Message-ID: <19980316144448.58952@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz>
Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 14:44:48 +0100
From: Jan Hubicka <hubicka AT atrey DOT karlin DOT mff DOT cuni DOT cz>
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com, djgpp-announce AT delorie DOT com
Subject: ANNOUNCE - XaoS3.0 - fast realtime fractal zoomer
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                                    >X a o S<

CREDITS (alphabetically):
	Eric Courteau   (ecourteau AT cplus DOT fr)
			- Francais.cat (translation of tutorials)
	Tim Goodwin	(tgoodwin AT cygnus DOT co DOT uk)
			- english.cat corrections
	Jan Hubicka	(hubicka AT paru DOT cas DOT cz) 
	                - Zooming routines, ugly interface,
			  palettes,drivers, autopilot, filters,
			  documentation, tutorials, maitainer etc...
	Jens Kilian	(jjk AT acm DOT org)
			- BeOS driver, deutsch.cat
	Thomas A. K. Kjaer(Thomas DOT Marsh AT freesoft DOT cz)
			- OS/2 ports (320x200 graphics and AA-lib)
	Thomas Marsh	(tmarsh AT austin DOT ibm DOT com)
	                - First zoomer, formulas, planes,
		          X11 driver, inversions, many ideas
	Terje Pedersen  (terjepe AT login DOT eunet DOT no)
			- Amiga port
	Fabrice Premel (premelfa AT etu DOT utc DOT fr)
			- Periodicity checking
	Tapio K. Vocaldo(taps AT rmx DOT 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 recomended)
	  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 possition
	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 possition files
		 Perturbation
		 Random palettes
		 Other noteworthly features
		Whats 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 homepage 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 reeaches 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 caluclation 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 Souces are complettly 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 yeat, but I hope they are comming
	soon:

	XaoS*.deb		Debian packages
	Macxaos_3.0.sea.hqx     Macintosh distribution
	xaos30.lzh		Amiga binarry. 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 recomended.  

	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 recomended 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 AT horac DOT ta DOT jcu DOT cz

	xaos
	  this list is for general xaos discusion 
	  (ideas, questions, bugreports..)
	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 AT horac DOT ta DOT jcu DOT 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
--