LifeWiki - User contributions [en]

OCA:LeapLife

2023-08-27T01:43:26Z

Ultimium: OCA:Just_Friends: "Just Friends is a two-state rule created by David Bell". No need to nitpick here

{{Rule
|name = LeapLife
|b = 2n3
|s = 23-q
|char = Chaotic
|hideimg = true
}}
'''LeapLife''' is an [[isotropic non-totalistic cellular automaton]] created by Hunting in January, {{year|2020}}. It differs from [[Conway's Game of Life]] by two transitions, much like {{rl|tlife}}, but is much more stable.

LeapLife ranked eighth in [[OCA Discovery of the Year#2020|OCA Discovery of the Year 2020]]. LeapLife billiard tables ranked last in [[OCA Discovery of the Year#2021|OCA Discovery of the Year 2021]]. LeapLife is also the third most-searched non-totalistic rule on Catagolue, after {{rl|Rule X3VI}} and {{rl|Snowflakes}}.

{|style="clear:right;float:right;margin-left:16px;margin-bottom:8px;width:300px;"
|{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 16, y = 16, rule = B2n3/S23-q
2o2b4o3bo2bo$ob2o2bobo2bo2b2o$o2bo2bobo2b2o$2b2o2b2obob2o2bo$bobo2bo2b
2obo2bo$2obo2bo6b3o$2bob2o4b2o3bo$2o2b9obo$3b4o4b2ob2o$b2o2bo7b3o$bo2b
o3b2obob3o$o2bo2b4ob4o$3b3obob3o$2b3o2bobobo2bo$3bob2o4bo2bo$b4ob4obob
3o!
|viewerconfig = #C [[ HEIGHT 600 WIDTH 600 THUMBSIZE 2 ZOOM 10 GPS 8 AUTOSTART T 0 PAUSE 2 T 161 PAUSE 1 LOOP 162 ]]
|position = center
|caption = After 121 ticks, a {{times|16|16}} random soup<ref>{{cata|hashsoup/C1/k_pZ8qDBWr6PSX746/b2n3s23-q|/hashsoup/C1/k_pZ8qDBWr6PSX746/b2n3s23-q}}</ref> settles into a p6 traffic light oscillator, an escaping glider, and an escaping lepa
}}
|}

== Patterns ==

=== Still lives ===

Because LeapLife added one birth transition and removed one survival transition from Life, all [[Still life|still lives]] in LeapLife are still lives in Conway's Game of Life, but the reverse is not true. For example, the [[snake with feather]] fails in LeapLife.

All still lives up to 12 bits have occurred naturally. The last of them to occur, [[trans-very long fuse with two tails]], appeared in November 2022, in a soup submitted by [[FWKnightship]]. Notably, [[eater 1]] and [[aircraft carrier]] are significantly more common than they're in Life.

All still lives up to 11 bits have known [[Glider synthesis|syntheses]]. The following (probably outdated) table displays statistics about the costs for strict still lives up to 11 cells. Green indicates a cost lower than one glider per bit; yellow indicates a cost of equal to or more than one glider per bit. Max costs are linked to the corresponding still life.

{|class="wikitable"
|-
! Live cells !! Count !! Max cost
|-
|4
|2
| style="background: #80ff80;" | [[Tub|3]]
|-
|5
|1
| style="background: #80ff80;" | [[Boat|2]]
|-
|6
|5
| style="background: #80ff80;" | [[Snake|4]]
|-
|7
|4
| style="background: #80ff80;" | [[Long snake|4]]
|-
|8
|9
| style="background: #80ff80;" | [[Hook with tail|5]]
|-
|9
|10
| style="background: #ffffa0;" | [[Extra long snake|12]]
|-
|10
|25
| style="background: #ffffa0;" | [[Trans-very long hook with tail|11]]
|-
|11
|44
| style="background: #ffffa0;" | [[Cis-long^3 hook with tail|19]]
|}

=== Oscillators ===

A variety of [[oscillator]]s are present in LeapLife, mostly discovered with [[apgsearch]].

Of all alien oscillators, quite a few of them are especially common, shown below.

