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XaoS
Website: http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/
Copyright (C) 1995-1997, 2000-2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later (http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html)
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
Website: http://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/
Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 The GSL Team.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later (http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html)
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
Website: http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html
Copyright (c) 1998-2008 Glenn Randers-Pehrson
Copyright (c) 1996-1997 Andreas Dilger
Copyright (c) 1995-1996 Guy Eric Schalnat, Group 42, Inc.
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%start
Try this animated tutorial if you don't know what a fractal is. If
you are new to XaoS you should try it too, since it is quite a good example
of XaoS's features.
Watch this tutorial to discover more of XaoS's features.
Both the tutorials are divided into chapters and available from help menu, so you don't need to watch them all at once (they are about half an hour long).
XaoS Overview
A written introduction to all of XaoS's features.
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%support
Check the Xaos home page for the latest news and information about XaoS and to download the latest versions.
Users' Discussion Group Site: http://groups.google.com/group/xaos-usersThe xaos-users discussion group on Google Groups provides a place for XaoS users to help each other get the most out of XaoS. XaoS developers also monitor this discussion and answer questions from time to time.
You can browse the archives freely but you must join the group in order to post. However, Google Groups provides a range of options for participation from a traditional mailing list to a completely web-based forum, so you don't have to get emails if you don't want to.
If you have a question or problem, please feel free to ask for help. We also encourage you to share examples (.xaf or .xpf files), hints and tips. If you have a gallery of images created using XaoS, feel free to post a link to the group.
Developers' Discussion Group Site: http://groups.google.com/group/xaos-develThe xaos-devel discussion group on Google Groups is where XaoS developers discuss and coordinate the further development of XaoS. XaoS users are welcome to monitor this forum as well, but general discussion and requests for help should be posted to the Users' Discussion Group instead.
Issue Tracker Site: http://code.google.com/p/gnuxaos/issues/listIssues are tracked on Google Code. If you think you have found a bug in XaoS or have an idea for a great new feature, please let us know about it. However, if you're not sure how to submit a useful issue report, please ask on the xaos-users discussion group first (see above).
Please don't submit duplicate issues. Search the existing ones first to make sure nobody has already reported it. You can add additional information about a bug by entering a comment on an existing bug. You can also express your interest in an issue by using the "Star" function on Google Code. This lets the developers know how many users are interested in an issue and also allows you receive status updates.
The developers will do their best to respond to issues in a timely manner. However, keep in mind that XaoS is developed on a volunteer basis and the developers work on it in their spare time. Therefore, we can't guarantee that issues will be addressed in a certain timeframe.
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Development XaoS is free software. One of the most significant rights its license grants to you is the right toXaoS has an open development model. All development is coordinated via Google Code at http://gnuxaos.googlecode.com/. Development versions are available via Subversion at https://sourceforge.net/scm/?type=svn&group_id=5771, so if you are interested in the future of XaoS, give the latest source a try! We also have a several discussion groups, which you can join if you want to discuss XaoS with others or participate in the development process.
If you want to do some development, you are encouraged to send your work back to the authors; if it is well done, it will be added to the next release. All changes should be submitted to the Google Code issue tracker.
XaoS is quite easily extensible. You might want to
read a bit about its internals in the file
Volunteer Opportunities XaoS needs volunteers to make it the best fractal program it can be! You don't have to be a programmer to help. The following tasks open to volunteers:
Improving the documentation via the Wiki (and improving the DokuWiki converter).
Compiling binaries for your favorite operating system.
Reviewing the source code, adding comments, and checking lines which generate warnings during compilation.
Creating additional tutorials and examples.
Translating XaoS into your language.
Implementing feature requests.
Fixing outstanding bugs.
If you would like to volunteer, join the discussion groups and let us know. We would be happy to help you get started! %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %sffe usrform usrformInit
Using user formulas
XaoS supports entering your own custom formulas.
Select User formula from the Fractal menu to define a
custom fractal formula. Select User initialization to change
the sequence starting point
In user formulas, as shown above, three variables are available:
Format for complex numbers is
eg. {3;2} is complex number 3+2i.
Available functions are listed below:
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %video
How to encode video files from XaoS
To create a video, make and xaf file first (the easiest way to do this is
to use the
Generating image sequences for video
To generate an image sequence, choose
xaos -render [filename] -size 352x240 -antialiasing -renderframerate 24 -basename [basename]
You might also want to change the resolution. Make sure that the resolution you choose is supported by the video codec you wish to use.
The framerate can also be altered. Make sure you choose a framerate that is supported by the video codec you wish to use.
On the other hand, the other XaoS rendering option
All images are named [basename]framenum.png. For example intro0001.png is the first frame of the animation intro. If consecutive frames are the same, XaoS doesn't save them, so some frames may be missing. If your encoder can't handle that, you will need to write a simple script which will fill in the gaps by means of mv or symbolic linking.
A list of all filenames is saved into the file [basename].par, where each line is the name of one frame. The names repeat here if necessary, so you can use this file to supply filenames to the encoder.
Encoding videos Once XaoS has generated the png files for each frame of the animation, you can use a third-party video encoder to convert the sequence of images into a video file. We currently recommend the following encoders, which support a wide variety of video codecs and file formats:Note: we used to recommend Berkeley parallel MPEG encoder to encode the generated png files into MPEG videos. We have kept the instructions mainly for historic purposes. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %berkeley
Berkeley parallel MPEG encoder This is the encoder we used to recommend. However, it has not been updated for a very long time and no longer appears to compile on modern systems. Also, there are much more modern codecs available that provide better video quality and compression rates. Still, we have kept the following instructions mainly for historic purposes.It is available at Berkeley's FTP site mm-ftp.CS.Berkeley.EDU and called mpeg_encode1.5b
It has lots of options to tune, so you should spend quite a lot of time playing with this. The configuration I use is in file doc/mpeg.param.
I've also made some patches that makes possible to use the pattern and motion
files generated from XaoS. The patch is in doc/mpeg_encode.patch. So if
you want to use these features (they are
Once you filled the mpeg.param file (see comments inside), you should render sequence using mpeg_encode [filename] and with luck you are done.
