🚀 go-pugleaf

PH>Ah!!! THIS was the problem.  The NAME has been changed (to protect the
PH>innocent?).  That was probably done a while back, too, I bet.

PH>What *IS* the official name of the program?

The closest thing we have to an "official" naming convention is
FRAINT.EXE and FRASRC.EXE - the names under which new versions of
Fractint are uploaded (as self-extracting archive files) to their
home base on the GRAPHDEV forum on Compuserve.

Compuserve's software limits filenames to a 6.3 convention, and
they frown on version numbers in filenames (so do I, really - it's
*much* easier to be able to say "the latest version can always be
found in file...").  Fractint's core development work is done via
Compuserve, and the above naming convention has been around for
a *long* time there - and works very well.

Unfortunately, as Fractint moves outward from there, it runs into all
kinds of forced naming changes, none of which us Fractint folks have
any control over (and in fact, we're not usually the folks who end up
uploading it, at least not on the BBS networks).

Some sites forbid the self-extracting archive format, so folks have
to extract and then reZIP (or reARC, or reZOO, or...) the files.
Other sites (including my favorite local BBS) forbid the uploading
of files with names that already exist, so folks *have* to add
something unique like a version number.  When we upload a new
'nn.0' release, the latter is pretty easily handled within DOS limits
using the convention FRAINTnn.ZIP - but then that convention gets
blown away when we upload the almost inevitable 'nn.1' bug-fix.
I suppose a Unix-based FTP site could abandon the 8.3 MS-DOS 
restriction, but I can understand the desire to store an MS-DOS
program using a name that is at least recognizable by MS-DOS.

(At any rate, the short answer is that the closest thing we have
to an official name is FRAINT.EXE/FRASRC.EXE.)

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