
Terraform README

Robert Gasch

   This is the README file for Terraform, an interactive fractal
   landscape modeller/viewer.
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   Table of Contents
   1. [1]README
          
        [2]Author and Copyright
        [3]Distribution Policy
        [4]Guarantees
        [5]What is terraform?
        [6]Version Number
        [7]What libraries does terraform use?
        [8]What systems does terraform support?
        [9]What kind of hardware do I need?
        [10]How do I get started?
        [11]What command line options does Terraform understand?
        [12]Where can I find the answer to ...?
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Chapter 1. README

Author and Copyright

   Terraform was written by Robert Gasch (Robert_Gasch@peoplesoft.com)
   and is copyright by the author.
   
   Parts of this program are based on code from other software released
   under the GPL and/or other licence policy. See the file AUTHORS for
   details. The author gratefully acknowledges the contributions these
   people (unknowingly) prodvided.
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Distribution Policy

   Terraform is available from it's home page
   [13]http://terraform.sourceforge.net and released under the [14]GNU
   GPL.
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Guarantees

   Terraform should work all right but No representations are made about
   the suitability of this software for any purpose. This software is
   provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
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What is terraform?

   Terraform is an interactive fractal landscape generator/viewer. It's
   written using the GTK widget set and as such has a non-sucking
   graphical user interface.
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Version Number

   The current version number is 0.6.6. . This is software under
   development and should be considered 'Beta'. For more detailed
   information of the changes for each version please check the Changelog
   document.
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What libraries does terraform use?

   Terraform requires libglib 1.2.x, libgtk 1.2.x and libgtkmm (gtk--,
   the C++ Gtk wrapper) 1.1.10 (or newer) and (optionally) imlib 1.8.x.
   Terraform does not (yet) use the gnome libraries.
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What systems does terraform support?

   Terraform should run on any UNIX type system with the proper libraries
   installed. For the latest details on these matters, consult the FAQ.
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What kind of hardware do I need?

   Background: I typically work with height fields sized 400x400. The
   following advice is based on height fields of that size. Of course a
   100x100 height field will be much less CPU/RAM hungry (about 16 times)
   but so small that it's almost useless.
   
   CPU: I'm running terraform on an PII Celeron running at 540Mhz with
   128MB RAM. I would think that for reasonable performance you at least
   want something like a Pentium 133 or better. Of course faster is
   better and slower is worse. If you want to use fetures like
   interactive or automatic rotation, you probably want something like a
   Pentium 300 or better. For (auto) rotation with a high wireframe
   resolution, you probably want the fastest possible CPU you can find.
   When using these modes on my machine, the X server requires more CPU
   than terraform and things get sluggish. There's a delay loop built in
   so that it won't just flood your CPU, but for high frame rates, even
   my machine could do better. My guess is that a commercial (optimized)
   X server would help here (I'm running XFree). I will look at possible
   performance optimizations later, once the base is stable (things like
   Xshm and a better (interruptable) drawing loop).
   
   X-Windows: My X-Server is running at 16bpp, something which is
   probably a good idea. I havn't actually gotten around to seeing how
   terraform runs under 8bpp, but it's probably ugly.
   
   Compiling the code: Compiling the code can take quite a bit of memory,
   depending on the optimization level used. I've seen the process
   compiling TFWindow.cc peak at around 30MB of memory when compiling
   without optimization and around 98MB of memory when using -O2. If you
   have the memory, enable -O2 optimization by adding it to TF_CXXFLAGS
   in src/Makefile.
   
   Memory: Running terraform does not require large amounts of memory.
   Here is a tabele outlining memory requirements under the different
   display modes:
   
   Memory image size
   HF Size   default fastWire (reduced*) fastWire
   400x400   3.8M    4.1M                5.3M
   800x800   6.1M    7.3M                11M
   1600x1600 14M     19M                 35M
   
   * = fast wireframe drawn at 1/2 of default resolution
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How do I get started?

   cd into the directory where you've installed the source, type
   ./configure. If configure balks at your supporting libraries, you'll
   have to go back and compile or install the proper version.
   
   You should now be able to type make and build the executables. Once
   this is done you can type make install to install the Terraform
   executable and any supporting files it needs. If you want to change
   any of the startup defaults, you can copy the file system.terraformrc
   to $HOME/.terraformrc. Try terraform --helprc or terraform --installrc
   for more details.
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What command line options does Terraform understand?

   For a list of supported command line options, type terraform --help.
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Where can I find the answer to ...?

   Check the FAQ, it might just answer your question.

References

   1. file://localhost/tmp/@16614.2#README
   2. file://localhost/tmp/@16614.2#AEN20
   3. file://localhost/tmp/@16614.2#AEN25
   4. file://localhost/tmp/@16614.2#AEN30
   5. file://localhost/tmp/@16614.2#AEN34
   6. file://localhost/tmp/@16614.2#AEN37
   7. file://localhost/tmp/@16614.2#AEN41
   8. file://localhost/tmp/@16614.2#AEN45
   9. file://localhost/tmp/@16614.2#AEN48
  10. file://localhost/tmp/@16614.2#AEN80
  11. file://localhost/tmp/@16614.2#AEN91
  12. file://localhost/tmp/@16614.2#AEN95
  13. http://terraform.sourceforge.net/
  14. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