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 36, y = 20, rule = B2n3/S23-q
b3o26b2o$o3bo10b2o2b2o9bobo$o3bo9bo2b2o2bo10bo$o3bo10b2o2b2o10bo2bo$b
3o29b2o10$18b2o$2o16bobo$2o16b3o8bobobobo$2bo26b3ob3o$3b2o10b2o12bobob
obo$3b2o10b2o!
|viewerconfig = #C [[ THUMBSIZE 2 ZOOM 12 HEIGHT 450 WIDTH 650 GPS 2 AUTOSTART ]]
|position = center
|caption = From left to right: '''Row 1''': The traffic-light p6, the interchange p6, and the "integral" p4. '''Row 2''': The "two-blocks" p3, the "loaf-block" p4, and an unnamed p10
|style = width:300px;
}}

Most oscillators known before April 2020 can be found in a [https://github.com/HuntingBot/leaplife/blob/master/all-oscillators.rle GitHub repository].

=== Spaceships ===

The [[glider]]s and [[xWSS]]es still work in LeapLife, and there's an additional (2,1)c/8 [[knightship]] called the "lepa".

As of October 2022, all [[spaceship]]s discovered in LeapLife are elementary. The idea of building a [[Demonoid]] in LeapLife was brought up several times, but the spaceship itself is not yet completed. The currently known velocities are c/2, c/3, c/4, c/5, 2c/5, c/6, 2c/7, c/12 orthogonal, c/4, c/5, c/6<ref name="post160843" /> diagonal, and (2,1)c/6,<ref name="post160502" /> (2,1)c/8 knightwise. A table of completed spaceship searches can be found [[User:Ultimium/LeapLife_Spaceship_Search_Status_Page|here]].