Pattern file Some other files are generated as well. A
MPEG sequence consist of these three frames. The
The
The
Using just P frames is generally not a good idea. It makes the file shorter,
but to jump into Nth frame of animation you need to
XaoS generates a recommended order of frames based on its knowledge of fractal motion. Situations where the screen doesn't move at all are rendered just from P frames (since jumping is usually not required here); in situations where the screen changes completely (at least in XaoS's opinion) I frames are used and in other cases, a standard sequence IBBPBBPBBPBBP... is used.
If your encoder supports this, you should supply this pattern for encoding to squeeze out some bytes.
Motion vector files XaoS also generates a motion vector recommendation for the encoder. This is useful for encoding of B and P frames.If some objects on the screen are moving at a constant speed, motion vectors can store that speed, so no image needs to be saved to represent that change.
Calculating this motion vector is a very significant task. If you guess them well, you increase quality and reduce file size, which is always great. Calculation also takes lots of CPU and it is hard to get optimal vectors (it just takes too long).
XaoS knows how the fractals move, so it can calculate this vectors quite easily. XaoS saves this information into *.p and *.b files. (*.p are for P frames, *.b are for B frames). If your encoder supports this, you should provide this vector to increase quality. They are not exact (XaoS can make mistakes); the encoder should try to find its own vectors, then try XaoS's ones, and pick whichever is better.
This technique saves quite a lot of bytes in fast zooming/un-zooming animations (where images move more than 3 or 5 pixels per frame--since most programs look 10-20 pixels around each point for motion vectors).
To enable saving of motion vector files, add the option -rendervectors. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %controls
Basic controls By default the mouse buttons work in the following way:
This behavior can change. If you enable rotation, the first button is used for rotating fractals. Also, in fast Julia mode, the first button is used to change the seed.
If you don't have a middle button, press both buttons to enable emulation.
After few minutes of zooming you will probably exceed the precision and the fractals will get boring. If you are getting strange big rectangles on the screen, you probably reached the numeric limit: there is no way to avoid this except un-zoom back and choose a different area. It doesn't hurt so much, since you have zoomed approximately 64 051 194 700 380 384 times, so there are quite a lot of areas to explore. Algorithms with unlimited precision exist, but they are still too slow for real-time zooming.
The other possibility is that you have reached the iteration limit. The fractal is
calculated approximately, and in this case you need to increase number of
iterations used for approximation (and decrease the speed in the process).
This is done from the menu or using the arrow keys
An
This behavior can also change. With palette cycling enabled,
All other functions are available from the menu, which (in the default configuration) are displayed when you move the mouse to the top of the screen/window. It is useful to learn the shortcut keys, which are shown in gray next to the menu items they trigger. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %writehelp
How to write XaoS help files XaoS help is stored in the file help/xaos.hlp. It is divided into parts, each part being started by aIf you are writing documentation about some command in the XaoS function registry, use the same keyword as the name of the command in order to make context sensitive help work.
The following tags are supported:
I also taken care to make it easily extensible for future versions of XaoS so I hope there will not be many incompatibilities between various XaoS versions.
The format is a simple set of commands executed sequentially. XaoS does not provide any variables/cycles as usual scripting languages do, but future extension to full-blown Scheme should be easy since the format uses Scheme-like syntax. The syntax of every command is:
(command_name
where parameters are optional and separated by whitespace (an arbitrary number of spaces, tabs and newlines). The parameters can have the following types:
There is a complete description of all XaoS functions (with some examples) and an index of functions in the XaoS registry. You may particularly want to read about the animation functions. Also, the following functions are significant:
Example:
;configure everything for the first frame
(inistate)
(palette 1 1163254293 0) ;custom palette
(cycling #t) ;enable cycling
(cyclingspeed 7)
(maxiter 276) ;higher number of iterations
(range 3) ;default range for solid guessing
(usleep 1000000) ;second frame starts here
(moveview -1.8101154154614007889 -8.2687205907162041209E-05)
;just move the image
(usleep 1000000) ;third frame
(morphview -1.8101154154614007889 -8.2687205907162041209E-05
6.277210971069452361E-10 6.2772109785334669875E-10)
;10 seconds of zooming into selected
rectangle
(usleep 100000000)
The best way to learn XaoS command language is probably to read position files and modify them. For example, to create zooming animation from the original file:
(initstate)
(defaultpalette 0)
(formula 'mandel)
(view -1.64128273713 -5.50393226816E-05 9.69332308848E-08
9.69332308834E-08)
Just change the view command to morphview, and add usleep:
(initstate)
(defaultpalette 0)
(formula 'mandel)
(morphview -1.64128273713 -5.50393226816E-05 9.69332308848E-08
9.69332308834E-08)
(usleep 10000000)
The following code produces Julia morphing in the real axis:
(initstate)
(fastjulia #t)
(juliaseed -2 0)
(morphjulia 2 0)
(usleep 2000000)
And following is the ``rotozooming'' animation:
(initstate)
(fastrotate #t)
(morphview -1.64128273713 -5.50393226816E-05 9.69332308848E-08
9.69332308834E-08)
(morphangle 300)
(usleep 10000000)
(wait)
(fastrotate #f)
XaoS gallery I plan to make a gallery of animations and position files on the XaoS home-page, so please send any nice animations and images you created using XaoS to the mailing list or upload them to our website. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %drivers Platform-specific documentation XaoS is portable and works on many different platforms. Since not all platforms are exactly the same, there are some differences between the behavior of XaoS on different platforms. Here is documentation about each specific port.
The Mac OS X port of XaoS strives to provide a Mac-like experience, while retaining compatibility with other platforms. Some Mac-specific details are outlined below.
Zooming Since most Macs have one button mice, the middle and right buttons are emulated with modifier keys. This means there are multiple ways to perform basic zooming operations:However, XaoS also has its own long-standing tradition of cross-platform keyboard shortcuts. These keyboard shortcuts are also displayed in the menus inside parentheses. For example, the menu item "Autopilot (a)" means that you can press a (with no modifier keys) to activate Autopilot. All of these traditional XaoS shortcuts do not use modifier keys, so they do not conflict with any standard Mac OS X shortcuts.
