Xfractint is the Unix port of fractint, which runs under X. Fractint is an IBM PC program to generate fractals, and was written by the the Stone Soup Group. The Unix port was done by Ken Shirriff (shirriff@sprite.Berkeley.EDU). HOW TO RUN: If your distribution includes the directories xfmips, xfsparc, and xfalpha, you have the ready-to-run executables for the DECstation 5000, Sun Sparc, and Dec Alpha. To run, set the environment variable FRACTDIR to the appropriate directory: "setenv FRACTDIR /whatever/xfmips" (as appropriate), cd to the appropriate directory, and run "xfract". Note: you must have both the xfractint executable and the help file fractint.hlp. HOW TO COMPILE: To compile, do: make xfractint If you are compiling under SunOS, Ultrix, AIX, Linux, or HPUX, read the Makefile and uncomment the approprite lines. To find out what features are new in this version, look at the "versions" file. GETTING MORE FRACTAL FORMULAS: Dan Goldwater (daniel_goldwater@brown.edu) has a huge collection of .map, .par, etc. files called FracXtra. You can obtain it under the name FRACXTR5.ZIP from various sites such as The Graphics Alternative BBS, 510-524-2780 or anonymous ftp to wuarchive.wustl.edu in /mirrors/msdos/graphics. NOTES ON POTENTIAL PROBLEMS: Important: if you report a bug, _please_ specify what version of xfractint you are using. Xfractint won't compile unless your compiler handles function prototypes. You have the best chance of compiling xfractint if you use gcc. SunOS cc does not work. To check if your compiler handles prototypes, try compiling the following two line program: int foo(int bar); main() {} If you get line 1: syntax error at or near type word "int" then your compiler doesn't handle prototypes, so you won't be able to compile xfractint. (One person managed to use "unproto" from comp.sources.misc volume 26 to strip out the prototypes, so the standard Sun compiler would work. You can try this, but I'm not supporting it.) If you get "gcc: unrecognized option `-target'" when you compile, the problem is probably that you are using an old version of gcc (1.36). You need a newer version. If xfractint hangs in the title screen, the problem is probably that your display cannot update fast enough for the scrolling. The solution is to use the -slowdisplay flag. If you are using Openwindows and can't get xfractint to accept input, add to your .Xdefaults file: OpenWindows.FocusLenience: True To use all 256 colors, use the -private flag, discussed in the man page. If you cannot view the GIFs that xfractint creates, the problem is that xfractint creates GIF89a format and your viewer probably only handles GIF87a format. Run "xfractint gif87a=y" to produce GIF87a format. The program is a straight port from the IBM PC, and it thus uses the IBM style user interface. See the man page for more details, and a description of what to use for ctrl-pageup, etc. DOCUMENTATION: Running "make makedoc" will create a file fractint.doc, which contains the online documentation in ascii form. See fractsrc.doc for copyright information on fractint.