[3959] in comp.os.os2.announce archive
XaoS3.0 - fast portable realtime fractal zoomer
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jan Hubicka)
Sat Mar 28 02:18:31 1998
To: os2ann.DISCUSS@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU
Date: 20 Mar 1998 11:03:00 -0500
From: hubicka@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz (Jan Hubicka)
Reply-To: hubicka@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz (Jan Hubicka)
Reply-to: hubicka@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz (Jan Hubicka)
[Followups directed to comp.os.os2.misc]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
>X a o S<
CREDITS (alphabetically):
Eric Courteau (ecourteau@cplus.fr)
- Francais.cat (translation of tutorials)
Tim Goodwin (tgoodwin@cygnus.co.uk)
- english.cat corrections
Jan Hubicka (hubicka@paru.cas.cz)
- Zooming routines, ugly interface,
palettes,drivers, autopilot, filters,
documentation, tutorials, maintainer etc...
Jens Kilian (jjk@acm.org)
- BeOS driver, deutsch.cat
Thomas A. K. Kjaer(Thomas.Marsh@freesoft.cz)
- OS/2 ports (320x200 graphics and AA-lib)
Thomas Marsh (tmarsh@austin.ibm.com)
- First zoomer, formulas, planes,
X11 driver, inversions, many ideas
Terje Pedersen (terjepe@login.eunet.no)
- Amiga port
Fabrice Premel (premelfa@etu.utc.fr)
- Periodicity checking
Tapio K. Vocaldo(taps@rmx.com)
- Macintosh port
INTRODUCTION:
XaoS is a fast portable real-time interactive fractal zoomer. It displays
the Mandelbrot set (among other escape time fractals) and allows you zoom
smoothly into the fractal. Various coloring modes are provided for both the
points inside and outside the selected set. In addition, switching between
Julia and Mandelbrot fractal types and displaying planes is provided. The
first version was a poorly written Mandelbrot view by Thomas later modified
by Jan to support high frame-rate zooming. Other additions were later made
including autopilot (for those of you without drivers licenses), palette
changing, PNG saving, and fractal inversion.
SUPPORTED PLATFORMS(for now)
UNIX LIKE:
X11 (8bpp pseudocolor 8,15,16,24,32 truecolor, StaticGray and
StaticColor only)
Curses (now obsoleted by AA-lib driver)
SVGAlib (svgalib 1.2.10 or newer recommended)
AA-lib (high quality ascii art)
OTHER OS: (with native support):
Amiga (256 workbench displays only)
BeBox
Hurd (AA-lib driver only)
Macintosh (displays with 8bit support only)
MS-DOS (djgpp/allegro - VESA 2.0/1.0,
8,15,16 and 32 bit depths,
VGA - 320x200 and X modes,
S3, Cirrus, ET4000 in
resolutions 256x256-1200x1600
AAlib - approx. 50 different text modes for VGA/MDA
including dual monitor support)
OS/2 (320x200 mode 13 and many text modes)
plan9
KNOWN TO WORK ALSO AT:
Hurd
Windowze (DOS prompt)
All platforms with at least ansi-c compatible compiler and text output
FEATURES:
o Fast smooth interactive realtime zooming. Even on 486!