In some cases, the same function may be performed with both a traditional XaoS shortcut and a Mac OS X-specific shortcut. You can choose whichever one is more comfortable for you.
Full Screen Mode The Mac OS X port supports a full screen mode. To enter it, selectTo turn on output to Videator, select
The Mac OS X driver was written by J.B. Langston, 2006-2008. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %aa
AA-lib driver The AA driver is currently the most advanced and portable driver for XaoS. It is based on AAlib--a high quality ASCII-art library developed by the AA-project. (see http://aa-project.sf.net)It is a fully featured XaoS driver for text mode displays. It supports 256 colors and the mouse where possible.
It also has some extended features available from the UI menu:
The AA-lib driver also provides the full set of standard AA-lib's command line options. You may use them to tune parameters like gamma correction, and so on. See xaos -help or the AA-lib documentation for details.
The AA driver was written by Jan Hubicka, 1997. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %dos
DOS driver This is a fully featured driver for DJGPP and allegro. It supports many VGA modes, VESA 1.0--3.0, VBE/AF, S3 and some other cards.The following problems may occur:
The most famous VESA emulating program is Scitech Display Doctor. It has support for many videocards and is quite reliable. It's disadvantage is that it is shareware and works for only 30 days. You might also look on ftp.simtel.net, where there are many VESA emulation packages such as s3vbe or the new FreeBe project at http://www.talula.demon.co.uk
DOS driver was written by Jan Hubicka, 1997. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %ggi
GGI driver GGI stands for General Graphics Interface. Part of this project is to develop libggi, a portable graphics library, and XaoS's GGI driver uses that. It is experimental, since the API of libggi is not stabilized yet. There are some problems with keyboard handling--the shift key doesn't work yet.Everything else might work well, but there are no guarantees. It is alpha quality software.
GGI driver was written by Jan Hubicka, 1998. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %plan9
Plan9 driver Plan9 is a very nice small operating system by the authors of Unix at Bell Labs. It is very incompatible with other operating systems; even the C compiler and header files are different, but XaoS should work well there (even on the limited free demo installation without any POSIX compatibility stuff)There are a few limitations: the file selector and image saving don't work. You can save position files and then later render them on the other OS, or save screenshots.
Plan9 terminals also don't provide any way to catch the arrow keys, so you can't use them. Use the mouse to navigate in the menus. Also, getting the screen resolution is impossible, so use -pixelwidth and -pixelheight instead of -screenwidth and -screenheight.
By default XaoS changes the colormap. This will collide with other colorful programs like Mortha. You can disable this behavior using -nopalette switch, but this will slow down XaoS.
Plan9 driver was written by Jan Hubicka, 1997. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %SVGAlib
SVGAlib driver This is a driver for Linux SVGAlib. I really like this driver, because I much prefer full screen zooming instead of a small 320x320 window in X11. It was one of the first drivers for XaoS and is fully featured. The following problems can occur:
SVGAlib driver was written by Jan Hubicka, 1997. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %win32
Win32 driver This is a driver for Windows 9x and NT. It is new since version 3.1 and because of some oddities of Windows API it may be rather unstable. Please report all bugs. In case of problems you could use the DOS version of XaoS instead.The driver should work in all bit depths, but 16 color mode is not natively supported by the XaoS engine. XaoS internally works in 32k colors and the result is converted to 16 colors by Windows. Because Windows conversion routines are slow and ugly, the result is slow and ugly. Please configure your display to another bit depth to ``solve'' this problem.
Use -size WIDTHxHEIGHT command line option to change the default window size.
This driver also maps to native Windows look and feel. There is a small problem with combo boxes in dialogs. They are expected to give you a choice between a few strings. The keyboard controls (changing choice by arrow keys) work, but mouse selection is broken. If you know how to solve this bug, please let me know.
XaoS is a UNIX application and has many command line options. Some features are not available from the GUI. Because Windows applications can't have normal output, most of the critical messages are displayed in message boxes, but some longer messages are omitted. The most significant omission is the help about command line options that you can find in doc/cmdopts.txt.
One thing that might be confusing is that animation rendering mode doesn't display anything, but only renders images. Start the rendering, and a message box will inform you that XaoS is entering the calculation loop. Relax and wait for the message box signaling the end of the loop.
Note that XaoS also supports the DirectX API.
Win32 driver was written by Jan Hubicka, Jan Olderdissen and Pavel Tzekov, 1999. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %dX-window
DirectX windowed driver This is a driver for Windows 9x and NT. It is new since version 3.1 and because of some oddities of Windows API and kludges in DirectX it may be rather unstable. Please report all bugs. In case of problems you could use the DOS version of XaoS instead.The DirectX driver is an alternative to the windowed win32 driver. If you have DirectX installed, this driver is used by default. It has almost the same behaviour as the win32 driver so please read its documentation for more details. The only difference should be the display speed.
The driver supports only hicolor and truecolor modes. There is no support for 256 and 16 color modes because of palette collision problems. The win32 driver will be used in these cases by default, so this should cause no problems.
If you are experiencing problems with this driver, you might want to use the win32 driver by default; to do this, use the -driver win32 command line option.
DirectX driver was written by Jan Hubicka, Jan Olderdissen and Pavel Tzekov, 1999. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %dX-fullscreen
DirectX fullscreen driver This is da river for Windows 9x and NT. It is new since version 3.1 and because of some oddities of Windows API and kludges in DirectX it may be rather unstable. Please report all bugs. In case of problems you could use the DOS version of XaoS instead.This driver allows the Windows port of XaoS to run in full screen mode. The driver supports 256, 65536 and 16777216 color modes (24bpp and 32bpp) in all resolutions supported by DirectX. You can change graphics mode by pressing the = key (or by using the UI/Resize menu). If the selected mode is not supported, the driver will restore the previous setting.
Use the -mode WIDTHxHEIGHTxDEPTH (like -mode 640x480x16) command line option to change graphics mode.
If you want to start XaoS in DirectX, use the -driver dX-fullscreen option.
See the Win32 driver documentation for some more Windows releated information.
