PascGalois Zn Help: 2-D Cellular Automata Image Screen


The Image Screen

The image screen is where you will be doing most of your explorations.

The screen is fairly simple but it has many options in the menu system. We will discuss the layout and mouse options before going into each menu option. When exploring these images the main thing you as a user want to do is alter the color schemes to bring out information on the underlying structure. The layout of the screen is simple. The image is to the left and the element/color correspondence is on the right. There is a menu at the top and a status bar at the bottom. Directly above the color correspondence is a color scheme selector drop-down box. Each child window may have as many color schemes as you would like. The divider between the image and the element/color correspondence is movable.

The two viewing modes are an element viewer for a specific time-step and a probability density viewer which graphs the probability that a cell contains an element from some selected subset of a finite group.

The Time-Step Viewer

The Time-Step Viewer is pictured above. When you move the mouse over the automaton the position you are pointing at and the value of the element at that position are displayed in the status bar and if you hover for a few seconds over the automaton the position and element are also displayed as a tool tip close to the cursor.

If you double-click on an element in the image or on an element in the element list a color chooser dialog box will appear allowing you to select a new color for that element.

If you right-click on the image or on an element in the element list a popup menu will appear with the options to change the element's color, to make the element transparent and to copy and paste a color. If you select to change the element's color the same color chooser dialog box will come up. If you select the transparent color option then the color in the element list for the selected element will be a box with an x through it, signifying a transparent color. When the graph is refreshed the background color will show through the transparent elements. Copy and paste will simply copy and paste the color to and from the system clipboard.

Before moving onto the menu options, the bottom of the screen contains the level navigation tools that allow you to view the different levels of the automaton.

The Level box simply displays the current level that is being viewed. The first four buttons move the viewing level either forward or backward by either one level or 10 levels. The next button moves the viewing level back to the first level and the last button allows you to input the level number to view. Note that this number must be in the range of levels generated.

The Probability Density Viewer

The layout of the probability density viewer is similar to the level viewer except that there are two lists to the right. The color scheme now corresponds to subintervals of [0, 1]. The first color corresponds to probability 0 and all other intervals represent of the form (a, b]. The list to the left of the color scheme is a list of the group elements. The way this mode works is you select a subset of elements from the element list and refresh the image. For each cell in the automaton the program will calculate the probability that an element from this subset is in that cell, using level 0 to the current level.

When you move the mouse over the automaton the position you are pointing at and the value the probability of that cell are displayed in the status bar and if you hover for a few seconds over the automaton the position and probability are also displayed as a tool tip close to the cursor.

If you double-click on a cell in the image or on a probability range in the list a color chooser dialog box will appear allowing you to select a new color for that range.

If you right-click on the image or on a probability range in the list a popup menu will appear with the options to change the element's color, to make the element transparent and to copy and paste a color. If you select to change the element's color the same color chooser dialog box will come up. If you select the transparent color option then the displayed color in the selected probability range will be an x, signifying a transparent color. When the graph is refreshed the background color will show through the transparent cells. Copy and paste will simply copy and paste the color to and from the system clipboard.

The Level box works the same way as with the level viewer. In this mode the image displayed will be the probability density from level 0 to the current level.

The File Options



The View Options



The Options Options



The Zoom Options



The Colors Options



   

The menu on the left is the one for the level viewing mode and the on on the right is for the probability density viewing mode.


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