REQUIREMENTS, DOCUMENTATION & GENERAL
==================================================================================

Zhu3D runs under Linux/Unix, Windows 98-XP and Mac OS X and supports different
CPU's as well as different API's like KDE, Motiv or CDE. Your operating system
must support OpenGL or at least a compatible software implementation like Mesa.

The absolute minimum screen-size is 1024x768. Hardware accelerated OpenGL is
recomended, but a reasonably newer card from the DirectX8/9-generation will do
the job. For simple viewing even an ancient PC < 1 Mhz and without HW-OpenGL is
sufficient. But with enabled motion blur, big textures and doing heavy animations
with narrow grids you will need any CPU/GPU-power you can get.

Have a look in the doc-directory for further information! In your work-directory
you will find a lot of commented examples.

The strange program name was inspired by Zhu Shijie, a genius ancient chinese
mathematician. If you are interested, you find some historic remarks in the help.


ERRORS/HINTS
==================================================================================

Zhu3D seems to be pretty stable and reliable. Nevertheless some hints and
observations:

Opening *.zhu files with a doubleclick sometimes may lead to strange recursions
and a crash finally, when you don't close the program fast enough. This phenomenon
occurs under Linux and Qt 4.1.4 (and maybe minor) only. Updating to Qt 4.2 and
a newer Zhu3D cures this. Another solution: Select files and click "Open" instead
of doubleclicking.

When handling mathematically "strange" functions or moving to "huge"
number-regions, tesselation may result in odd views. The documentation
gives further hints, how to handle those extreme cases.

Due to driver issues under Linux some AMD/ATI-cards fail, when HW-acceleration
is turned on. Updating the ATI-driver will solve this problem and is recommended
anyhow. Newer versions from spring 2006 onwards are a lot better than the
older ones. At least in ATI-terms of quality. Under Windows older AMD/ATI-driver
fail with fog and need an update too.

Under Linux/KDE language support for Chinese works out of the box. Windows users
have to play a little install/reboot-adventure for the East-Asian language pack
before.

Under Windows - especially the older versions - the measuring of the
GPU/CPU-utilization may be a bit erratic. In this field the Linux timers
perform somehow better (up to factor 18000) in terms of precision.

Textures are a bit nicer under Linux/Unix systems. Sorry Windows-folks, i did
not want to fiddle arround some deficiencies.

PostScript file-generation and/or printing is somehow depending on your
printer driver/backend. These may crash, when print/file dimensions are too
big. Under Windows my configuration printed up to a 8000x8000 resolution without
problems, under my Linux e.g only up to 2000x2000.


FUTURE PLANS
==================================================================================

Quite senseful would be an legend editor. As multicore-CPU's are coming up more
and more, making Zhu3D multithreaded is an idea too. Maybe I will do this, when
there is some time - and a multicore on my desktop:-)


PROGRAMMING
==================================================================================

A short word to Qt4 from Trolltech: As I really dislike non-portable code, I
hardly ever wrote GUI-programs. This project initially was started to test if
the promises from Trolltech hold true. They do. It is a powerful GUI-framework
for platform-independent solutions. Even without prior experience, I managed to
port my old C-code-basis within a few days.


CONTACT
==================================================================================

If you have wishes, suggestions or just a supernice graph you want to share, mail
to: zhu3d(at)aon.at. I will try to respond as reliable as I can, but don't put a
hat on a hen. Sometimes I am under heavy stress with my regular work.


LICENSE
==================================================================================

This program may be used under the terms of the GNU General Public License version
2.0 as published by the Free Software Foundation and appearing in the file
license.gpl included in this package.

This program is provided AS IS with NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING THE
WARRANTY OF DESIGN, MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

(C) 1991-2007 Heinz van Saanen


