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CHAOSPRO 4.0
Release 4.0
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Compatibility and Migration Issues

At first, ChaosPro tries to be compatible to itself (of course). So you should be able to read old ChaosPro formulas with new ChaosPro versions.

Sometimes fractals will look different in a new version: This may happen if a function had a bug. I will remove bugs, of course. Now suppose the sin function in ChaosPro had a bug. I would remove that bug without trying to retain compatibility.

Now lets continue discussing compatibility issues:

  • UltraFractal compatibility

    ChaosPro 3.1 tries to be fully UF3 compatible. If you encounter any problems (fractals look different in UltraFractal than in ChaosPro), please let me know.

    On the other hand, ChaosPro won't be 100% compatible to UF3:
    Sometimes there are formulas which produce illegal numbers. Neither UltraFractal nor ChaosPro do active checking for illegal numbers (infinity, NaN, etc.), and so the result of a function or operation applied to an invalid number is undefined and in fact different in both programs. Even future releases of UltraFractal most likely will render fractals based on such formulas differently. So this is not the fault of ChaosPro, but basically the fault of the formula writer.
    Unfortunately even the user of such a formula cannot easily decide whether the final image is just the result of illegal numbers or a real fractal...
  • FractInt and ChaosPro *.frm files

    ChaosPro has a formula parser and a formula compiler. If you load *.frm files using the Open-command of the formula compiler, then these formulas will be loaded only into the formula compiler and will be transformed into the ChaosPro compiler syntax on the fly. If you load *.frm files using the old formula editor then they will be loaded only into the formula editor.
    At startup all formulas found in the formula directory are loaded into the formula editor as well as transformed and inserted into the compiler window.

    Normally ChaosPro should be able to read all FractInt *.frm files. Problems occur with ChaosPro V2.0 *.frm formulas if you used the additional coloring feature of ChaosPro: These formulas cannot be converted to the compiler, because the compiler and the corresponding fractal type Escapetime work with iteration formulas and coloring formulas, thus one formula would have to be split into two formulas, which would have to belong together.



  • FractInt and ChaosPro *.par files

    ChaosPro can load all old ChaosPro *.par files. Additionally ChaosPro can load many *.par file entries from FractInt. Because FractInt supports numerous fractal types and not all fractal types have been built into ChaosPro, not all entries in a par file can be processed by ChaosPro. But ChaosPro silently removes such entries and places a message into the message window that it cannot load that entry. Some special processing occurs to entries in *.par files which use the fractal type "Formula". These entries get loaded as usual, i.e. as fractal type Formula. As soon as you select such an entry you get asked whether you want to convert this fractal type. You can then decide whether to convert this type to Escapetime which uses compiler formulas and is about 20 times as fast, but offers not a complete compatibility, or to leave it as it is, based on the slow formula editor, which offers better compatibility especially for old ChaosPro *.frm files. If you convert it, then a copy of the original fractal gets created and inserted ("_org" is appended to the name).
    I suggest you try to convert it, then you calculate it and verify the result (converted fractal and original one). And if it is correct, delete the original one...


  • FractInt and ChaosPro *.map files

    All FractInt and ChaosPro *.map files can be read and used in ChaosPro.


  • UltraFractal *.uxf (Transformations), *.ufm (Iteration Formulas) and *.ucl (Coloring Formulas)
    ChaosPro can read all those UltraFractal formula files. In order to use them within ChaosPro, they need to be imported. During import the files get converted into ChaosPro syntax (which is more like Java or C/C++).
    So if you want to import them, put all your transformations, iteration formulas and coloring formulas into a folder on your harddisk (the original UltraFractal folder is a good place...), start up ChaosPro, choose menu item "File/Import Formulas" and choose the folder containing all formulas to import. The formulas will get translated and saved into a sub folder below the ChaosPro\Formulas folder.

    Important:The import feature may contain bugs. So please whenever you obtain a new version of ChaosPro, reimport all your UltraFractal formulas.

    Please note that currently UltraFractal Alpha Channel formulas are not supported, although alpha channel information inside a fractal parameter entry in an *.upr file can be correctly handled by ChaosPro.


  • UltraFractal *.upr files

    ChaosPro should be able to correctly read UltraFractal *.upr files and their entries including alpha channel information.

  • Tierazon .zar files

    *
    .zar files from Tierazon can be loaded into ChaosPro. Because there are several versions of Tierazon out there (incompatible to each other), I cannot promise that the fractals resulting from *.zar files are the same as those created by Tierazon.

One note:

If you have files from other fractal generators, I recommend to not place them into the ChaosPro folders (you can do that, if you like...), because then at program startup always the time consuming conversion takes place. Instead, start up ChaosPro, load the files using the appropriate command and save the result into the correct ChaosPro directory. Because the conversion may produce wrong results, please keep your original files for cross check (or if the current version of ChaosPro does a wrong conversion, perhaps a future version of ChaosPro can correctly convert a file...).