FracPPC v1.1b1 ‹ June 16, 1996 The last publicly distributed version of FracPPC was version 1.0b2. It has been nearly two years since that release. There were obviously periods of inactivity in the development of FracPPC in that time, but I never relinquished the idea of making FracPPC a full-featured fractal generation program for the Power Macintosh. There are still many features that need to be added to FracPPC, but at this point I think it has most of the basic functions you need in this sort of program, plus a couple of features unique to FracPPC. File List The following files are included with FracPPC v1.1b1 FracPPC (The application) Read Me (This file) FracPPC User Manual FracPPC Parameter Files (A folder with example parameter files) New Features € Images can be saved to PICT files € Areas of image can be selected for zooming € Can edit color maps € Can apply color maps separately to different regions of fractal € User interface has been improved In a way, the ability to save to PICT files is the most important improvement. Without that, previous versions were more like "toy" programs. Now images can be used as input to graphics programs to manipulate or enhance the image. The ability to separate fractals into different regions with different color maps is more significant than it may sound. This means that stalks, for example, can be colored separately from the rest of the fractal. Some stunning effects can be achieved with this capability (see the example parameter files). Now that the infrastructure for this capability is laid down, I intend to use it extensively as I add new fractal types to the program, so this will be increasingly useful with future versions. Parameter Files The ³FracPPC Parameter Files² folder contains four categories of parameter files. In order to keep track of the rather large number of files I've now accumulated, I use the following naming scheme: All names have at least six characters of the form: xxnnnn The first two letters (xx) mean: ma ‹ Mandelbrot fractals ms ‹ Mandelbrot with stalks ju ‹ Julia fractals js ‹ Julia with stalks followed by four numerals which is just an arbitrary index number. Some files have alternate colorations of the same fractal. These alternate colorations are signified by using the same six letter name as the original fractal followed by cn where n is a numeral. Sometimes I include interesting zooms of the same fractal. These are signified by the six letter name followed by zn where n is a numeral. This convention is occasionally extended, so for example if I have a file called ms1234 and a zoom of that file called ms1234z1, then an alternate coloration of the zoom would be ms1234z1c1. In the next revision of FracPPC I will probably have a way of storing multiple color map choices in a single parameter file, making it unnecessary to generate multiple files for alternate colorations. Who knows, I may even make it possible to turn a file into a ³library² of related zooms and color maps. Bugs This is a beta version. I hope to have an official non-beta release of 1.1 (unlike the previous version ‹ there was never a non-beta 1.0). In other words, I will try to avoid adding more features until I have eliminated all significant bugs from this version. Right now I can tell you that, although I believe there are no serious memory leak or memory fragmentation problems with this version, it definitely does not handle low-memory conditions well. This is a known problem that I will fix. Actually, if you try to reset the fractal parameters to generate a fractal that requires much more memory than is available, that situation is handled well. The biggest problem occurs when you ask for a fractal that just barely fits in memory. A crash is likely in this case. For large fractals, you will need to reset the 1000K default for application memory size. You should allow a certain amount of extra memory for miscellaneous needs ‹ about 512K is more than sufficient. If you know the length and width of the fractal you will want to generate, here is the formula to figure out how much memory you will need for the dwell values in this version. For fractals with one region (i.e. Exterior), memory = 2*width*height For fractals with two or more regions, memory = 3*width*height. Some aspects of color maps (i.e. minimum & maximum dwell) are set from the current fractal and can't be edited. Sometimes you get into situations where these values are not exactly what you want. I need to rethink the entire color map format, but I don't know if the results of that will end up in 1.1. Certainly whatever I come up with will include backward compatibility with the current format. Future Versions The following features are going to appear in future versions, along with better documentation. I list them in the appoximate order of priority. € Better color editor € Multiple fractal types and display techniques (binary decomposition, etc.) € Copying in PICT format € Speed-up algorithms (Contour crawling, etc. These don't seem as necessary with the speed the PowerPC can knock fractals out with, but it would still be useful for the large files one might want to generate for printing. € Extendibility (so the user can add new fractals) € Generation of Quicktime movies showing fractals when zooming in or morphing as a parameter or parameters are changed continuously € Anti-aliasing and improved dithering € ³Spooling² of large fractal images so that large high-res images can be generated without allocating enormous amounts of RAM to hold dwells ___________________________ Dennis C. De Mars email to: demars@netcom.com