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Text File | 1996-05-09 | 30.8 KB | 630 lines

_ __ / |/ / ____ ____ ___ ____ / , ____ ____ / / / / / / ' / / / / /_ /___/ * / / (___/| (___ / (___/ (____ / / (___ * 1.90 * * * Copyright © Chris Taylor, 1996. ___________________________________________________________________________ MacroLife is suitable for use with all versions of RISC OS. If this is an unregistered copy, please read the end of this file for information on the extra goodies you get when you register (and support the charity Motivation). This Help file is split into sections: * Introduction * What is Life? <-- For newcomers to Life * How to use this program * Quick start <-- MacroLife essentials * The Manual * Acknowledgements * Registering your copy of MacroLife <-- why register? There is more information in the Docs directory within the application. *** MacroLife also supports on-line help via Acorn's Help application *** ___________________________________________________________________________ ****************** ** Introduction ** ****************** MacroLife is a desktop version of the famous game of Life, invented by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. It displays a scrollable window onto a Life plane, or grid, onto which you can place patterns of cells and watch how they evolve. Besides running on the desktop, MacroLife offers a very large Life plane. It is 65,536 cells on a side, over 4 billion cells in total. Facilities are provided to assist with navigating around the plane, but they are only needed if you want to generate really large patterns. Other features include: * saving, loading and editing of Life planes and regions. * predefined Lifeforms. * random field generation. * an option to switch to other algorithms such as '3-4' Life. * a provision for returning to the start position. * a wide range of magnifications. * ... ******************* ** What is Life? ** ******************* Life is a fascinating 'game' in which patterns of cells on a two-dimensional plane evolve according to a simple rule. Despite its simplicity, Life patterns can behave like living organisms, moving, growing and even - theoretically, at least - reproducing and evolving. Each cell on the Life plane may be in one of two states, 'Alive' or 'Dead'. Time is measured in generations, each generation being produced by applying a calculation to each cell on the grid. This rule of Life is as follows: A cell will be alive in the next generation if it has exactly three living neighbours. If it has two live neighbours, it will preserve its state. If it has any other number, it will be dead. Each cell has eight neighbours, including the diagonally adjacent cells. The smallest object in Life is the 'blinker'; three cells in a row. The rules of Life switch the blinker between horizontal and vertical every generation: * *** * *** * The pattern on the icon bar, the glider, is the simplest of many Life 'spaceships', patterns which move. The glider moves diagonally: * * * * * * * *** ** * * ** * * ** ** *** The other Life pattern which MacroLife uses as a symbol is called the 'r pentomino', since with imagination it looks a little like a lower case 'r': ** ** * The word 'pentomino' is simply an extension of 'domino': a domino has two sections, and a pentomino has five. Putting an 'r' pentomino on the Life plane and selecting 'Run' results in an explosion of growth and activity. There are many approaches to exploring Life, you can place large random patterns and watch them 'evolve', design new Lifeforms, or simply have fun crashing Life spaceships and other patterns into each other to see what happens. The Draw file 'Patterns' in the MacroLife Docs directory contains a catalogue of Life patterns (including a prolific but unstable 'Acorn'). Since Life was described by Martin Gardner in his Scientific American column, many enthusiasts have spent countless hours exploring its behaviour. Several books are available which describe these explorations, including 'The recursive universe' by William Poundstone, which among many other things describes how a Life pattern could reproduce itself. In the last few years, some remarkable discoveries have stimulated a fresh wave of interest in Life. Dean Hickerson, David Bell and others have led the search for new Lifeforms, and many of their creations are available in the library supplied with the registered version of MacroLife. ***************************** ** How to use this program ** ***************************** Quick start =========== To start MacroLife, double-click on the application to run it and then click Select over the icon bar icon. This will create a new Life plane. You can add new cells to the plane by clicking with Select. You can also hold down the Select button and drag the mouse around, much like using Paint. Use Adjust to remove cells. When you have created your pattern, click on the 'Run' button or choose 'Run' from the Edit menu to watch it evolve. If it goes too fast, you can single-step the display using the 'Step' button or menu item. MacroLife has a collection of Life patterns - 'Lifeforms' - built in; you can call them up via the 'Add Lifeform' entry in the Edit menu. Once you have selected a Lifeform, a grey pattern with a dashed box surrounding it will