Peter Moreland -
SherLok Merfy