ConwayLife.com

dvgrn wrote:Ran into some weirdness with the Build 171 LifeViewer. When I hit "Reply" on the Slow Salvo Seeds topic, the page is going unresponsive. Chrome just makes you kill the page or wait forever, but Firefox will let you debug or stop the script that's causing the trouble:

Script: http://conwaylife.com/forums/s…rosilver ... ugin.js:56

It appears to be something on the second page of the thread, since loading that page is also causing trouble. No doubt it's something I posted... maybe it's one of the

Code: Select all

tags?

When you hit Reply, you can see posts from the second page in the message history, so I'm pretty sure the offending pattern is in there somewhere.[/quote]
The issue wasn't a pattern at all, it was the [url=http://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1675&start=25#p22897]last post[/url] on the second page which contained content that LifeViewer tried to decode and got stuck in a very large loop. I've amended the post to prevent it hanging LifeViewer by adding an initial line.
I've also fixed the bug and I'll upload a new build later today.

Thanks for reporting.

• new script command [[ DELETERANGE <1..16> ]] that defines how near live cells have to be to each other to be deleted as part of a pattern (default is 3 cells)

• RLE decoder was not failing on some invalid patterns
  • correctly failing test case is here
• removed support for LV85 format patterns

• creating rule lookup table is now 5x faster
• UI icons are now shared across all viewers
• "Click to Control" message now uses colour animation
• added state value to coordinate display

rowett wrote:Two questions:
1) Is there a canonical version of Hensel's notation available?

rowett wrote:2) Where can I find a list of symmetries (C1, D8 etc) along with descriptions?

dvgrn wrote:

rowett wrote:Two questions:
1) Is there a canonical version of Hensel's notation available?

Alan Hensel's neighbors2 table is the one everyone seems to be trying to standardize on.

rowett wrote:2) Where can I find a list of symmetries (C1, D8 etc) along with descriptions?

Let's see... pictures and descriptions, and here's a list that I think is right but haven't double-checked. You can also dig the list out of apgsearch code, I suppose.

• added the ability to define or randomly generate transition maps (see my post here for details)
  • [[ MAP <map>|<threshold> ]] defines the transition map for all generations
  • [[ MAPODD <map>|<threshold> ]] defines the transition map for odd generations (in which case the MAP definition is used for even generations and must be present)
  • <map> is a base64 encoded 512 bit value
  • <threshold> is a value <0.0..1.0> representing a random threshold to generate the 512 bit value
  • note that [[ MAP ]] overwrites any rule defined in the pattern (but respects History setting)
• scripts (without waypoint definitions) can now display a message on start [[ "This is a message" ]]
• a notification is displayed when the cell population becomes zero

• the cell state value in the coordinate display now works with non-executable patterns
• multiple [[ LOOP ]] or [[ STOP ]] script commands are now flagged as errors
• bounding box calculation occasionally created a box with the wrong height
• custom colours DEAD and DEADRAMP were switched

ARYXfhZofugWaH7oaIDogBZofuhogOiAaIDogIAAgAAWaH7oaIDogGiA6ICAAIAAaIDogIAAgACAAIAAAAAAAA

rowett wrote:Build 176 is now available on the lazyslug server

Enhancements in this build:

• added the ability to define or randomly generate transition maps (see my post here for details)...

dvgrn wrote:That is one monstrous big rule space. I take it that a Hensel isotropic rule string to MAP string converter is in the works?

dvgrn wrote:Ran into a minor detail today, that I thought I had mentioned sometime or other in LifeViewer discussions, but now I can't find any sign of it. Mark Niemiec has a big database of glider syntheses. His RLE format is completely canonical, except that target objects can be marked with a different color, distinguished by an 'x' in the RLE instead of 'o'.

I believe some cases can be found in Mark's patterns where 'y' and 'z' are used for two other alternate colors, but that's relatively rare.

Anyway, Golly just reduces 'x', 'y', and 'z' to plain old state 1, silently and reasonably gracefully -- but it looks like LifeViewer gets a little bit confused.

I haven't done a lot of investigating, but I'm pretty sure it would work okay to convert Mark's format to display as LifeHistory in LifeViewer, with 'x' and 'y' mapped onto states 3 and 5. 'z' really needs another ON state, orange or some such bright color, which LifeHistory doesn't have. But maybe LifeViewer could support a 'z' state without too much trouble?