appear on the plane. You can move this around with the mouse and then click Select to place it. A good pattern to start with is the 'Glider gun', in the 'Guns' submenu. If the Help application is running, it will display additional information about about each Lifeform in the menu. There are many facilities provided for editing these patterns, and you can combine them to build new ones. As an example, place a glider gun on the Life plane and run it until the 'Gen' display reaches 61. (It should now look like the pattern in MacroLife's start-up banner.) Now choose 'Glider mirror' from the 'Others' submenu. Move the grey glider until it is superimposed on the leading glider from the gun, and click 'Select'. If you start the program running again, a continuous stream of gliders should bounce off the mirror. When the generation reaches 106, stop the program and choose 'Glider mirror' again. This time, to match up the gliders you will need to rotate the mirror. Press 'A' on the keyboard to rotate the mirror A)nticlockwise, and you will be able to superimpose the gliders and start running again. You can also copy blocks of cells around the plane, and you can rotate and reflect these as well. To return to your starting position, or get rid of all the cells: * Double-click over the 'Gen' display to set the Generation to 0. * Double-click over the 'Pop' display to set the Population to 0. MacroLife uses two file types: Lifeforms, which can be automatically included in the 'Add Lifeform' menu, and Life planes, which store the whole plane together with settings and window positions. You can load both types of file by double-clicking on them, but MacroLife can only edit one plane at a time. Double-clicking on a Lifeform file will add it to any existing patterns on the plane. You can also drag Lifeform files onto the plane. They will appear centred on the mouse pointer. The Manual ========== The icon bar menu ----------------- This has the usual 'Info' and 'Quit' items, and a 'Help' item which displays the file you are reading. The 'Save choices' item will save the options set for the current Life plane. It will be shaded if you do not have a plane open. It saves the choices set from the 'Options' dialogue box and various others including the scale, the speed, whether the grid is displayed, and the Life rule to be used. These will then be used whenever a new plane is created. It doesn't save the size and position of the plane window; this can be done by selecting the 'With settings' option when saving a Life plane. The toolbar ----------- The toolbar at the top of the window displays information about the current Life plane and provides various controls. The 'Gen' and 'Pop' displays show the current generation and the population - the number of living cells. The 'X' and 'Y' displays show the co-ordinates of the cell at the centre of the visible region of the plane. 'X' increases from left to right, and 'Y' increases from top to bottom. The 0, 0 point is near the centre of the plane. Immediately to the right of the 'eye' button on the toolbar, an optional display gives quick help on the function of the icon under the pointer. You may need to turn off 'Narrow toolbar' via the Options dialogue box to see this. All of the controls and information on the toolbar can also be accessed from the menu, so if you don't like it, you can turn it off. Main toolbar controls: * RUN/STOP - Once you have created a pattern, you can start producing new generations by clicking on the run button on the toolbar - the one with the solid arrow. The arrow will change to a block; click on this to stop. You can also stop the program by pressing the Escape key. This can be used to interrupt long calculations. You can force the program to stop even when drawing a new generation using Ctrl-Escape. * STEP - The button with the 'broken arrow' is used to single-step, producing one new generation each time you click on it. * SCALE - The 'magnifying glass' button allows you to change the scale. The current scale is shown in the title bar. You can set magnifications of less than 1:1, right down to the point where the whole plane is visible. As the magnification falls below 1:1, less and less detail is shown, but at least one pixel will always be on if any cell in that region is occupied. Clicking on the scale button with adjust toggles between the current and the previously selected scales. Clicking on the scale button with shift-Select and shift-Adjust respectively decrease and increase the scale. * CENTRE - Click with Select on the 'target' button between the X and Y grid co-ordinate displays to re-centre the window, moving the visible area to the middle of the plane. Click with Adjust to move the centre of the view to the average of all the living cells on the plane. Click with shift-Select to drag the visible area around the window. The mouse pointer will change to a hand, and Select can be used to drag the window once, or Adjust to repeat the dragging operation. (You can also use the Shift view button to do this). Other functions available from the toolbar: * CLEAR - To clear all the cells from the plane, double-click with Select over the population display. (i.e. Double-click on the Population to set it to zero.) * RESET - To reset the plane to its start point (generation