"Crucial Elements"

"Crucial Elements" is the title of a suite of fractal images based on variations on a simple unadorned two-line geometric cross motif. These images were originally generated by the BASIC program FRASECT.BAS written in 1990. In 2004, this BASIC program was ported to a Perl script frasect.pl. Three object-oriented Perl libraries-- Data::Image, Data::Font, and Info::Color were developed to support the Perl implementation. The source for these programs is not available at this time.

Ten parameters control the appearance of each image in the suite with differences in these parameters resulting in the different appearance of the images. For the initial or "seed" cross, these parameters describe:

1. the basis distance in pixels
2. the coordinates of the intersection of cross bars
3. the ratio of the point of intersection to the endpoints of the vertical bar
4. the ratio of the point of intersection to the endpoints of the horizontal bar
5. the ratio of the length of the horizontal bar to the vertical bar
6. the number of quarter rotations
7. the number (0 or 1) of horizontal reflections
8. the number of computational generations
9. the background color (default is 'white')
10. the foreground color (default is 'black')

All images are presented as 1-bit monochrome bitmap (BMP) files to minimize their size when loading in browsers. If your browser will not display these images, then it may be an older browser or not be enabled or optioned to accept standard monochrome (black and white) bitmaps.