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 163, y = 129, rule = B2n3/S23-q
b3o10bo18bo27bo10b2ob2o12b2o4b2o12b2o2b2o$o2bo8b5o12b3ob2o4b3o9b3o7bo
8b2obobob2o11bo4bo14bo2bo$3bo7b2o3b2o10bo5b2o5bo9bo8bobo5bobo7bobo7bob
o4bobo9bobo4bobo$3bo24bo2bo10bo7bo16b2o2bobobobo2b2o6bo8bo7b2o10b2o$ob
o8bo2bo2bo8bo5bo9bo7bo16b2o3bo3bo3b2o5b2o8b2o6b2ob2o4b2ob2o10b2o$11bo
5bo8bob2o3bo5bo5b3o5bo4b3o7bob2o5b2obo5b2o10b2o5bo3bo4bo3bo9bobo$9bo3b
obo3bo6bo6bo6b3o7b3o4bo12b3o3b3o6b2o12b2o8bo4bo15bo$7b2obo2bobo2bob2o
7bo11bo3bobo3bo9bo10bo3bo30b3o4b3o$8bo3bo3bo3bo7b2o2b2o7bo2bo3bo2bo5bo
3b2o5bo3bo3bo3bo4bo2bo8bo2bo$6bo3bo7bo3bo4bo6bo6bo3bobo3bo4b2o5b2o3bo
2b2o3b2o2bo5bobo8bobo$12bo3bo11b2obo12bo3bo11bo2b2o2b2obo7bob2o$7bo4bo
3bo4bo10b2o9b2o3b2o13bo4bobo2bobo2bobo5bobo8bobo$8bo4bobo4bo21bobo3bob
o12b2o3bob4ob4obo6bo10bo36bobo$9b3obobob3o23b3ob3o12b3o3bobob2ob2obobo
5bobo8bobo35bo2bo$8b2o9b2o22b2o3b2o22bo3bo8b2ob2o6b2ob2o30b4o4bo$8bo
11bo39bobo9b2ob2o54b3o3bo2bo$9bo9bo39bo10bo7bo7bobo8bobo27b3o$59b2o9bo
bo3bobo7b3o8b3o30b2o7b2o$59bo7b2o11b2o3bo3bo6bo3bo26b2o3bo5bo$59bo7bo
3bo5bo3bo4b3o8b3o28bo4bo3b2o$60bo26bo10bo33bobo2b2o$87bo10bo26bo2bo6bo
b2o$57b2o10b3o5b3o7bo3b4o3bo26bobo7bo$58bo8b3o9b3o42bo3bo7bo$57b3o28bo
8bo28bob2obob2obo14bo$56b2ob2o10bob3obo10b2o6b2o20b5obobo3bo3bobo12b4o
$71bo5bo9bo10bo20bo4bo2b2o25bo$68b4o5b4o6bo10bo20bob2o7b2o15bo3bob2o$
69bo2bo3bo2bo42bobob2obo15b2o4bo$118b2o2bo20bo4b2o2bo$68b3o7b3o41b4obo
15bob2ob2ob2o$69b2o7b2o37b2ob2o3bobo14bo2b2o3b2o$68b2obo5bob2o29bo7bob
2o5bo15bo$69b3o5b3o30b2o6bo4bob3o11bo4b3ob3o7bobo$69b2o7b2o34bo3b4obo
3bo8bob2ob2o5b3o7bo3bo$68bobo7bobo28b2o3bo6bo14b2o3b3o3bobo12bo$68bob
2o5b2obo28bo4bo22b2obob2o16bobo$68bo11bo25b2o3b2o24b2o2bo2bo2bo$69bo2b
o3bo2bo26bo9b3o16bo6b3obo$73bobo29bobo24bo6b3o$73bobo30b2o7bo17b2o7bo
3bo$73bobo27bo2bo8bo3bo11b4obob2o2bo3bo$70b2obobob2o22b2obobo10bob2o9b
2o4bo2bo3b3o$69bo3bobo3bo19bo4b2o10b2o11b3o4bo3b2o$68b2ob2o3b2ob2o17bo
3b3o23bo2b4o4b2o$70bo7bo24bo8b2obo13b3ob3o$101b3o6b3ob2o17bo5bo$68bo
11bo24bo3bo3bo11bo7bobo3bo$67bobo9bobo16bo2bo6b3o14bo3b2o8bo$67bo13bo
16b4obo2b3o2bo12b2o3b2o3b2o2bo$69b2o3bo3b2o18b2o2bo3bobobo7bobo6bo6b2o
$72bobobo26b2obo3bo7bobob2o5b2o$68bob4ob4obo22bo13b3o5b2o4bo$67b2o11b
2o20b2o5bo19b2o$68bo3bo3bo3bo21b3o3bo6b3o9b2obo$68bob4ob4obo47bo$69b2o
2bobo2b2o33bo3b2o$73bobo35bo4b3o$72b2ob2o34b4obo9bo2bo$73bobo36b3o4bo
6bobo$71bobobobo30b2o8b5o5bo$70bo2bobo2bo42b2o2bobo$70bo2bobo2bo28bobo
10bo4bo$71b3ob3o29bo5bo4b3obobo$70bobo3bobo26b3o4b3o4bo3bo$71bobobobo
27b2o11bo2b2o$74bo30b2o7bobo$72b5o28bobo7bo2bo2bo$106b3o$107bobo8b3o$
108b2o7bo$109bo5b2o$104bobo$98bo5bob2o3b3obo$97bobo4bobo$96b2obobo3b2o
5b2o$96b7obo$96b2o3b3o$92b4o4bobobo$93bo5bo2bo$91bobob3o5b3o$91b2o7bo
3bo$88bob3o7bo$87bobo9bo$86b2obo7bo2b2o$83bob2ob3o$89bob2o5bo2bo$82bo
8b2o4bobo$85bo3bobobo$83b3o3b2o3bo2bo$85bo5bo$85b2ob2o5b2o$85b2o5bobo$
82bo7bo2b2o$76b5o5bo4bob2o$75bo2bo2bobob3o2bo$78b3o2bo$73bo3bo3bo3bo$
73bo3bo2b4o$79b2ob2o$73bo6bob2o$72b5o4bo$71bobo4bo2b3obo$69b3obob2o4b
3o$67bo5bo4bo2b3o$66bo9b2o$65bo3bo3bo3bo$65b3o8bo$67bo8bo$63b2o9b2o$
62bob3o2b2o3b2o$61bo3bo3bo2bo$66bo$59b3o5bo2b2obo$58b4o7b2obo$57bo10b
4o$57bo3b3o5bo$59bo2bobo$52b2o3bo2bo4b2o$50bo3bobobobo4bo$50bo3bob3o6b
o$50bo8b5o$52b5ob2o2bo$52b2o5bo$53bo4b2o$54bobobo$56b2o$55b2ob2o$55b2o
b2o!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ THUMBSIZE 2 ZOOM 4 WIDTH 1000 HEIGHT 560 ]]
|caption = Smallest example of all known simplified velocities. (2, 1)c/6 spaceship not shown for its size
|style = width:300px;
}}

Very few spaceships in LeapLife have syntheses. Only the lepa, xWSSes and their combinations, and the c/12 orthogonal<ref name="post128049" /> have been synthesised.