DirectX driver was written by Jan Hubicka, Jan Olderdissen and Pavel Tzekov, 1999. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %BeOS DirectWindow WindowScreen
BeOS support XaoS has pretty advanced support for BeOS R4. It works on both PowerPC and Intel platforms, supports multithreading, the clipboard, file dragging, has native look and feel and can work as an image translator from XaoS files to images.The first version of the BeOS driver was written by Jens Kilian and later extended by Jan Hubicka.
Installation
You can start the installation script to do everything for you. If you want something special, read this section.
In order for XaoS to work you need to keep the executable together with its data files (help, examples, catalogs and the tutorials directory)
When first started, XaoS registers two new mime types called image/x-xaos-position for XaoS Position Files and video/x-xaos-animation for XaoS Animation Files, registers icons for them and sets itself as default application.
Available display drivers
XaoS supports following drivers:
By default, XaoS starts in windowed mode and uses the application server for output. You could change the driver to DirectWindow to use direct access to video RAM. Note that this mode is slower in most cases, and not supported by some videocards.
The BeOS driver by default chooses the most similar bitmap supported by XaoS to achieve best and fastest results. In the UI menu you can change this default choice to another one if you wish. Also you can ask the BeOS and DirectWindow to resize to fullscreen mode.
XaoS also supports real fullscreen mode using the BWindowScreen API. To switch XaoS to this driver, use the UI menu. If you want to use this mode by default, use the -driver WindowScreen command line option.
This driver differs a lot from windowed ones. It use direct access to the video card, allowing you to change video mode. Also, the 256 color mode can access the palette, so it is not dithered like the windowed mode. Because BeOS can't do GUI in fullscreen mode, XaoS uses its own toolkit. I hope you will feel confortable in it.
XaoS as translator
You should be able to open XaoS files in graphics applications such as ShowImage or ArtPaing. In Preferences you can find the DataTranslations program, that can be used to set the size, type and DPI of the resulting image. Also antialiasing can be enabled.
Note that
If the translator doesn't work, ensure that you have a link to the XaoS executable in /boot/beos/system/add-ons/Translators/. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %X11
X11 driver This was the first driver done for XaoS. It supports many visuals, shared colormaps and MitSHM extension.Bugs/limitations:
X11 driver was written by Jan Hubicka and Thomas Marsh, 1997. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %DGA
DGA driver This is the driver for DGA (Direct Graphics Architecture) extension used by XFree86 X servers. It is pretty new so it could be buggy.Bugs/limitations:
DGA driver was written by Jan Hubicka, 1999. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %tutorial
XaoS tutorial This is a brief introduction to the basic XaoS features. How to zoom The main advantage of XaoS is that after a few seconds' delay to calculate the first image, you may choose any point with the mouse and press the
In case you think that the default
The autopilot also has some additional features. It turns back when the zoomed picture stops being interesting, and is able to spot when it's zoomed into a really boring part (or has reached the limit of floating point numbers) and restart zooming from the top.
Various fractal formulae XaoS also supports formulae other than the Mandelbrot set. You may change
On keys 1 to 5 are
On key 6 is a fractal called
On key 7 is the
On key 8 is a fractal called
On key 9 is
On key 0 is
With keys SHIFT-A you can display a fractal called
With keys SHIFT-B you can display a fractal called
With keys SHIFT-C you can display a fractal called
With keys SHIFT-D you can display the
The rest of the built-in fractals are accessible through an other menu, but you can still use the hotkeys.
On SHIFT-E is a fractal called
On SHIFT-F is a fractal called
On SHIFT-G is a fractal called
On SHIFT-H is the
On SHIFT-I and SHIFT-J are the
The next 3 fractals are famous classic fractals.
On SHIFT-K is the
On SHIFT-L is the
On SHIFT-M is the
Out-coloring modes To make fractals yet more interesting, more coloring modes for points outside the set are provided. ``Classical coloring mode'' uses the number of iterations that the orbit required to escape to (nearly) infinity. You can change this mode from the
Those cryptic names for coloring modes are mathematical formulae, where
In-coloring mode In-coloring mode is similar to out-coloring, except that it changes how things inside the set are displayed. This can also be changed from the
You might also want to see the tutorial on
Like the coloring modes, planes have cryptic names. You guessed it, they're mathematical formulae. Here mu means coordinates in the normal complex plane. If you have coordinates in 1/mu plane, and you need coordinates in the a complex plane (to calculate the Mandelbrot set) you simply use the coordinates as mu. Lambda is another plane that can be converted to mu using a similar formula.
Mandelbrot/Julia switching Most of the fractals displayed by XaoS (currently all of them) have two forms: Mandelbrot and Julia. Every point in a Mandelbrot set has its own Julia set. To see more about this correspondence, try the tutorial on
In the Mandelbrot mode, you can get a corresponding Julia by moving the mouse to an interesting point and pressing M. To get back press M again. Some fractals (Barnsley and phoenix) are already in their Julia versions, because the Mandelbrot ones are boring. But by pressing M in such fractal you should get the Mandelbrot version, and by choosing another point as the base point and pressing M again you should get a completely different fractal. The most interesting points for Julia sets are at the boundaries of the Mandelbrot set. Most of the Julias inside or outside the set are boring.
Fast Julia preview mode Fast Julia mode is a quick way to find a point to use as a base for the Julia set.. Just press J and a small Julia set will be displayed in the top left corner. Then move the mouse around with button 1 depressed, and the Julia for the point the mouse is over will be automatically generated. Palette If you think that the default XaoS colors are ugly or you are just bored by them you can change it by pressing P. XaoS will automatically generate random palettes. Many of them look ugly, so press P again to get another one until you find one you like.
Filters Many interesting effects are done by post-calculation filters. XaoS has filters that do everything from embossing, through motion-blurring, right through to turning the fractal into a stereogram. To enable them use the filter menu or press E.
Palette cycling This is a very old trick that makes the Mandelbrot set a little flashier. You may enable or disable it using Y. In the truecolor modes you need to enable the palette emulator filter first. This is done via the E key, or from the filter menu.