o 11 fractal formulas:
Mandelbrot power 2 - Mandelbrot power 6
octo
Barnsley
Newton
Phoenix
Magnet
o Autopilot (enhanced in this version)
o [NEW] 8bpp, hicolor, realcolor, black&white,
truecolor (24 or 32bpp) support
o [NEW] Three algorithms for random palettes
o [NEW] Saving to PNG files
o [NEW] Saving/restoring current position
o [NEW] Animation save/replay
o [NEW] Animated tutorials:
Introduction to fractals
Introduction and the Mandelbrot set
Higher power Mandelbrots
Newton's method
Barnsley's formula
Phoenix
Octo
Magnet
Features overview
Outcoloring modes
Incoloring modes
True-color coloring modes
Filters
Planes
Animations and position files
Perturbation
Random palettes
Other noteworthy features
What's new
Supported languages for tutorials:
English
Francais
Cesky
o [NEW] 10 outcoloring modes + 10 incoloring modes
o [MEW] 10 true-color coloring modes
o [NEW] Boundary detection
o [NEW] Periodicity checking
o [NEW] Unrolled calculation loops
o [NEW] Realtime image rotation
o [NEW] More than 50 examples
o [NEW] An AA driver that provides high quality ascii art
rendering at many platforms
(see AA-project home page at http://www.ta.jcu.cz/aa)
o both Mandelbrot and Julia forms of fractals
o [NEW] fast julia preview (now for all formulas)
o special image stretching algorithm for fast zooming
[NEW] now reaches 150 FPS on pentium 130 in fullscreen
320x200 mode
o solid guessing
o many supported platforms including text mode drivers
o zoom up to 64051194700380384 times
o unzooms more than 1267966761981568116729735090176 times
o Color cycling
o Dynamic resolution (Now really improved)
o Fast julia browsing mode
o Supports non-standard monitor sizes
o [NEW] SMP support
o POSIX threads API
o plan9
o BeOS
o [NEW] post calculation filters:
o [NEW] motion blur
o Random dot stereograms in animation
o [NEW] Interlace filter
o [NEW] Two edge detection filters
o [NEW] Starfield generator
o [NEW] Emboss
o [NEW] Palette emulation filter
o [NEW] Dithering on devices w/o user defined palette
CHANGES SINCE 2.2:
o Many new features and support for BeOS
o It is approx twice faster
o XaoS is GNU program now
o Sources are completely redesigned and cleaned
o Lots of new documentation, revised old one
o Changed some keybindings
FTP:
XaoS comes in various files:
XaoS-3.0.tar.gz sources
XaoS*.rpm Red-hat packages
xaos30s.zip Sources in zip format for DOS users
xaos30b.zip .exe file for DOS
XaoS30-OS2.zip .exe file for OS/2
Following versions are not done yet, but I hope they are coming
soon:
XaoS*.deb Debian packages
Macxaos_3.0.sea.hqx Macintosh distribution
xaos30.lzh Amiga binary. Note that this
file is uploaded only to aminet.
All can be found at following site:
ftp.ta.jcu.cz /pub/linux/hubicka
UNIX version:
sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux/Incoming (will be moved somewhere)
tsx-11.mit.edu now in /incoming..will be placed into
/pub/linux/binaries/usr.bin or
/pub/linux/sources/usr.bin
ftp.x.org /contrib/graphics
MS-DOS version:
ftp.simtel.net /pub/simtelnet/msdos/graphics
HOME-PAGE:
Europe: http://www.paru.cas.cz/~hubicka/XaoS/
U.S.: http://www.tedium.com/XaoS/
http://www.realtime.net/~amadeus/XaoS/
REQUIREMENTS:
XaoS uses floating point math for its calculations. This may be slow on
some computers. The program was developed on a Pentium running at 120 MHz,
but it can work quite well (20fps) on 486Dx/2. I also received nice letters
from users using XaoS at 386/40 or so. Coprocessor is _REALLY_ required.
Faster computer is better so alpha/600MHZ recommended.
To compile XaoS you need ANSI compliant compiler with _GOOD_ optimizations.
Unix version uses configure script. Other platforms uses different ways.
GNU CC is highly recommended. Graphics drivers usually have some additional
requirements. (for example xlib for X11, djgpp and allegro for dos port)
Also fast malloc/free routines are recommended because they are called
quite often (10 times per frame). For full featured XaoS (with image saving
code) you also need zlib and libpng.
MAILING-LIST:
XaoS now have following mailing lists at
majordomo@horac.ta.jcu.cz
xaos
this list is for general xaos discussion
(ideas, questions, bug reports..)
xaos-announce
keeps you informed about new versions
xaos-devel
you want to become XaoS developer? Subscribe here and let us know about
you! You will be welcomed.
To subscribe send following message to
majordomo@horac.ta.jcu.cz:
subscribe [list_name]
THANKS TO:
Unknown Samorai from Brazil
- for $20 (Your email don't work)
Stanislav "XaoS" Mikes
- for the name of our program
Borislav Deianov
- for sharing ideas
Isaac Newton
- for discovering his method
Benoit B. Mandelbrot
- for ordering the Julia sets
Richard M. Stallman
- for GNU
Linus Torvalds
- for the best kernel
Tim Wegner & Bert Tyler
- for Fractint
Darryl House
- for making Fractint's code readable
NO THANKS TO:
Bill Gates
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