On 22/05/2011 2:13 AM, clipka wrote:
> Am 21.05.2011 23:14, schrieb Stephen:

>>
>> How does Fractint's deep zooming work, then?
>
> There's a clue is in the program's name:

Never ;-)

> It computes FRACTals using the
> computer's INTeger instructions - rather than floating point -
> implementing numeric formats with much higher precision than natively
> supported by the computer's architecture.
>

That was the question I meant to ask, how? But never mind if I'm really 
interested I suppose I can look it up.

> BTW, when Fractint first entered the scene, hardware floating point
> support was still a luxury on PCs, requiring a dedicated co-processor;
> so on most systems, those custom integer number formats didn't just
> offer higher precision, but were also at least as fast as IEEE double
> precision.

I remember trying to justify to my boss why I needed a co-processor then 
later why I needed a sound card. They did not come as standard in the 
early days.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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