XFRACTINT(1)

XFRACTINT(1) 💖✨

okay bestie, welcome to xfractint — the fractal generation program that literally makes math pretty. this is her manual page, group-chat edition. grab a snack, we're doing this together 🫶

---

✨ NAME ✨

xfractint — fractal generation program. that's it. that's the vibe. she draws fractals 💅

---

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

xfractint [options] [; comments]

yes bestie, options go in, fractals come out. and yeah you can drop ; comments in there too, go off 👑

---

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Xfractint draws a wide variety of fractals. it's giving range, it's giving versatility.

Xfractint is a port of the IBM PC program fractint. periodt.

Xfractint has online documentation which should be referenced for most operation information. so like, that's your main character resource, okay?

⚠️ but real talk — that online documentation is from fractint, and it does not always accurately describe xfractint. so don't come for me if it's a little off, she's quoting her ex 💀

a text version of the online documentation can be generated by running:

make doc

slay. free docs. we love a DIY moment 📄✨

---

💅 OPTIONS 💅

okay this is the part where we go through EVERY single one, no skips, no skimming, because that's what besties do:

• -display display_name — specifies the X11 display to use. tell her where to show up, she'll show up 💖
• -onroot — indicates the resulting images should appear on the root window.

📌 note: rubberband zoom boxes don't work on the root window. so like, cute but limited, iykyk.

• -private — indicates that xfractint should allocate as many colors as possible in a private colormap. normally xfractint will use 128 colors; this flag will let you use all 256, but it may mess up the colors in other windows 😭. this is not necessary if you are using greater than 8-bit color.
• -slowdisplay — indicates that the machine has a slow display, so the scrolling window should be updated infrequently. use this flag if xfractint hangs on the title screen 💀 like, stuck. frozen. not the moment.
• -fast — indicates that xfractint should use the faster drawing mode. instead of drawing each pixel immediately, xfractint will save up pixels and then refresh the screen every 5 seconds. depending on your X implementation, this may make drawing twice as fast. no cap 🔥
• -disk — use disk video. that is, generate the picture in memory instead of to the screen. the resulting picture can be saved as a gif file or printer file. lowkey a workaround queen ✨
• -fixcolors num — specifies the number of colors to use. this number must be a power of two. also, this number can't be greater than the number of colors available. and, it can't be greater than 256. three rules, bestie, don't fight them 🎀
• -geometry WxH[{+-X}{+-Y}] — this sets the size and position of the image window. the default is 800x600 pixels. so if you want it bigger, say it with your chest 📐
• -share — indicates that xfractint should share the current colormap. that is, xfractint uses as many colors as possible, but doesn't modify the colormap. this is not necessary with greater than 8-bit colors. the polite option 🫶
• -simple — uses simpler keyboard handling. use this flag if you wish to debug xfractint with gdb, or else you may get "(gdb)" repeated infinitely. and bestie, infinitely is a LOT 😭
• xxx=yyy — sets variable xxx to value yyy. see the online documentation for more details on the possible variables. plug in your little variables, go feral 🧚
• @filename — loads parameters from the specified file.
• @filename/groupname — reads a named group of parameters from the specified file. see, the /groupname is doing the heavy lifting here 👑
• -psviewer — allows the user to change the default postscript viewer. the viewer is called when the user prints an image with ctrl-p. the default viewer is gv. change your destiny 🖨️✨
• -ctrlwindow — allows the user to have a separate control window similar to the ncurses interface. two windows, one legend 💅
• -font — loads the selected font.
• -fontbold — loads the selected bold font. bold of her, honestly 💜

---

💀 BUGS 💀

okay bestie, deep breath. there are many bugs and things that haven't been implemented. not ideal, but we're being honest here:

• Boundary tracing sometimes locks up. 😭
• Passes=2 has problems?? — yes, with the double question marks, i'm just the messenger.
• Symmetry that is offset slightly doesn't always complete the image.
• The top of the help screens are messed up. starting your xterm with -geometry 80x25 fixes this. okay so there IS a fix, we love that for us ✨
• Xfractint uses a bizarre (to Unix users) user interface which was directly copied from the IBM version. if you don't have the appropriate keys, use the following key mappings:
  • F1 to F10 (IBM) → Shift-1 to Shift-0 (Unix)
  • INSERT (IBM) → I (Unix)
  • DELETE (IBM) → D (Unix)
  • PAGE_UP (IBM) → U (Unix)
  • PAGE_DOWN (IBM) → N (Unix)
  • LEFT_ARROW (IBM) → H (Unix)
  • RIGHT_ARROW (IBM) → L (Unix)
  • UP_ARROW (IBM) → K (Unix)
  • DOWN_ARROW (IBM) → J (Unix)
  • HOME (IBM) → O (Unix)
  • END (IBM) → E (Unix)
  • CTL_PLUS (IBM) → } (Unix)
  • CTL_MINUS (IBM) → { (Unix)

🎀 screenshot this mapping list. future you will be so grateful. iykyk.

---

👑 COPYRIGHT 👑

Copyright 1991 - 2010 by The Stone Soup Group

(the Stone Soup Group!! iconic name, honestly, ate)

---

🌈 AUTHORS 🌈

okay giving credit where credit is due, because these people built the whole thing:

• the original Unix port was done by Ken Shirriff (shirriff@eng.sun.com).
• Xfractint was updated to Fractint 19.5 by Tim Wegner (twegner@fractint.org) under Linux 2.0. please report updates for other platforms to Tim Wegner. the current official release is 20.0.
• the primary authors of Fractint 20.0 are:
  • Timothy Wegner — twegner@fractint.org
  • Jonathan Osuch — josuch@fractint.org
  • George Martin — ggmartin@compuserve.com
  • Robin Bussell — robin.b2@ukonline.co.uk

legends. all of them. absolute main character energy 🫶🌟

---

and that's the whole page, bestie!! go make some fractals, be safe with -private (it WILL mess up your other windows, i warned you), and remember: this was version 20.04 of the xfractint manual page. mwah 💖