Fractint
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 The Mandelbrot set rendered in Fractint |
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| Developer(s) | Stone Soup Group |
|---|---|
| Initial release | September, 1988 |
| Stable release | 20.4.09 / October 12, 2008 |
| Written in | C, x86 assembly, M68K assembly |
| Operating system | cross-platform |
| Available in | English |
| Type | Fractal generating software |
| License | Freeware |
| Website | spanky.triumf.ca/www/fractint/fractint.html |
Fractint is a freeware software package that can render and display many kinds of fractals. Its name comes from the words fractal and integer, since the first versions of it computed fractals by using only integer arithmetic (also known as fixed-point arithmetic), which led to much faster rendering on x86 computers without math coprocessors. Since then, floating-point arithmetic and "arbitrary-precision" modes have been added, the latter of which emulates an arbitrarily large mantissa in RAM. The arbitrary-precision mode is slow even on modern computers.
Fractint can draw most kinds of fractals that have appeared in the literature. It also has a few "fractal types" that are not strictly speaking fractals, but may be more accurately described as display hacks. These include cellular automata.
The program originated on the MS-DOS platform, but has since been ported to X and Microsoft Windows. The DOS version is currently at level 20.4.09, which was released on October 12, 2008 from the Developer's web site. FractInt is one of the oldest freeware programs still being maintained.
[edit] History
Fractint originally appeared in 1988 as FRACT386, a computer program for rendering fractals very quickly on the Intel 80386 processor using integer arithmetic. Most '386 processors of the era did not come with floating point units (387), so the integer approach was much faster.
Although the early versions of FRACT386 were written by Bert Tyler, they were based on an even older program for rendering the Mandelbrot set called DKMANDEL.ARC, which was written by J. Douglass Klein. By the time of the FRACT386 v2.1, which was the first popular version of FRACT386, no original code from DKMANDEL remained.
In February 1989, the program was renamed Fractint. In July 1990, it was ported to the Atari ST with the math routines rewritten in M68K assembler by Howard Chu.
It was written and maintained by the "Stone Soup Group" who took their name from the fable of the stone soup. Along with Emacs and NetHack, it is one of the oldest still-maintained free programs.
