Forum: Fractals


Subject: Fractal Explorer

Jennyfnf opened this issue on Oct 22, 2010 · 175 posts


Gaiadriel posted Sun, 24 October 2010 at 8:56 AM

From the thread I mentioned, and Arthur's prior responses to Titia's inquiries to him: Programmers: help asked !*titiavanbeugen reports, May 20, 2008

For many years now I have a lot of fun with the freeware fractalprogram Fractal Explorer... and many people more.
Fractal Explorer has proven to be an excellent fractalprogram.
But there is a problem now...

Arthur, the creator of Fractal Explorer hasn't got the time anymore to update the program.
It has to be made compatible for Vista (and later). Some people can still use it, some can't, or there are problems.
I asked Arthur about updating it. He wrote:

"Probably it is impossible. Or may be very difficult...
FE was created with Delphi 3, which was released in 1997 or 1998 year...
It was not simple to get compatibility with Win 2000/XP because
Delphi 3 not have some declarations for this OS...
To get compatibility with Vista FE needs much never compiler. May be
Delphi 7 (at least), may by more never...

But moving from Delphi 3 to another version is very difficult, because
FE uses many additional components and controls. And some from it
has no compatible versions for never versions of Delphi.
So, it needed to rewrite at least 60-70% of UI code and design..."

I don't understand all this, but I understand I and many others soon can't play with this toy anymore.
Is there anyone around here that is able to update Fractal Explorer for the future?

I was writing a tutorial, but the motivation is gone now, because probably there is no FE anymore to play with.