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I was thinking that, due to the high power of some public MediaWiki servers... it might be an easy way to "borrow" computation time for some difficult fractal generation. Only stills could be generated, I suppose, but theoretically videos could be calculated in plain ASCII format, which then can be converted to .avi files (or whatever format).

The question is how this could be most easily done, and what extensions would be done - this would most definitely NOT be possible with basic things. To draw pictures, there's probably some extension that could be used - WikiPlot could not be used, however, as it is too infelxible. An alternative would be using DPL to generate HTML tables with no borders, cells 1 pixel large, and colored depending on the function. This sounds hard, but since most of this code is "set", it wouldn't be hard. To enable interactive plotting, Inputbox or Simpleforms would both work well. The alternative would be editing the WikiMarkup each time and previewing (or saving) for the new imag. For the main processing, some really ugly self-replicating DPL hacks could be used, or you could use some more advanced extension like Control Structure Functions or Loops should be sufficient.

In summary, full functionality for any fractal, with very powerful programming, could be done with DPL - something readily available for installation on (for instance) Wikia, a popular wikifarm - while additional extensions could simplify it. Anyone have thoughts/suggestions/criticisms?

Okay, I've looked in a couple of other things: Firstly, the piece of software I was looking for was called "Winter". It's a pretty powerful extension, but I doubt Wikia (or any other wikifarms, for that matter) would instal it.  :( Second, I've found one plausible easier method of plotting; it's called Plotter, and it's currently in beta. It requires the use of JavaScript in the MediaWiki namespace, which would make it pretty hard for the casual user. Plus, it's hard to interact with WikiMarkup both directions that way - many other more generic JavaScript-related extensions suffer from the same problem.  :( I've searched through practically all the extensions in the Extension Matrix (a large list of basically all respectable extensions).

I've found a possible wiki to try this on: the Fractal Art Wiki, at http://fractal.wikia.com/wiki/Fractal_Art_Wiki. It's totally dead. I asked an admin to send in a request for DPL; if he doesn't soon, I will.

Here's some possible code I was thinking about for producing the final image:

Template:Plot_Fractal
This code won't work, partly because I haven't quite figured out how to return just a range of values (although this can be done). Also, I'm pretty sure I din't escape the character correctly. Basically what I'm trying to achieve here is to make two nested dpl calls; the outer one creates a list of lines, the inner, a list of pixels. The outer one adds some value of {Values}.dpl after a comma, the inner one a different set of values before the comma. Then "ColorForm", a chosen name of template which contains the color formula, does operations on NumForm, which does operations using the Iter parameter, the NumParam parameter (which is a comma separated list of values to give parameters) and the pixel value. This code has nothing for page selection right now, and so won't produce any pixels. This is something I still need to figure out.  :-\ All help will much appreciated!

 :-( I'd hoped for more interest in this. In any case, I've made good progress. Considering that WikiMarkup doesn't even support variables, I think I've done well so far. I've made a "Loop" template that can support up to 1000 iterations, an a maximum of three nested loops. (These numbers can easily be expanded.) I've made a template which takes a complex number (not even something supported by the expr: extension) and computes a power. If anyone here knows WikiMarkup, or even if you don't,  :tongue1: I'd like you to come help... or at least take a peek...  ;)

I think it makes more sense to mess with this (http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/whatisgoogleappengine.html) or even this (http://www.sun.com/solutions/cloudcomputing/definecloudcomputing.jsp).

Yeah, but both those things cost money. As an 8th grader, that's not exactly something I have in abundance. That's why I want it to work on someone else's sever, neh? Plus, it would be really useful to develop it for wikis.