zero), double-click with Select over the generation display. This will only work if the generation is greater than zero and the 'keep start point' option is selected. (i.e. Double-click on the Generation to set it to zero.) * NEW START - To make the current generation the new generation zero, double-click with Adjust over the generation display. This will only work if the generation is greater than zero and the 'keep start point' option is selected. * MOVE VIEW - Double-clicking on either the X or Y grid co-ordinate displays will open a dialogue box allowing you to move the window directly to a specified co-ordinate. It's usually easier to use the overview windows to move around. Additional toolbar controls: Some of the following controls may not be immediately visible. You can choose whether these buttons appear above or to the right of the main controls via the Options dialogue box. Drags (and many other operations) can be aborted by pressing the Escape key, and repeated by using Adjust instead of Select. If a Lifeform or block has less than ten thousand cells, live cells in the block are displayed in grey. When dragging, the Population and Generation figures are temporarily replaced by the Width and Height of the dragbox. * GRID - The grid button switches the grid lines on and off. The grid is only shown at magnifications of 3:1 or greater. * LIFEFORMS - The 'R Pentomino' button produces a pop-up menu from which you can choose a predefined Lifeform to drag onto the plane. Before the drag starts, MacroLife will scale down the display if required, so that the entire Lifeform will be visible in the current window. The predefined Lifeforms are stored within special library files in the Lifeforms directory within the MacroLife application. You can also put your own creations into the five subdirectories within this one. MacroLife automagically builds the menus using first the library file !FormLib and then any Lifeforms it finds in these directories, so they will appear the next time you run the program. If you have registered, you will receive a library management tool, libform, with which you can create new Lifeform libraries or extract the Lifeforms from existing ones. Each directory also contains a text file giving more information about the Lifeforms in the library, these are used by the online help system. If you want to give your Lifeforms a title other than the filename, click on the 'toggle size' icon on the 'save area as' dialogue box - see SAVE AREA. * RANDOM - Clicking on the 'random dots' button opens a dialogue box which allows you to specify the required density. You can then drag a box which will be filled with a random pattern at that density. If you want to superimpose the random pattern on an existing one, hold down the shift key during the drag. * BLOCK CLEAR- The button with a blank white square is used to clear areas of the plane. After clicking on it, you can drag a box on the Life plane which will be cleared of cells. * BLOCK FILL - The button with a solid black square is used to fill areas of the plane. After clicking on it, you can drag a box on the Life plane which will be filled with new cells. * BLOCK MOVE - The 'scissors' button is used to move blocks of cells around the plane. Drag a box around the cells you wish to move and then click Select to move them to a new location. * BLOCK COPY - The 'camera' button is used to copy blocks of cells around the plane. Drag a box around the cells you wish to copy and then click Select to copy them to a new location. After a Lifeform has been chosen, or a Move or Copy block has been selected, the pointer shape changes to an 'F'. At this stage, you can press any of the following keys before clicking Select to place the block of cells: H - Horizontal flip - will reverse the block left-to-right. V - Vertical flip - will flip the block upside-down. C - Clockwise rotate - will rotate the block 90° clockwise. A - Anticlockwise rotate - will rotate the block 90° anticlockwise. You can use any combination of keypresses, and the 'F' will change its orientation to match the current transformation. (R - Rotate and F - Flip also work as synonyms for C and H) When a block of cells is placed, normally all of the cells are set, whether 'alive' or 'dead'. If you want to merge the new pattern into its destination, use shift-Select or shift-Adjust. * SPEED - To alter the speed at which MacroLife produces new generations, click on the 'speedometer dial' button and choose the speed you require from the dialogue box which appears. The needle on the dial will change to show the new speed. Clicking on the speed button with shift-Select and shift-Adjust respectively decrease and increase the speed. If you select the 'Full speed' option and then run, everything else on the desktop will stop, and the toolbar displays won't be updated. The display on the hourglass will show the last two digits of the generation. You can stop the program by clicking Adjust or pressing the Escape key. Clicking on the speed button with ctrl-Select and ctrl-Adjust switch single-tasking full speed off and on. * STOP AT - Clicking on the '1103' button opens a dialogue box which allows you to set a generation at which the program will stop, optionally beeping to let you know it has finished. * RULE - This button initially shows a 'Glider' like that on the icon bar and indicates the rule being used to calculate new generations. Clicking on it opens a dialogue box showing the three predefined rules, Conway's Life, 3-4 Life, and Fredkin's game. The symbols are Lifeforms found in planes running with the selected rule. A fourth option in this box allows you to experiment with other rules. If you select the 'User defined' option, the window will expand to show additional controls which allow the conditions for cell birth and survival to be changed. The block labelled 'Cells' determines which of the 'neighbour' cells are considered. The block labelled 'Try' allows you to select one of the predefined rule sets which are provided as examples. 