Changing number of iterations To calculate fractals perfectly, you need an infinite number of iterations. XaoS does just the first few of them, so after lots of zooming you may get into a place that looks quite boring, and the boundaries of the set are rounded, without any interesting details. This can be changed by changing the number of iterations:
Press and hold arrow right and wait until iterations are high enough. This may slow down calculation much. To reduce number of iterations press arrow left.
Changing resolution XaoS usually starts in a low resolution (320x200 or thereabouts) to make calculations faster. If you have a fast computer or you need to save bigger .gif images, you may change the resolution. This can be done by pressing = in the full screen drivers, or simply by resizing the XaoS window. Changing driver XaoS usually has more than one driver available. You may change it on the fly in case you want a different one. For example, XaoS started in X11 can be switched at runtime to use the AA driver. This can be done from the UI menu.This action is bit dangerous, because XaoS can crash during initialization if there is some problem with initialization; XaoS tries to initialize a new driver, and if it fails it attempts to return back to the original. Sometimes this is impossible, and all XaoS can do is terminate..
Other features XaoS has many other features, but they don't fit into this tutorial. Most of them are available from the menu, so you can experiment with them. You might also want to see the
This function lets you include another file in your script. It works similarly
to #include in C or load in Scheme.
The file is searched for in the same directory as the current source file.
Lines can be drawn in
The color of the line should be specified by the color command.
You might draw an arbitrary number of lines and, later, morph them. Each line is
identified by a unique numeric key; the current key can be set using linekey.
Commands for changing lines operate on the line with the current key.
(Lines drawn in sequence have consecutive numbers.)
For example:
(color 'red)
Creates line morphing to rectangle.
Draw line between two points.
keyword specifies type of coordinates and should be one of the
following: `fractal, `screen or `scaled.
This function also increases the line key.
Morph current line to given coordinates.
keyword specifies type of coordinates and should be one of the
following: `fractal, `screen or `scaled.
The line will start moving at the next timing command, and reach the
final position before the end of it.
This function also increases the line key.
This function has the same functionality as morphline, but it doesn't
increase the line key, and touches the line with the previous key. This is useful when
you want to move a just-drawn line--you don't need to set linekey back.
Set current line key.
Clear current line. This function also increases the line key.
Clear all displayed lines. Lines can also be cleared using the
clearscreen or display commands available from the Misc menu.
(view 0 0 1 1)
Will do a 5 second long unzooming animation.
This function is almost identical to function view.
It expects that the view will be changed only slightly, so recalculation is done
with ANIMATE priority. This means that dynamic resolution is used by
default.
Viewport is selected by the center and two radiuses (real and imaginary). See
view for more information.
The keystring is used to select what morphing you want to control. It is one of
the following:
Viewport is selected by the center and two radiuses (real and imaginary). See
view for more information.
This function can easily be used for creating zooming/unzooming animations using position files.
This is an example position file generated by XaoS:
(initstate)
By replacing the view command with morphview and
adding usleep you can create a zooming animation:
(initstate)
A simple animation morphing Julia seed in the X axis:
(initstate)
A simple ``rotozooming'' animation:
(initstate)
The functions for zooming/unzooming were created mainly for recording
animations. In manually created animation files, it is easier to use
morphview.
The speed of zooming should be controlled by the function speed
or in a more exact way by maxstep and speedup.
Start unzooming from the area specified by zoomcenter.
This function waits for a given amount of time (in usec) before processing
the next command. The screen is recalculated and displayed at the beginning of
usleep if necessary necessary. The remaining time is spent in waiting or
performing animation.
This function's behavior is very similar to usleep,
but the time is calculated from the number of letters currently displayed
onscreen. If you want to wait just long enough for the user to read the subtitle,
use this function. The user can alter the replay speed as desired using
letterspersec. This value can be changed during
replay with the arrow keys.
Wait until the image is complete. You should always use this function after
zooming or unzooming when dynamic resolution is in use. This ensures that
the image calculation will be complete so the user can see the result before
the animation continues. It may also be useful in combination with filters like
motion blur.
This function deadlocks if used with animation functions; don't
do that.
Load a XaoS position file (*.xpf).
See the format description for more information.
Save current state to a XaoS position file (*.xpf). This file is
human-readable, and can easily be improved by hand after saving, or used as
a base for animations.
See the format description for more information.
e
Toggle recording to a XaoS animation file (*.xaf). This file is
human-readable, and can easily be improved by hand after recording.
See the format description for more information.
From the scripting language, (record #t) enables recording, and
(record #f) disables it.
Replay a XaoS animation file (.xaf).
Save current state to an image file. This file is in .png (portable
network graphics) format, which can be read by many applications varying from
graphics programs all the way to Web browsers.
This function needs an external library called libpng. If the library
wasn't available during compilation, this function is unavailable too.
Please see INSTALL for more information about obtaining libpng
and recompiling XaoS.
Choose random .xpf file from the examples directory and
load it.
You might use it as the starting point for next exploration.
Save current configuration to ~/.xaosrc (under Unix) or xaos.cfg
(under DOS and Windows). XaoS automatically reloads the configuration from this
file when it starts.
Quit XaoS.
Set the current fractal formula. keyword should be one of the
following:
Most fractals rendered by XaoS can be represented as Mandelbrot sets or Julias.
Each point in the Mandelbrot set has its own Julia set. To learn more about
this correspondence, see the tutorial on the
This function switches between Mandelbrot and Julia representations. When
switching to Julia, you need to set the seed--a point selected from the
Mandelbrot set.
If you run this function from the menu, you are prompted for the Julia seed
as a number. Often, this can be clumsy, and it would be easier to specify a
point with the mouse pointer. If you hit the M key instead of
using the menu, the current mouse position is used.
Good seedpoints lie at the boundaries of the Mandelbrot set; other seeds
usually generate quite a boring fractal. You can also explore various seeds
at high speed using the Fast Julia mode.
Not all fractals have Julias, but XaoS can generate fake Julia sets for
those that do not, which use some Julia-like modification of the formula;
so this function is currently usable for all fractal types.
This function is used to enable/disable julia mode in animation files.
Select the current julia seed.
Perturbation is a simple trick which changes the point at which orbits start.
Traditionally zero is used, but other values can generate interesting
results too.
