Brahammars Mandelbrot Toy  v 1.1   Copyright 1995,96 Ola Brahammar
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This is a simple program which draws the Mandelbrot fractal in a PM Window.


This program is distributed as FREEWARE, which means it is distributed free of 
charge, but the the program and its documentation remain copyrighted. No part 
of this program or its documentation may be used in any other manner than this
document implies. Any COMMERCIAL USE of this program is prohibited without
the author's explicit consent.
This application comes with NO WARRANTY, either expressed or implied. The 
author shall not be liable for any damage arising from the use of this program.
Try it on your own risk. If it turns your harddisk into a C-60 cassette tape, 
it's your own stupid fault. So there.

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* System requirements *

You need DIVE installed in order to run, and preferably a video driver capable 
of 65k colors or more, altough the program does work in 256 color modes.
And yes, realy, it DOES look much better in 65k color modes.

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* Installation:

No particular installation process required.

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* Userguide:

When the program starts, it displays an 640x640 PM window, together with
a dialog window to change settings. The initial Mandelbrot fractal is being
computed, which might take anywhere from 1 to 100 seconds depending on your 
hardware. A 100Mhz Pentium does it in something like 0.8 seconds.

Clicking right mouse button in the PM window changes coloring of the fractal. If
the program is computing a zoom, clicking right mousebutton displays the 
computed fractal sofar. 

To zoom in to a specific part of the fractal, click and hold left mouse button,
and drag the mouse to box an area of interest. When releasing the mouse button, 
the title bar will show a simple progress meter, the calculation engine starts
working and after a while displays the area you selected zoomed to fill the
window. You can also manually enter starting points in the dialog box. Clicking
the "Calc this" button starts calculation.

* Saving an image to disk

There is no built-in function for saving the images.
I suggest you get a program capable of "screen capture", like for example
Peter Nielsen's excellent shareware imageviewer 'PMView'.

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* Bugs and limitations

  * If the PM window is minimized and you play with the dialog box functions,
    strange things might happen. 
  * Fractal image size is limited to 2048x2048 pixels.
  * No checks are made as of what you type into the dialog box.

* Thanks

Thanks to Roine Gustafsson <e93_rog@e.kth.se> for brushing up this document,
and for being such a great pal. *hug* :-)  
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* Improvements for next version.

I would like to add a high precision mode, which would allow for deeper zooms.
If you know of any high precision ('Bignumber') math library for C, I'd like
to know. No fancy features needed: addition, subtraction, multiplication and
division will suffice.

* For the interested...

The program is written in vanilla C compiled with IBM CSet++.
I have compiled versions of it both with EMX/GCC and Borland C++ for OS/2.
The EMX/GCC version took about 20 % more time than this CSet version to 
calculate the initial image, while the Borland C one took almost 
100% more time (Even with an inline assembler integer math routine for the 
main calculation routine). 

* Far future releases will include:

Over the next version(s) the program will utilize external processors for 
calculations, such as keyboard processors, mwave boards, the signal processor
in your modem etc, and use unlimited floating point precision for infinite zoom
depth, with realtime compression of meta events in the graphics window in order
to allow a smooth display of rotating 3D fractals calculated "on the fly" to
save diskspace. Additionally, you might be able to keep your tea warm by 
attaching the cup to the heatsink of your CPU by adding large amounts sugar to
the tea, so that it won't fall off and short-cut any vital parts of your
computer...


I welcome suggestions to and comments about 'Brahammars Mandelbrot Toy'.
My email address is:

   m9186@abc.se


Regards, Ola Br†hammar
1996-05-19

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