Message-Id: <199803161403.JAA28764@delorie.com> Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 14:44:48 +0100 From: Jan Hubicka To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com, djgpp-announce AT delorie DOT com Subject: ANNOUNCE - XaoS3.0 - fast realtime fractal zoomer Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Precedence: bulk Precedence: bulk >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 --