• Pattern reader
  • Ignores x and y definitions and bases the pattern size on the actual pattern data
  • Supports Mark Niemiec's x, y and z states
• Rule decoder
  • Supports Alan Hensel's non-totalistic rules (from neighbors2, e.g. B2ce3ai_S23)
  • Contains a library of alias names ("Conway's Life", "2x2", "Maze", "HighLife" etc.)
  • Allows "History" to be added to any valid rule or Alias name (including Hensel's) to create [R]History rules
  • Allows birth and survival rule parts to be separated by "/", "_" or without separator by using the "B" and "S" letters
  • Is case-insensitive (so "Life", "LIFE", "life", "B3/S23" and "b3/s23" are all valid)
  • The following are all valid rule specifications for Conway's Life
    • 23/3
    • 23_3
    • B3/S23
    • B3_S23
    • B3S23
    • S23/B3
    • S23_B3
    • S23B3
    • Life
    • <blank or not supplied>
    • Conway's Life
  • The following are all valid rule specifications for Conway's Life with [R]History
    • 23/3History
    • 23_3History
    • B3/S23History
    • B3_S23History
    • B3S23History
    • S23/B3History
    • S23_B3History
    • S23B3History
    • LifeHistory
    • Conway's LifeHistory
    • History

rowett wrote:I completely rewrote the RLE decoder from the ground up. The new version should be much more resilient.
Wow! I'm a little nervous, though. Does it still allow interspersed <br> tags and so forth? I'll have to think up a long list of the most likely ways to break the new decoder.

rowett wrote:I should have a release ready by the weekend.

dvgrn wrote:

rowett wrote:I completely rewrote the RLE decoder from the ground up. The new version should be much more resilient.

Wow! I'm a little nervous, though. Does it still allow interspersed <br> tags and so forth? I'll have to think up a long list of the most likely ways to break the new decoder.

rowett wrote:Dave I discovered from the thread that the tlife rule is B3/S2-i34q and have added it to LifeViewers alias list (which means those posts would now run in LifeViewer).
Do you know of other rule names that I could also add to the alias list?

dvgrn wrote:Ow, yes, there are a lot of them, and I haven't been keeping track.

What I should probably do is a quick survey of all the threads on the Other Cellular Automata board, just to see what strings show up most often after ', rule = '. Some of the most popular rules would be nice to have LifeViewer support for, but offhand I don't know which those are (besides tlife).

rowett wrote:And is there a process by which one decides which rules should be canonical? What's to stop two different posters both generating a rule called "tlife" with different rule definition?

• added support for Alan Hensel's isotropic non-totalistic rule format - test
• added support for Mark Niemiec's x, y and z states (pending state 7 completion) - test
• added support for Hex neighbourhoods (currently only ANGLE=0 display) - test
  • hotkey "/" will toggle hex display (note this does not change the rule)
• added alias list to help information

• there is now no limit to the pattern size that can be deleted when it hits the large grid boundary - test
• moving the mouse within a Viewer without focus will also trigger the "Click to control" message
  • previously this was only triggered when moving the mouse onto the Viewer

• the x coordinate cell display does not yet work correctly with Hex rules

• If there is a <bounded-grid> definition at the end of the rule string it is processed then removed from the rule string
• If there is a <history> definition at the end of the rule string it is processed and then removed
• The remaining rule string is tested to see if it is an alias and if so replaced with the alias definition
• If there is a <neighbourhood> definition at the end of the string it is processed and then removed
• The remaining rule string is decoded with the birth/survival parser

• rules and aliases are case insensitive
• whitespace is ignored
• the parser is strict and invalid characters cause the rule to be invalid
• LifeViewer reads but does not execute patterns containing bounded grid definitions

• new script command [[ HEXDISPLAY ]] to switch on hex display (used for unsupported rule patterns you want to show as hex)

• x coordinate display for hex rules now works correctly
• better whitespace handling for rule decoding

• Plane (finite width and height only)
• Tube (bit of a hack)
• Torus including shift
• Klein-bottle including shift
• Cross-surface
• Sphere

• added support without performance penalty for bounded grids - test

• tile counts were only being updated every even generation in help information