Fractint for BeOS

This is an initial port of the classic fractal explorer program to the Be Operating System (BeOS). The current version is 0.02 and is based on the port to the X/Windows-system (XFractint) made by Ken Shirriff, which in turn is based on Fractint version 20.0.

Fractint is originally written for DOS and has some annoying limitations (e.g. only up to 256 colors are supported) and a rather out-of-fashion user-interface, but it contains an impressing number of different fractal types and it's possible to add own formulas.

Get it

• Source release (fractint-beos-src-0.02.tgz)
• Binary release (fractint-beos-bin-0.02.tgz)

Installing the binary package

You need to have some curses stuff installed to be able to run Fractint for BeOS. Get it from GeekGadgets or here. Unpack it in /boot/apps/GeekGadgets

• Unpack the fractint archive in some temporary directory.
• Run the install script install.sh. This will install a binary file as /boot/home/config/bin/fractint and some data files in /boot/home/config/etc/fractint/
• To uninstall, just remove the file and the directory.

Compiling the sources

You need to have the curses library installed and it has to be in your include and library paths. Get it at GeekGadgets Then just type make -f Makefile.beos

at the prompt. You will get a lot of warnings.

Bugs

• The palette isn't very good in bitmap-mode (e.g. bifurcaration)
• Zooming doesn't work very well (not att all in non-bitmap mode)
• stack/unstackwindow unsynced sometimes (for example when running saved command set twice after each other)

To do

• Keyboard navigation in graphics modes

Other fractal software for BeOS

A very cool fractal program for BeOS is XaoS. It doesn't have as many fractal types as Fractint, but is a lot faster and has many nice features. Try it, and be amazed!

Links

• The Fractint main page
• XaOS

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact me at ee@hernlabs.se