On enabling this function from the menu, you will be asked for a complex
number specifying the perturbation. It is a toggle; selecting it again
resets the perturbation to zero without prompting.
It can be used to specify a complex number representing a point on the screen.
If you hit the B key instead of using the menu, the current mouse
position is used. This too is a toggle, so B again will disable
perturbation by setting it to zero.
This function only has an effect for certain formulae (like the
Mandelbrot set) and only then in Mandelbrot mode.
This is the scripting-language variation of the perturbation function. Instead
of toggling, you always specify the perturbation to use. Use 0 0 to disable
perturbation.
Bailout is the value which is checked for each point of
the orbit if the point is far enough
from the complex zero point in the current iteration.
If the point is far enough, then the iteration immediately
stops and the starting point on the screen will be
painted with a given colour, depending on the fractal
type and many other settings.
For the Mandelbrot set
this value is 4. Other fractal types usually
have the same bailout value. For most fractals many bailout values
give more or less similar output. E.g., for the second order
Mandelbrot set one can prove that the sequence |z| (z:=z^2+c) tends to
infinity if and only if |z|>2 for some element z of this sequence.
In XaoS program, Bailout value is the square of this 2, i.e. you can change this
to any value greater than 2 for similar results.
Other fractal types may use other bailout values. The default
is 4 for each types.
Set your current viewpoint in the fractal. This function is useful when you have
found some interesting coordinates somewhere (on a web page, perhaps) and you
want to see that position in XaoS.
In the dialog you will be asked for the
The center specifies the point which is displayed at the center of the screen.
The radius is the radius of a circle around this point; XaoS will size the image
so that this circle only just fits on the screen. The angle gives the rotation of
the image in degrees.
People specify fractal coordinates in many ways. Some people use the coordinates
of the upper-left and lower-right visible points, specifying the coordinates as four
numbers , , , .
To set the same viewpoint in XaoS, set the real portion of the center to
, the imaginary part of center to , and
the radius to the greater of and .
Other programs use a zoom factor instead of a radius. For these, you can set the
radius to .
This function is used to set the visible area of fractal in animation files.
It doesn't let let you specify the angle, (for that, see the separate function
angle), but lets you specify an ellipse instead of a circle. You can
specify both a real and an imaginary radius, so you have better control over the
area that will be visible. XaoS will size the image so that the ellipse only just
fits on the screen.
Set the rotation angle in degrees. By default this causes recalculation of the
screen. You can enable the fast rotation mode, which lets you
rotate the screen without recalculation; but it slows down other things, so
don't forget to disable it later.
This function resets most of XaoS's values to their defaults. It is useful when
you get lost and want to start from the beginning. It should also be used
as the first command of every animation file, to ensure that the file is always
played with the same settings in effect.
All fractals displayed by XaoS are functions with a complex parameter.
They can be be displayed in the normal complex plane where the x
coordinate is the real part of the number and the y is imaginary;
but they can also be displayed differently:
In the scripting language, the planes are numbered as follows:
Areas inside the set are usually filled in black, but this is only a convention;
you could color them in differently to make the fractal look more interesting.
The only method available to make areas inside the set visible is to display
the value of the latest orbit as the value of each pixel.
The
XaoS has many different ways to show that value. The cryptic names of the modes
are mathematical formulae, where
Outcoloring modes are similar to incoloring modes, but indicate
how to display the areas outside the set instead. As with incoloring modes, the
value of the latest orbit can be used to determine the color of each pixel, but the
default is to use the number of iterations needed for the value at that point to become
recognisably divergent as the color.
The
The cryptic names of the modes are mathematical formulae, where
In the scripting language, the outcoloring mode is specified by one of the following
integers:
Truecolor coloring modes are similar to incolor and
outcolor coloring modes; but instead of using a palette,
they directly calculate the red, green and blue components of the color.
This lets you display more parameters at once, and produces interesting
and often attractive results. On 8bpp displays you need to enable the
palette emulator filter first to see anything, amd the quality
won't be so good, as far fewer colors are available per parameter.
The
The cryptic names of the modes are always three mathematical formulae (one for
each color component), where
To enable inside/outside truecolor coloring mode in the scripting language,
set incoloring/outcoloring value to 10 (truecolor coloring
mode) before (or after) calling intcoloring or outtcoloring.
In the scripting language, the coloring mode is specified by one of the following
integers:
XaoS has a solid guessing optimization: if all corners of a rectangle have
the same color, it assumes that the whole rectangle is a solid colored block,
and doesn't calculate points inside the rectangle. This optimization saves
lots of calculation, but sometimes introduces errors. This value alters the
maximum size of the rectangle that can be guessed at one time. The default
value is 3; use 0 to disable the optimization.
Periodicity checking is one way to speed up the calculation. Areas inside the
set always need maxiter iterations to determine that
the point is probably inside the set (while it is rare for areas outside to
need anywhere near that much). Often the orbital trajectory falls into a
periodic, repeating cycle; if that can be detected, the calculation can be
stopped early, as there's no way that the orbit can ever leave the cycle
again (hence it cannot diverge, hence the point must be inside the set).
Implementating this method efficiently is quite problematic. It slows down
the cases where cycles are not found, because cycle-checking is quite hard work
and has to take place for all points, even those that don't become cyclic.
Because of the inexactness of floating-point calculations, the cycles are
never exact, so you need to use an error value. Higher error values mean that
cycles will be detected sooner, while lower error values increase the
exactness of the calculation. Higher values can introduce serious errors,
especially at the front of the Mandelbrot set. XaoS detects this automatically
and corrects for it in most cases, but sometimes it might be wrong. Also,
other optimizations in XaoS (such as boundary tracing) don't give this method
much of a chance to run, since areas inside the set are usually not
calculated at all.
That's why the advantages of this optimization are questionable. You should
probably experiment with enabling and disabling it. Sometimes XaoS is faster
with this enabled, sometimes when disabled. Also, this method works only
when incoloring methods are disabled, and only for some
fractal types (some fractal types, e.g. newton, don't have any concept of
an area `inside the set' at all.)
