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Annotation of researchv10no/cmd/movie/LONG_DESC, revision 1.1

1.1     ! root        1: 
        !             2:                 anim -- Algorithm Animation
        !             3: 
        !             4:                 Jon Bentley (research!jlb)
        !             5:                 Brian Kernighan (research!bwk)
        !             6: 
        !             7: 
        !             8: A program or an algorithm can be animated by a movie that
        !             9: graphically represents its dynamic execution.  For instance,
        !            10: a memory allocator might be animated by lines that appear
        !            11: when memory is allocated and disappear when it is freed; a
        !            12: sort might be animated by a randomly scrambled sequence of
        !            13: lines being permuted into order.  Such animations are useful
        !            14: for debugging programs, for developing new programs, and for
        !            15: communicating information about how programs work.
        !            16: 
        !            17: The anim program provides a basic system for algorithm
        !            18: animation:  the output is crude, but the system is easy to
        !            19: use; novice users can animate a program in a couple of
        !            20: hours.  The system currently produces movies on Teletype 5620
        !            21: and 630 terminals and workstations running X11, and also
        !            22: renders movies into ``stills'' that can be included in troff
        !            23: documents.
        !            24: 
        !            25: An animation is normally produced by adding print statements
        !            26: to a program.  Each statement requests the drawing or erasing
        !            27: of some piece of the animation.  Objects may be lines, boxes,
        !            28: circles, or text, positioned arbitrarily.  Anim scales
        !            29: coordinates so that the disaply always fits the screen.  The
        !            30: display may contain multiple independent views that depict
        !            31: different aspects of interest; these views are completely
        !            32: independent of each other and are scaled separately.
        !            33: 
        !            34: When anim is used interactively, the viewer can control the
        !            35: speed of display, proceed forward or backward through time,
        !            36: and change the screen layout to emphasize certain views.  It
        !            37: is also possible to mark interesting points in time and step
        !            38: from event to event interactively.
        !            39: 
        !            40: When anim is used to produce stills, a simple language
        !            41: permits the selection and positioning of arbitrary
        !            42: collections of interesting frames and views.
        !            43: 
        !            44: The system is described in detail in "A System for Algorithm
        !            45: Animation -- Tutorial and User Manual," Bell Labs Computing
        !            46: Science Tech Report #132, January, 1987.

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