Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 12:42:21 +0100 (MET)
From: Jan Hubicka <hubicka AT horac DOT ta DOT jcu DOT cz>
To: djgpp-announce AT delorie DOT com
Subject: XaoS 2.2 - fast portable realtime interactive fractal zoomer/morpher
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.970206124114.30375A-100000@horac.ta.jcu.cz>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII


                                    >X a o S<

CREDITS:
	Jan Hubicka	(hubicka AT paru DOT cas DOT cz) 
	                - Zooming routines, ugly interface,
			  palettes,drivers, autopilot, stereograms,
			  fast julia browsing mode
	Thomas Marsh	(tmarsh AT austin DOT ibm DOT com)
	                - First zoomer, formulas, planes,
		          X11 driver, inversions
	Tapio K. Vocaldo(taps AT rmx DOT com)
	                - Macintosh port
	Thomas A. K. Kjaer(takjaer AT daimi DOT aau DOT dk)
			- OS/2 ports (320x200 graphics and text)
	Terje Pedersen  (terjepe AT login DOT eunet DOT no)
			- Amiga 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, 
	GIF saving, and fractal inversion.

SUPPORTED PLATFORMS(for now)
        UNIXES:
	  X11 (8bpp pseudocolor 8,15,16,24,31 truecolor, StaticGray and 
	       StaticColor only)
	  Curses (yes! text mode version available!)
          Linux/SVGAlib (svgalib 1.2.10 or newer recomended)
	OTHER OS:
	plan9 (8bpp displays only)
	MS-DOS (djgpp/allegro - supports VESA 2.0/1.0, 
	                        VGA - 320x200 and X modes, 
				S3, Cirrus, ET4000 in
				resolutions 256x256-1200x1600)
	Macintosh (displays with 8bit support only)
	    This port is available just for version 2.1
	OS/2 (320x200 mode 13 and text mode)
	Amiga (256 workbench displays only)


FEATURES:
	o Fast smooth interactive realtime zooming. Even on 486!
	o 11 fractal formulas:
		Mandelbrot power 2 - Mandelbrot power 6
		octo
		Barnsley
		Newton
		Phoenix
		[NEW] Magnet
	o Autopilot
	o Random palettes
	o Saving to gif files
	o 7 outcoloring modes + 2 incoloring modes
	o both Mandelbrot and Julia forms of fractals
	o special image stretching algorithm for fast zooming
	  described in algorithms.html
	o solid guessing
	o many supported platforms including text mode drivers
	o zoom up to 64051194700380384 times
	o [NEW] unzooms more than 1267966761981568116729735090176 times
	o [NEW] Palette rotation
	o [NEW] Dynamic resolution
	o [NEW] Fast julia browsing mode
	o [NEW] Random dot stereograms in animation
	o [NEW] Supports non-standard monitor sizes

MAIN CHANGES: (except those features marked as [NEW])
	o Speedups(60fps -> 80fps), cleanups, bugfixes...
	o Mailing lists (see bellow - subscribe NOW!)
	o Tutorial
	o Algorithm description (for possible XaoS developers)
	o PROBLEMS file describing most common problems with running XaoS
	o README.gcc file describing problems with some versions of gcc
	o Updated homepage (html version of tutorial, new images in gallery)
	o xaosman.txt - text version of unix manual page describing 
	  command line options
	o Palette generation routine is now better
	o Aproximation algorithm now produces better and smoother results
	o zooming to choosed point is more exact

FTP:
	XaoS comes in various files:
	XaoS-2.2.tar.gz		sources
	XaoS*.rpm		Red-hat packages
	XaoS*.deb		Debian packages
	xaos22s.zip		Sources in zip format for DOS users
	xaos22b.zip		.exe file for DOS
	XaoS22-OS2.zip		.exe file for OS/2
	Macxaos_2.1.sea.hqx     Macintosh distribution (Only for 2.1)
	xaos22.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/ 
                       (Only page currently up to date)
	U.S.:	http://www.tedium.com/XaoS/ 
		http://www.realtime.net/~amadeus/XaoS/ (This page will be
					removed soon. Use new location
					instead)

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]

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)

THANKS TO:
	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
	Linus Torvalds
		- for the best operating system
	Tim Wegner & Bert Tyler
		- for Fractint
	Darryl House
		- for making Fractint's code readable

NO THANKS TO:
	Bill Gates


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                   Have you browsed my www pages? Look at:
                       http://www.paru.cas.cz/~hubicka
      Koules-the game for Svgalib,X11 and OS/2,  Xonix-the game for X11
      czech documentation for linux index, original 2D computer art and
              funny 100 years old photos and articles are there!