The tutorial chapter ``
When the fractal set is calculated, a orbital trajectory is examined for each
point. If the orbit diverges to infinity, the point is outside the set.
Otherwise, the point is inside the set. For exact calculations, you need to
know the entire orbital trajectory, which is infinitely long for areas inside
the set, so fractals cannot be calculated exactly. By default, XaoS calculates
at most 170 positions (iterations) and then gives up; if the point is still
inside the bail-out value, it guesses that the point is inside the set.
When zoomed into a detailed area, especially one close to the set boundary,
this value could become too low, and the fractal will become boring.
You might try increasing this value if you want to get the image interesting
again; but this necessarily slows down the calculation at the same time.
The tutorial chapter ``
By default, changing the seed for the Julia set requires recalculation of the
image (which is quite slow). It's a nice effect to change the seed smoothly and
show the Julia set morphing as the seed changes. XaoS has a special algorithm
which can calculate such morphings in realtime. It is very inexact, but it is
good enough for a fast preview.
If you want to select a good seedpoint, enable fast Julia mode and find a
nice place by dragging with the first mouse button depressed; then change to
the Julia mode to see the exact image.
XaoS performs many optimizations, but fairly often this is not enough. In order
to keep a high framerate, XaoS automatically lowers the resolution of the image,
increasing it when there is time for more calculation. This feature is enabled by
default when animating, but you might also like to enable it for new images
(which makes the image `come into focus' when it is recalculated from scratch for
whatever reason), or disable it completely if you don't like it.
In the scripting languge, the keyword should be one of the following:
The user interface provides two rotation modes--
This function is used to enable and disable fast rotation mode.
Use this function to enable continuous rotation. In the scripting language you
can also use morphangle to get an outwardly similar
but more controllable effect.
Specify the speed of continuous rotation, in degrees per second.
Negative values are allowed and rotate anticlockwise.
This command is used to enable or disable filters.
The
This filter is a standard edge detection algorithm; solid areas are filled
in black. Some fractals look very interesting with this filter (and some
areas of some fractals just look like noise). This version of the filter produces
relatively wide lines, so is useful at higher resolutions. The filter
edge detection2 makes thinner lines, for the low resolution modes.
This filter is a standard edge detection algorithm; solid areas are filled
in black. Some fractals look very interesting with this filter (and some
areas of some fractals just look like noise). This version of the filter produces
relatively tight lines, so is useful at lower resolutions. The filter
edge detection makes thinner lines, for the high resolution modes.
The starfield filter generates random stars whose density depends on the
iteration count. Choose your favorite spiral fractal and enable this filter
to get a Grand Design spiral galaxy :)
Fractal images are good as a base for random dot stereograms. In
case you don't know what these are, please point your browser to
Google or another search engine and find some articles about such
images, because learning to read such images takes some effort. They
make it possible to generate three dimensional images on a normal monitor
without any additional hardware, by exploiting bugs in the human brain
(although you need two working eyes, and some people never learn to
see them; they can simply ignore this feature).
XaoS is able to generate these images in animations, so you may use
all normal XaoS functions (except palette changing and palette rotation,
which makes no sense applied to a stereogram). To make the animation yet
more exciting, XaoS emulates ``falling'' into the set; while you zoom in,
your distance from the set drops and drops--but you never hit it; when the
set reaches the level of your monitor, the distance is changed again so
you are far away.
To make this work right, XaoS needs to know the
By default XaoS expects my 15" monitor (29.0cm x 21.5 cm). Another
cause of problems is the virtual screen supported by some windowed
environments (like some X servers) that makes a program think that the
resolution is higher than it actually is, and you see only part of
this extra-large screen.
The worst thing you could possibly do is to run full-screen XaoS in some
graphical windowing system (OS/2 on top of Windows or Wine on top of Linux,
perhaps) where XaoS can't tell the real size of its window at all. In such
cases, it's normally better (not to mention faster) to run XaoS natively,
rather than under such an emulation layer.
The following command line options are provided to specify sizes:
These options are used by some other parts of XaoS as well, so you should
use them even when you don't want to see stereograms. You should probably
write a small starting script (or alias, or shortcut; whatever your environment
uses) that passes the correct parameters to XaoS.
If the window is
If you still can't see the stereograms, it could be that the fractal, or your eye,
is deformed. A deformed fractal can be caused by your specifying your monitor size
wrongly. Visual problems that damage depth perception, as well as problems like
astigmatism, can make it impossible to see stereograms at all.
The interlace filter halves the horizontal resolution, and in each frame alternates
between drawing only the even and only the odd lines. This speeds up the
calculation, and in higher resolutions produces a motion-blur-like effect.
Motion blur mixes the current frame with previous ones to produce a
motion-blur effect. It might be rather slow in 16bpp truecolor modes. The best
results can probably be seen in 8bpp modes, so you might want to enable the
palette filter first.
This is a standard emboss filter, as seen in programs such as the GIMP or
Photoshop. It produces especially nice results with the smooth
outcoloring mode.
XaoS can work in either palette or truecolor mode. Both modes
have advantages and disadvantages. Palette mode allows effects such as palette
rotation, while truecolor mode allows smoother incoloring
and outcoloring modes and the
truecolor coloring modes. If your display is truecolor, you
can enable this filter to get palette emulation (albeit not as cheaply as in
a real paletted mode).
Antialiasing is a technique to increase image quality by eliminating jagged
edges. XaoS calculates four values for each pixel (on the subpixel boundaries)
and uses the average of them for the pixel value.
This filter slows XaoS down a
XaoS can work in either palette or truecolor mode. Both modes
have advantages and disadvantages. Palette mode allows effects such as palette
rotation, while truecolor mode allows smoother incoloring
and outcoloring modes and the
truecolor coloring modes. If your display is 8bpp, you can enable
this filter to get truecolor emulation (but, obviously, not with as many colors
as a real truecolor display).
More information about filters
Change zooming speed, where 1 is the default, 2 means twice as fast, and so on.
In the scripting language you can use the following functions for better
control:
Selects the zooming/unzooming speed. The parameter specifies how much of the
range will be removed each twentieth of a second; 0 means nothing, 1 means
everything (the parameter obviously has to be less than 1).
