From Germany.EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!hookup!caen!hearst.acc.Virginia.EDU!ruacad!rucs2!dana Tue Jan 17 16:45:11 1995 Article: 1808 of comp.ai.alife Newsgroups: comp.theory.cell-automata,comp.ai.alife Path: Germany.EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!hookup!caen!hearst.acc.Virginia.EDU!ruacad!rucs2!dana From: dana@rucs.faculty.cs.runet.edu (Dana Eckart) Subject: New release of Cellular Automata Software Message-ID: Organization: Radford University Date: Mon, 16 Jan 95 21:16:34 MET Lines: 61 Xref: Germany.EU.net comp.theory.cell-automata:2176 comp.ai.alife:1808 I am happy (relieved?) to announce the latest release of my cellular automata programming system: Cellular. UNIX and DOS versions have been placed on rucs2.sunlab.cs.runet.edu and are available via anonymous ftp in the files: pub/ca/cellular.tar.gz (440651 bytes) pub/ca/cellular.zip (627642 bytes) The file "cellular.tar.gz" contains the UNIX version and "cellular.zip" the DOS version [NOTE: The DOS version should be unzipped with the "-d" option.] This release fixes a number of bugs that were present in earlier releases of the software. In addition, a few extras have been added to make some kinds of programs easier to write. If you have an earlier release, you really should get this one to replace it with. The system provides a compiler for the language Cellang, a cellular automata programming language which I have been refining for the last several years. The most important distinguishing features of Cellang, include support for: * any number of dimensions; * compile time specification of each dimension's size; * cell neighborhoods of any size (though bounded at compile time) and shape; * positional and time dependent neighborhoods; * associating multiple values (fields), including arrays, with each cell; * associating a potentially unbounded number of mobile agents [ Agents are mobile entities based on a mechanism of the same name in the Creatures system, developed by Ian Stephenson (ian@ohm.york.ac.uk).] with each cell; and * local interactions only, since it is impossible to construct automata that contain any global control or references to global variables. The UNIX system supports both the X11 and Iris Graphics Library windowing systems and can generate shared memory multi-threaded code for multi-processor Sun and SGI machines. As for viewing speed; a 128 x 128 cell hodge-podge automata gives more than 13 updates per second on a 4 processor SGI 4D-440/VGX using the IRIS Graphics Library (but only 4.4 updates per second using the X11 Windowing System, due primarily to the extra spin locking required). For further information, questions, and comments, please contact: J Dana Eckart Computer Science Department Radford University Radford, VA 24142 dana@rucs.faculty.cs.runet.edu -- J Dana Eckart | It's so nice to be insane, dana@rucs.faculty.cs.runet.edu | no one asks you to explain. -- Helen Reddy