🚀 go-pugleaf

(discussing the zoom limit of Fractint...)

PH>Is there any way to increase this limit?  ...or do I have to start from
PH>scratch and write my own version of fractint?
PH>Just how many bits of fraction does fractint use?

If you zoom beyond the limits of Fractint's integer math algorithms, Fractint
quietly switches over to floating-point math.  Its precision limits
are essentially those of the Intel architecture at that point, and are
based on its ability to store the coordinates of successive pixels (in
'double' format) using different values.  (I'm on vacation and checking my
mail on a laptop that doesn't have a "C" compiler, so I can't dig
up the exact limit at the moment.)  To get around that limit,
you would have to rewrite Fractint (including its asembler routines)
using an alternate format - or use an Xfract port on a machine which has
more significant digits in its floating-point format.  The latter is probably
*far* easier.

PH>I also find a limit of 1000 on iterations to be rather small.

I'm confused - Fractint's current iteration limit is 32,768 (it would have
been 65536 had I not been stupid enough to use signed integers for a field
that never goes negative - maybe we'll fix that someday).

                   Bert Tyler   (bert.tyler@satalink.com)
---
 . DeLuxe./386 1.25 #343sa . Did you expect mere proof to sway my opinion?