Higher values mean faster zooming.
Speed of subtitles for the textsleep function.
The user can set this value to suit; it can also be changed with the left and
right arrow keys during animation replay.
To make XaoS yet more impressive, we made a special autopilot mode that
automatically drives into interesting boundaries of the set; you should
press A, play your favorite music, drink coffee and relax. I never
tried this but it should be really relaxing! Many pictures in the XaoS
gallery were discovered using the autopilot.
The autopilot also has some additional features. It backtracks if the
zoomed picture is not interesting anymore, and can detect when it's zoomed
into really a boring part of the fractal or reached the limit of floating
point arithmetic on the platform, and restart zooming from the top.
Recalculate current fractal. This should be used when the fractal on the
screen is strange because of error propagation caused by
solid guessing.
Interrupt current calculation.
Disable XaoS menus and dialogs. This function should be used by external GUI
programs; these manipulate XaoS via a pipe, so the internal GUI should be
disabled at the same time. See the hacker's manual (xaosdev.texinfo)
for more details.
Enable/disable status information. This displays some useful information
about the current fractal, such as viewpoint etc. (In low-resolution modes it
also almost completely obscures the current fractal...)
Enable/disable status line. This contains basic information such as how
much you are zoomed and the framerate.
You can invoke all XaoS functions using a simple command language reminiscent
of Scheme. This option lets you run a single command. If you want to run more
than one, you might want to use an XaoS animation file instead;
they are written in the same language.
Render an animation to image files. See How to encode video files
for more information.
Clear the screen. To display the fractal again, use display.
This function is mainly useful in tutorials and similar animations.
Display fractal. This functions reverses the effect of the clearscreen,
line drawing and text output functions.
Display the given text on the screen. This function is mainly useful in tutorials.
Text should be cleared by printing lots of spaces, or using the
clearscreen or display
functions. You might also want to use the textposition
function to select the part of the screen to display the text on.
To wait for the user to read the text, you can use the textsleep
function.
Example:
(clearscreen)
Change text and line color.
Select text position. The first keyword specifies the horizontal
position, the second the vertical position. The horizontal position should be
one of 'left, 'center, and 'right.
The vertical should be one of 'top, 'middle, and 'bottom.
This function is almost identical to the text function,
except that it uses message catalogs in the catalog directory to
translate messages into other languages. It should be used only in the multi-lingual
XaoS tutorials.
Display the main help page.
Draw text at the left side of the screen.
Draw text in the center of the screen.
Draw text at the right side of the screen.
Draw text at the top of the screen.
Draw text in the middle of the screen.
Draw text at the bottom of the screen.
Each escape time fractal has its own formula. XaoS supports the following
formulae:
The Mandelbrot set is the most famous escape time fractal ever. It has the
simple formula . See the
This fractal is a simple modification of the standard
Mandelbrot set formula, using instead of
.
Other derivations of the Mandelbrot set (Mandelbrot^4 and so on) use even
higher powers. See the
This is a less well-known fractal that Thomas discovered in Fractint.
It has an interesting shape when displayed in the alternative
planes. See the
This is Newton's approximation method for finding the roots of a polynomial. It
uses the polynomial and counts the number of iterations needed
to reach the approximate value of the root. See the
This fractal doesn't have Julia sets, but XaoS is able to generate Julia-like
sets which are also very interesting (they are sometimes called ``Nova
formulae'').
This is a formula by Michael Barnsley. It produces very nice crystalline Julia
sets. See the
This formula produces very nice Julia sets.
See the
This is a formula that comes from theoretical physics.
It is derived from the study of theoretical lattices in the context of magnetic
renormalization transformations.
See the
Create a default palette. In the scripting language, number specifies
how much the palette is shifted by.
Note that changing the palette in truecolor modes forces recalculation of
the whole screen. To avoid this, you can enable the
palette emulation filter first.
Create a random palette. XaoS will automatically pick one of its
palette-generation algorithms and create one.
Note that changing the palette in truecolor modes forces recalculation of
the whole screen. To avoid this, you can enable the
palette emulation filter first.
A custom palette lets you re-create some of the random palettes. The first value
specifies the algorithm, which should currently be one of the following:
Note that changing the palette in the truecolor modes forces recalculation of
the whole screen. To avoid this, you can enable the
palette emulation filter first.
Color cycling is an old and simple effect to animate fractals. The Mandelbrot
set looks particularly nice when color-cycled. On truecolor displays, color
cycling fails to initialize (since those displays don't have a palette).
You can enable palette emulation filter to make it possible.
In the user interface, colors can also be cycled in the opposite direction
with the ``
To control the cycling speed, you coan use arrow keys or the
``
The parameter specifies the number of skips per second. It can be negative to
cycle in the opposite direction.
Shift palette by the specified number of cells. This can be used to tune the
palette's position on the fractal. You can also use the
Shifting the palette on truecolor displays causes a recalculation of the screen.
To avoid this, you could use palette emulation filter.
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Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.
If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this
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The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate
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You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your
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necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names:
(signature of Ty Coon), 1 April 1989
Ty Coon, President of Vice
This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into
proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may
consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the
library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General
Public License instead of this License.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%end
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(morphline 'scaled 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.7)
(morphline 'scaled 0.7 0.3 0.7 0.7)
(usleep 1000000)
(morphview 0 0 2 2)
(usleep 5000000)
(defaultpalette 0)
(formula 'mandel)
(view -1.64128273713 -5.50393226816E-05 9.69332308848E-08
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(defaultpalette 0)
(formula 'mandel)
(morphview -1.64128273713 -5.50393226816E-05 9.69332308848E-08
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(usleep 10000000)
(fastjulia #t)
(juliaseed -2 0)
(morphjulia 2 0)
(usleep 2000000)
(fastrotate #t)
(morphview -1.64128273713 -5.50393226816E-05 9.69332308848E-08
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(morphangle 300)
(usleep 10000000)
(wait)
(fastrotate #f)
The
(textposition 'center 'middle)
(text "Welcome into my animation")
(textsleep)
(display)
The seed specifies a random seed for the palette; different seeds generate
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675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
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Copyright (C) 19yy (name of author)