From: bmartino@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Bob Martino)
Subject: The Fractal Toolbox
Organization: The Ohio State University
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 17:50:19 GMT

Hello everyone.

I am a recient graduate from THE Ohio State University with
my little degree in Physics/Math Education.  During my last
quarter here (yes, we're still on the quarter system), I did
some independent research in CHAOS and FRACTALS.

I wrote a few programs for the Macintosh using Macpascal.
These programs will produce various fractals and other chaos-
related stuff.  They are fairly short, easy to use, modify,
and understand (at least, that was my goal).  The idea is to
allow the fairly on-the-ball High School student (or teacher)
gain some understanding of chaos and fractals.  The programs
include:

Mandelbrot    - Draws a black and white picture of this famous
                object.  Zooming in to look at features close up
                is easily accomplished.
Julia Set     - Will produce as many Julia Sets as you wish.  Again,
                zooming it is possible.
Fractal Maker - Will draw deterministic fractals like the Kotch
                Snowflake and others.  The user can even create
                his/her own generator.  Lots of choices.
Chaos Game    - Will play the 'chaos game' with the user to create
                non-deterministic (random) fractals of trees, twigs,
                the Sierpinski Gasket, and a dozen others.  User can
                create his/her own fractals
Plus more (seven total).  The Logistic Function is also explored.

These are really GOOD programs.  Smooth, logical, and polished.
I spent a *LOT* of time getting them just right.  Many, many
features can be controlled by the user easily by simply changing
some constants at the beginning of the programs.


I put together a book with listings of the complete programs,
many cool examples of the output for each, and some brief
explainations of the programs (how and why they work).  It runs
about 100-150 pages.

My question is this:  Would anyone be interested in purchasing
such a thing?  If so, please drop me a line (e-mail please, so
I can be sure to get it).  What I want to know is:

 -  how many people would want this book?
 -  how much would be a reasonable price?
 -  how detailed should the explainations be?
 -  would you prefer the programs to come on disk, rather than have
     to type them in yourself (but the pictures would be left out)?

Also, any helpful suggestions from anyone familiar with self-
publishing would be *GREATLY* appreciated.  I've never tried this
before.
_________________________________________________________________________
                                    | "...for since the creation of the
      - that Bob Martino guy -      |  world His invisible attributes,
 bmartino@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu |  His eternal power and divine
                                    |  nature, have been clearly seen,
   God invented science.  so there. |  being understood through what
       ^^^^^^^^                     |  has been made        -Romans 1:20
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 "That's the whole problem with science.  You've got a bunch of
  empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder."
                                                  -Calvin