Introduction:

This command line program draw Mandelbrot set on textual terminals supporting 256 colours mode (i.e. xterm-256color). It requires that the font in use is set to its minimum size.

The palette is randomised before the draw, so the set appear differently at every run:

You can also zoom in and / or move the center to draw personalised pictures:

Testing:

Tested on:

• A Raspberry 400 (program), Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye), gcc version 10.2.1 20210110 (Debian 10.2.1-6), OpenMP 4.5
• An i7 pc (program), Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS, gcc version 11.4.0 (Ubuntu 11.4.0-1ubuntu1~22.04), OpenMP 4.5
• MacOs 13.6.4 with xterm-256color (terminal);

Dependencies:

• OpenMP (recommended to drastically improve the performances, but it's not necessary);
• Installation example for Debian/Ubuntu/RaspberryOS:

 sudo apt-get install libomp-dev

Installation and Use:

• compile the program as follow :

  make clean all

• Reduce one terminal font size at minimum and cut and paste the command from something permitting a comfortable reading;

• Use program's help option to have information about required parameters:

$ ./mandelbrot -H
./mandelbrot [-h <height>] [-w <width>] [-m <iterations>] | [-H]

 -m  <iterations>  number of iterations
 -w  <width>       specifies image width
 -h  <height>      specifies image height
 -z  <factor>      specifies zooming factor
 -u  <units>       move center up
 -d  <units>       move center down
 -l  <units>       move center left
 -r  <units>       move center rigth
 -H                print this synopsis

• Default demo:

./mandelbrot

• Draw a picture with specific dimensions:

./mandelbrot -h 100 -w 100 

• You can zoom in using -z , using, if necessary, -u, -d, -r or -l to move the center:

./mandelbrot -h 100 -w 100 -z 5 -u 5 -r 5