FRACTINT
Robert P. Munafo, 2023 Aug 9.
FRACTINT is a popular computer program for viewing the Mandelbrot set and many other fractals. Begun in 1986 as "FRACT386" (itself a descendant of the earlier "DKMANDEL.ARC"), FRACTINT was the one of the first and remains one of the oldest examples of Free software maintained by a loose association of programmers and maintainers.
Fractint is notable for:
- using integer math for speed on non-FPU-equipped systems (a primary reason for its early success)
- having efficient high precision math capability — used to produce many views setting records for being deepest for their time
- supporting the use of arbitrary code "kernels" for defining recurrence relations and colouring schemes
In addition, FractINT implements most of the Speed Improvements and representation functions described here in mu-Ency. For example:
- Solid guessing in its default raster scan technique, by scanning at three different resolutions at the same time, with the lower-resolution scan always being a row or two ahead ahead of the higher-resolution scan, so that the latter can do the adjacency tests needed for the solid guessing speedup.
- Successive refinement is called "diffusion scan" within the
program, and is accessed by hitting x, d,
, or with PASSES=d on the command line.
- The Mariani/Silver algorithm, called "tesseral" or "super
solid-guessing", is similarly accessed with x, t,
or with PASSES=t on the command line.
revisions: 20080221 oldest on record; 20100921 expand description; 20230619 slight clarifications; 20230808 more features briefly described
From the Mandelbrot Set Glossary and Encyclopedia, by Robert Munafo, (c) 1987-2024.
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This page was written in the "embarrassingly readable" markup language RHTF, and was last updated on 2023 Aug 09.
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