That's the description of the license on the software from http://www.fractint.org/ (requires a FAT32 partition under Windows XP, BTW. You might need another hard drive or a partition resizer to save anything from it).
The following text is probably not as cogent or understandable as just getting the software, opening a DOS window, and entering DEMO or FRACTINT, then pressing F1 when you want to know what the other keys do. Like so many things in your computer, it is not necessary to know a lot of nitty gritty details about how it works to make it work, and it helps. One of the first lessons I had to learn, because I like inversions, is that you cannot invert an inversion. You might chafe at just about everything going through keys, and if you ever get good at Advanced Paint by Number, then you will appreciate speed from that interface. I think that there is a copyright on the default parameters for internally defined fractal types (most of them are complications of [Benoit Mandelbrot]'s z=z^2 +c assignment, where zed and "c" are complex numbers on the cartesian plane such that real components *start* at a value of x and imajinary components *start* at a value of y. In other words, both starting points vary according to which part of the plane your screen is mapped to. Fractint lets you zoom, pan, and skew; it _could_ let you apply two kinds of skew and a trapezoid, and currently, all fractal mappings are defined with three points. The loop is applied to all of those starting points, mapped to a screen. Then there is a boundary condition that determines when you expect the point to approach infinity. Fractint colours pixels according to how many times it took the the loop to reach that boundary condition (iterations). There are about six other ways to colour the point, and my favourite is the arctangent it makes with the orijin (makes nice gray scales). Many of my fractals do *not* start on the cartesian plane; I start many of my loops with a function. FWIW, there are two massive qualifications on [fractal] saying in effect "I do not see all those rules!". I am inclined to ignore it, because it seems to encourage taking another look to understand them. There is one rule for me concerning fractals: Simple rules with _relatively_ complex results. [fractal] is more informative than [chaos theory], which contains a rule about topological mixing that I do not understand, despite the internal pointer. To answer the question in the subject, I would say yes. The reason for the copyright is so that contributors (at least fifty) would get paid in the event of a rich distributor of either output or the software itself. Last time I checked (about four years ago), Jason Osuch was CEO and concentrating on an X-windows version. It does sound, too. _______ http://edmc.net/~brewhaha/Fractal_Gallery.HTM _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
