Fracture Manual

Fracture User Manual Last modified November 1, 2003. By Ben Haller. Copyright © 2003 Stick Software. [ This manual is only available in English at present. ] Fracture is a beautiful fractal screensaver for Mac OS X. This manual assumes that you have already downloaded a copy of Fracture; if not, visit Fracture's main page at http://www.sticksoftware.com/software/Fracture.html. It also assumes that you know all the basics of using the Macintosh in Mac OS X, including using the mouse, menus, and windows, and opening and saving files. Right now this "manual" is really an FAQ (frequently asked questions) list, because Fracture is simple enough that it doesn't seem to merit a full manual — that would just be a lot of work and would probably be less effective at answering actual user questions. Let us know if you disagree, however; if a full manual is needed for Fracture, it can be made. Please send comments on this manual to us at support@sticksoftware.com. Thanks! Questions What is Fracture and what does it do, in a nutshell? How do I install Fracture? How do I make Fracture run as my screensaver? How do I configure Fracture? What are all these weird controls? ("Fractals" tab) What are all these weird controls? ("Display" tab) What are all these weird controls? ("Saving" tab) What are all these weird controls? ("Registration" tab) How do I control Fracture while it is running? What do I do with these .fracture files? What bugs and issues are known for Fracture? What is shareware? How do I pay? What is Fracture and what does it do, in a nutshell? Fracture is a beautiful fractal screensaver for Mac OS X. It's not really important for understanding Fracture, but a fractal is a mathematical entity that exhibits characteristics of self-similarity and complexity at arbitrary levels of magnification. Or something along those lines; I don't know whether a strict definition of what is and is not a fractal has really been arrived at. You know one when you see one!!:->. The point, here, is that fractals are beautiful. Fracture can create images like this: Lots of images created by Fracture can be found at our gallery at http://www.sticksoftware.com/gallery.html; making your own is as simple as installing Fracture and letting it run for a little while! For more basic information on Fracture, please see its home page at http://www.sticksoftware.com/software/Fracture.html. How do I install Fracture? Screensavers can live in a few standard locations in OS X. The screensaver engine expects to find them in those locations, and so only those locations will work. For our purposes here, there are two that matter: /Library/Screen Savers/, and ~/Library/Screen Savers/ ("~" being short for the location of your home directory). To install Fracture, you copy it to one of these folders. And that's it. Which folder should you use? That depends upon whether or not you have Administrator privileges on your machine, and on whether you want Fracture to be visibl…