XaoS - a real time fractal zoomer and morpher
=============================================

For installation instructions please see the INSTALL file.

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 AUTHORS file 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 driver licenses), palette changing, PNG
saving, and fractal inversion.


SUPPORTED PLATFORMS
-------------------

Starting from version 3.5, the supported platforms are:

  * POSIX (Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, etc.)
  * Microsoft Windows (XP or later)
  * Mac OS X (10.4 or later)
  
The following platforms were also supported in earlier versions:

  * BeOS
  * Old Macintosh versions
  * Microsoft DOS
  * OS/2
  * Plan 9

Due to the lack of volunteers interested in maintaing older platforms, we 
are discontinuing support for them.  If you want to use XaoS on one of
these platforms, please download an earlier version.

Of course, volunteers are always welcome to resurrect support for older
platforms or port XaoS to other platforms it doesn't currently support.


FEATURES
--------

  * fast smooth interactive real-time zooming (even on ancient machines!)
  * 24 fractal formulas + user defined formula
  * autopilot
  * menu driven interface
  * context sensitive help and animated tutorials
  * various colorization, post calculation filters, color cycling
  * image/animation saving/replay
  * image export to PNG
  * internationalized texts
  * configurable calculation methods
  * real-time image rotation
  * many example fractals
  * switching between Mandelbrot/Julia mode
  * fast Julia preview
  * zooming in 6*10^16 times, zooming out 10^30 times
  * SMP support

...and many more!  


HOMEPAGE
--------

http://xaos.sf.net


HOW TO REPORT BUGS
------------------

Please try to reproduce the bug and submit a description and output of

  xaos -config

to the issue tracker (http://code.google.com/p/gnuxaos/issues/list).

Debugger info (backtraces and so forth) is also welcome.


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