3-4 Life is a variation in which cells with either three or four neighbours are alive in the next generation. There is no distinction between 'birth' and 'survival', as with Conway's Life. Fredkin's game is an unusual variation in which all patterns, however complex, reproduce themselves. The rules are even simpler than Life: diagonally adjacent neighbours are not considered and if one or three of the four remaining neighbours is alive, the cell will be alive in the next generation. HighLife is the default 'User' rule. It is an interesting variation on Conway's original. Clicking on the rule button with shift-Select and shift-Adjust cycle the selected rule backwards and forwards through the available options. * SAVE - The 'floppy disc' button opens a standard 'save as' dialogue box so you can save the current plane. If you select the 'With settings' option, the current size and position of any open MacroLife windows will also be saved, together with settings such as the speed and scale. If you save an empty Life plane called 'LifePlane' into the application directory, MacroLife will start up with this plane open, but will not set the filename, so it won't be accidentally overwritten. * SAVE AREA - This is the floppy disc with a Lifeform superimposed on it. If you click on this button the pointer will change to an arrow with a Lifeform attached. Move the pointer to a corner of the area you want to save and drag the bounding box until it surrounds the area. When you release select, a 'save as' box will appear and you can save the area as a Lifeform file. This file can then be dragged back onto the plane. The Lifeform will appear centred on the cell over which you released the mouse button. You don't have to size the box exactly, as MacroLife will automatically shrink it to fit when it saves the Lifeform. * SHIFT VIEW - Click with Select to drag the visible area around the window. The mouse pointer will change to a hand, and Select can be used to drag the window once, or Adjust to repeat the dragging operation. * MOUSE - The 'mouse XY' button opens a small window which shows the current plane X and Y co-ordinates under the pointer. * OVERVIEW - Clicking on the 'eye' button opens all three overview windows. They can also be opened individually via the root menu. Each overview window shows which areas in the part of the plane which it represents contain occupied cells. These are indicated by black 'blobs' within the boxes. The red highlight shows which area is currently at the centre of the main window. If a blue highlight appears, this roughly represents the area currently visible in the main window. The Global window shows the entire plane. Each 'box' within the window represents an area of 4096 by 4096 cells. The Regional window shows the contents of the area currently highlighted in the Global window. Each box represents an area of 256 by 256 cells. The Local window shows the contents of the area currently highlighted in the Regional window. Each box represents an area of 16 by 16 cells. By clicking on the overview windows, you can move the view of the main window around the plane. Clicking on the Global window resets both the Regional and Local positions, and clicking on the Regional window resets the Local position, so start with Global and work down if you want to move a large distance. The root menu ------------- The main menu has three submenus: File, Edit, and View, and an item which opens the Options dialogue box. The File menu ------------- From the File menu, you can save the plane or portions of it to disc. It has the following items: * Info - This leads to an info box which provides information about the current Life plane. * Save - Duplicated on the toolbar, this leads to a standard 'save as' box, and lets you save the entire Life plane to disc. If you have already saved the plane, clicking in this item will save it immediately. * Save area - Duplicates the toolbar button. * Export - This leads to an 'export as' box which lets you save the Life plane as a text file. This format can be read by a number of Life programs, for example XLife on Unix machines. Text files can be imported by dragging them to the icon bar, as long as a plane is not already being displayed. The Edit menu ------------- The Edit menu allows you to control the production of new generations and to add new Life patterns to the plane. It has the following items: * Run (/Stop) - Duplicates the toolbar run/stop button * Step - Duplicates the toolbar step button * Set speed - Duplicates the toolbar speedometer button * Set rule - Duplicates the toolbar rule button. * Stop at - Duplicates the toolbar button. * Block edit - Leads to a submenu with four items which duplicate the Clear, Fill, Move and Copy block toolbar buttons. * Add Lifeform - Duplicates the toolbar button. * Random field - Duplicates the toolbar button. * Clear plane - This opens the same dialogue box as a Select double-click on the toolbar Population display. * Reset plane - This opens the same dialogue box as a Select double-click on the toolbar Generation display. * New start - This opens the same dialogue box as an Adjust double-click on the toolbar Generation display. The View menu ------------- The View menu provides controls which affect the appearance of the Life plane. It has the following items: * Centre view - This has the same effect as a Select click on the toolbar centre button. * Average view - This has the same effect as an Adjust click on the toolbar centre button. * Shift view - This has the same effect as a Select click on the toolbar shift button * Move view - This opens the same dialogue box as a double-click on the toolbar X or Y co-ordinate displays. * Scale view - Duplicates the toolbar magnifier. * Show grid lines - Duplicates the toolbar grid button. * Show mouse position - Duplicates the toolbar mouse XY button. * Show overviews - Clicking on this item will open all three. overview windows. They can also be opened individually via the submenu. * Show tools - Turns the toolbar on or off. The Options dialogue box ------------------------ This dialogue box allows you to specify the following: * Colours - The colours used on the Life plane. * Wrap at border - Whether patterns 'wrap around' when they reach the edge of the plane. * Keep start point - Whether the start point (generation zero) will be saved. You may wish to turn off this feature if you are short of memory. * Auto scroll - Whether the window will scroll if you are adding or deleting cells or dragging blocks of cells and the mouse gets close to the edge. * Toolbar help - Whether a 'quick help' text is provided. This appears to the right of the 'eye' button on the toolbar and describes the button currently under the mouse pointer. * Narrow toolbar - Whether a single row of buttons is spread along a narrow toolbar, or a double row is stacked on a wider toolbar. The options you set will only apply to the current plane. Click on 'Save choices' on the iconbar menu to store them permanently. The Choices file ---------------- MacroLife normally saves its Choices file in the application directory, and can optionally start up with a default Life plane, if one is saved into the application directory. If this is not possible, for example if MacroLife is run from a read-only archive or from a CD-ROM, a system variable, MacroLife$ChoicesDir, can be defined. This will specify an alternative directory which will be used instead. If you have a registered copy of MacroLife, this is where the program will look for the registration file. ********************** ** Acknowledgements ** ********************** Acorn's technical people, for designing a great family of computers. Dominic Symes and his cohorts for Zap, a superlative text editor. Jason Williams et al. for the Wimp library DeskLib, which made Life easier. Dick Alstein for TemplEd, a template editor that doesn't drive you crazy. Mark Moxon and David Matthewman at Acorn User, for taking an interest. Neil Burgess and Randolph Morris at BEEBUG, for extensive testing :-) Robin Watts, for helpful suggestions and being my first customer. Steve Spry, for tracking down a bug just before release. Only one, Steve? Dean Hickerson, David Bell and others for many of the new Lifeforms. William Poundstone, for a fascinating book on cosmology and Life. (The recursive universe, Oxford University Press 1985) **************************************** ** Registering your copy of MacroLife ** **************************************** On registration, you will receive: * The latest version of MacroLife. * A key file which will suppress the initial registration message and enter your name in the Licence field. * !LibForm, a Lifeform library management tool. * An archive containing hundreds of amazing Life patterns. * An illustrated manual. * Free upgrades (on receipt of the original disc and return postage). To register, send a cheque for eight pounds to the address below. If you are on the net, I can email you the files (without the printed manual) for seven pounds. I will then donate four pounds to Motivation, a charity which designs inexpensive wheelchairs and organises their production using local materials in countries which cannot afford commercial models. If you wish to use !MacroLife on a network, site licences cost an additional sixteen pounds. Again, half of this goes to Motivation. Please make the cheque payable to Mr C.J.Taylor. If you prefer, you can send two cheques, one made out to Motivation. If you find a bug in !MacroLife, or would like additional features, or just want to tell me how great/awful it is, please write/email me: Chris Taylor email: chris@sati.demon.co.uk 32 Burghley Court tel: 01908 569556 Great Holm Milton Keynes MK8 9EL This address should be valid until September 1996. After this date, write to: The Haven Buffler's Holt nr Buckingham MK18 5DN