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Annotation of researchv10no/cmd/movie/LONG_DESC, revision 1.1.1.1

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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