Publishing your formulas
When you have written a new formula, you might want to publish it, so other
people can use it as well. You can publish it using the online formula database
at formulas.ultrafractal.com. When you register with the formula database, you reserve a two- or three-letter abbreviation that you can use to name your formula files.
Before publishing your formula, take a step back and ask yourself the following
questions:
- Does your new formula add something that is not already available in the
formula database? In other words, is it worth trying for other people?
- Have you carefully considered all parameters and the effect that they have?
Usually, formulas with fewer parameters are more effective and easier to use.
Don't add extra parameters just because they look interesting.
- Have you added help and hints
to make your formula easier to use?
In general, you should take responsibility for the formulas that you publish.
For complex formulas, you might want to have them beta-tested by a small group
of people first. Consider that it might not be possible to fix problems later
without breaking compatibility with parameter sets produced by earlier versions.
When you are revising and improving your formula files, make sure that you
do not break backwards compatibility either. Here are some guidelines to help
you:
- Do not give the formula a different entry identifier, unless you know what
you are doing. Parameter files reference the formula by its identifier, so
they cannot be restored anymore if the identifier has been changed. You can
always change the title of
the formula, of course.
- Do not change the identifiers of existing parameters in your formula, since
parameter sets reference parameters in a formula by their identifiers. Instead,
change their captions.
- When using enumerated parameters,
do not change the names of the existing items. It is possible though to change
their order and add new items without breaking existing parameter sets.
- When using classes and plug-in parameters, see also Parameter forwards and Importing classes.
See Also
Public formulas
Compatibility