                                    >X a o S<

Last modification information:
$Header: /cvsroot/xaos/XaoS/doc/README,v 1.5 2003/01/23 17:15:39 kovzol Exp $

CREDITS:

        Original authors of XaoS are Jan Hubicka (jh@ucw.cz) and Thomas
	Marsh (tmarsh@tivoli.com).

	Many other people contributed to the project as well. Their list
	is too long to be included here. See doc/AUTHORS in the XaoS
	distribution.

INTRODUCTION:

	XaoS is a fast portable real-time interactive fractal zoomer. It
	displays the Mandelbrot set (among other escape time fractals)
	and allows you to zoom smoothly into the fractal. Various
	coloring modes are provided for both the points inside and
	outside the selected set. In addition, switching between Julia
	and Mandelbrot fractal types and displaying planes is provided.
	The first version was a poorly written Mandelbrot viewer by
	Thomas later modified by Jan to support high frame-rate 
	zooming. Other additions were later made including autopilot 
	(for those of you without drivers licenses), palette changing, 
	PNG saving, and fractal inversion.

SUPPORTED PLATFORMS (for now):

        UNIX LIKE:

	  X11 (8bpp pseudocolor 8,15,16,24,32 truecolor, StaticGray and 
	       StaticColor only, supports MITshm and DGA extension
	       of XFree86 servers)
          SVGAlib       (svgalib 1.2.10 or newer recomended)
	  AA-lib        (high quality ascii art)
	  GGI		(General graphics interface)

	OTHER OS (with native support):

	  BeOS (R4, both Intel and PowerPC, supports windowed and fullscreen
	        mode, native user interface, drag&drop, works as translator)
	  Macintosh (only version 2.1, displays with 8bit support only)
	  MS-DOS (DJGPP/Allegro - VESA 3.0/2.0/1.0, VBE/AF 8,15,16 and
	          32 bit depths, VGA - 320x200 and X modes,
		  resolutions 256x256-1200x1600, AAlib - approx. 50 
		  different text modes for VGA/MDA including dual 
		  monitor support)
	  OS/2      (320x200, VESA, XFree86 and many text modes)
	  plan9     (8 1/2 terminals)
	  Windows   Win32 and DirectX support, 8, 16, 24 and 32 bpp
	  	    displays, native user interface

	KNOWN TO WORK ALSO AT:

	  Hurd
	  Amiga    (256 workbench displays only, using Xlib emulation)

	All platforms with at least ansi C compatible compiler and text output

REQUIREMENTS:

	XaoS uses floating point math for its calculations. This may be
	slow on some computers. The program was developed on a Pentium
	running at 120 MHz, but it can work quite well (20fps) on
	486Dx/2. I also received nice letters from users using XaoS at
	386/40 or so. Coprocessor is _REALLY_ required. The faster
	computer is better so Alpha/600MHZ recommended.

	To compile XaoS you need ANSI compliant compiler with _GOOD_ 
	optimizations. Unix version uses configure script. Other 
	platforms uses different ways. GNU CC is highly recommended. 
	Graphics drivers usually have some additional requirements. 
	(For example Xlib for X11, DJGPP and Allegro for DOS port.) Also
	fast malloc/free routines are recommended because they are
	called quite often (10 times per frame). For full featured XaoS
	(with image saving code) you also need zlib and libpng.

FEATURES:

	o Fast smooth interactive realtime zooming. Even on a 486!
	o 14 fractal formulas:
		Mandelbrot power 2 - Mandelbrot power 6
		octo, Barnsley (2), Newton (2), Phoenix, Magnet (2)
	o Autopilot
	o [NEW] nice user interface, native UI for BeOS and Windows
	o [NEW] context sensitive help
	o bitmap, 8bpp with palette, fixedcolor, grayscale and
	  arbitary truecolor (16, 24 or 32bpp) support
	o Three algorithms for random palettes
	o Saving to PNG files
	o Saving/restoring current possition
	o Animation save/replay
	o [NEW] rendering of animation sequences, with support for MPEG motion
	  vector guessing and frame type choice.
	o Animated tutorials:
	        Introduction to fractals
		Features overview
		[NEW] Math behind fractals
		Whats new
	  Supported languages for tutorials:
	        English
		Espanhol
		Deutsch
		Francais
		Cesky
		Hungarian
	o 10 outcoloring modes + 10 incoloring modes
	o 10 true-color coloring modes
	o Boundary trace and solid guessing algorithms for fast image
	  calculation
	o Periodicity checking
	o Unrolled calculation loops
	o Realtime image rotation
	o More than 50 examples
	o An AA driver that provides high quality ascii art
	  rendering at many platforms
	  (see AA-project homepage at http://aa-project.sf.net)
	o Both Mandelbrot and Julia forms of fractals
	o Fast Julia preview (now for all formulas)
	o Special image stretching algorithm for fast zooming
	  now reeaches 150 FPS on pentium 130 in fullscreen
	  320x200 mode
	o Many supported platforms including text mode drivers
	o Zoom up to 64051194700380384 times
	o Unzooms more than 1267966761981568116729735090176 times
	o Color cycling
	o Dynamic resolution (now really improved)
	o Fast Julia browsing mode
	o Supports non-standard monitor sizes
	o SMP support
	   o POSIX threads API
	   o plan9
	   o BeOS
	o post calculation filters:
	   o Motion blur
	   o Random dot stereograms in animation
	   o Interlace filter
	   o Two edge detection filters
	   o Starfield generator
	   o Emboss
	   o Palette emulation filter
	   o [NEW] Antialiasing
	o Dithering on devices w/o user defined palette
        o Internationalization	

FTP:
	XaoS comes in various files:
	XaoS-3.1.tar.gz		sources
	XaoS*.rpm		Red-hat packages
	XaoS*.deb		Debian packages
	xaos31s.zip		Sources in zip format for DOS users
	xaos31b.zip		.exe file for DOS
	xaos31-BeOS-R4I.zip	BeOS R4 package for intel
	xaos31-BeOS-R4PPC.zip	BeOS R4 package for intel
	XaoS31-OS2.zip		.exe file for OS/2
	Macxaos_2.2.sea.hqx     Macintosh distribution
	xaos31.lzh		Amiga binary. Note that this
				file is uploaded only to aminet.

	All can be found at the SourceForge site:
        http://xaos.sf.net

HOME-PAGE:

        Current homepage is http://xaos.sf.net.

INSTALL:

	Installation methods are described in the file "INSTALL".

USAGE:

	Since version 2.0 XaoS have lots of command line options. They
	depend on its configuration, available drivers etc. See xaos -h
	for full help. Usually more than one driver is available. After
	startup XaoS tries to auto-detect the best one. For example in
	GNU/Linux case tests driver in following order:
	
	  SVGAlib
	  X11
	  AA
	  GGI
	  curses
	  
	If you want to force text display instead of graphics you may
	use -driver curses. Use xaos -list for list of all available
	drivers.

	Once XaoS started, you may see animated tutorial by pressing 'H'
	twice or read help (by pressing 'H' once).

THANKS TO:

	Unknown Samorai from Brazil
		- for $20 (your email doesn't work)
	Stanislav "XaoS" Mikes
		- for the name of our program
	Borislav Deianov
		- for sharing ideas
	Isaac Newton
		- for discovering his method
	Benoit B. Mandelbrot
		- for ordering the Julia sets
	Richard M. Stallman
		- for GNU
	Linus Torvalds
		- for the best kernel
	Tim Wegner & Bert Tyler
		- for Fractint
	Darryl House
		- for making code of Fractint readable

NO THANKS TO:

	Bill Gates