=== [[Linear growth]] patterns ===

==== Guns ====

Very limited [[gun]] technologies are known in LeapLife. 2-engine p22-based and p24-based guns are discovered early on. p19-based guns are first constructed by FWKnightship in March 2021 using an XWSS salvo as an over-unity reaction.<ref name="post126288" /><ref name="post127079" /> It was quickly superseded by a much smaller design by AbhpzTa, using a sparker-supported 2G-to-3G reaction.<ref name="post127107" />

Guns of period p19N, p22N, and p24N for all sufficiently large N are known as well.

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 67, y = 34, rule = B2n3/S23-q
11bo$10b3o$9bo$9bo4bo$10b2o3bo$11bo3bo$12bo4bo40b2o$14b2o41b6o$16bob2o
37b2o2b3o$16bo3bo34bo5bob2o$54bo4bo$17bo4bo29bobo5bobo$18b2o2b2o14bo2b
o5bo7bo4bo$19bo2bo14b3o8bob2obo5bo$20b2o14b4o7b2o2b3o2b2o$34bo11bo5b6o
$12b3o17b2o7b4o10b2o$12b2o18bo8b3o$11bobobo17bo5bo2bo$15bo2bobo33bo$9b
2o2bo5b2o31bobo$8bo3bobo4bo33b2o$8b3o$6b4o$5bob2o15bo$5bobo17b2o33bo$
3bo20b2o32bobo$b2o3bo52b2o$b3obo$bo4bo$3b2o24bobo$30b2o34bo$30bo33bobo
$65b2o!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ AUTOSTART THUMBSIZE 2 ZOOM 8 HEIGHT 400 WIDTH 650 GPS 16 KILLGLIDERS ]]
|caption = p22 and p24 glider guns
|style = width:300px;
}}

==== Puffers ====

[[Puffer]]s in LeapLife are discovered much later than guns, and very few puffers are known as of now.

The first puffer in LeapLife is the c/2 line puffer discovered by FWKnightship; It can be perturbed into rakes and others.

Some puffers of other velocities are known, including a 2c/5 orthogonal blinker puffer and a c/4 diagonal tubstretcher.

=== Unstable objects and evolutionary sequences ===

==== Methuselahs ====

Due to the nature of the rule, [[methuselah]]s in LeapLife are usually much shorter-lived than methuselahs in Life. The first few methuselahs in LeapLife were discovered by enumerating small patterns; The later methuselahs were found by soup-searching. The longest-lived methuselah currently known is one shown below, lasting 944 generations, found by [[User:Pzq_Alex]].

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 16, y = 16, rule = B2n3/S23-q
o5b2o4bo2bo$o2b4obo2b3obo$b5o2bo4b3o$3bobo4bob2o$bo2b2obo4bo$obo3b5o4b
o$3b4ob3o2bobo$2ob2o3bo2b5o$bobo4bo6bo$3o2bobo5bobo$o4bo2b3obobo$2o2b
4o$2ob3o2bobo3bo$2o2b5o3bob2o$2o2bo2b2obobo2bo$o2b3ob2ob2o2bo!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ ]]
|caption = 944M.
|style = width:300px;
}}

The longest-lived known diehard is the 710-tick diehard shown below:

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 16, y = 16, rule = B2n3/S23-q
2bo5bo3bobo$3b2obob2o3b2o$2bo2b2o2b2o$3b2ob3o4bobo$5b2o2bo2b3o$5bob3o
2bo$bo2bobo3bob3o$o3b3o3bo2b2o$8b2o4bo$3b3o3b4obo$2obo4bobo2bobo$6o7b
3o$o7bob2o$3o3bobobo2bobo$3bo5b2obobo$bo5bobo2bobo!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ ]]
|caption = 710-tick diehard
|style = width:300px;
}}

The following is a table of long-lived methuselahs that were record-breaking at the time it was discovered.

{| class="sortable wikitable"
|-
!colspan=10|Abbreviations: L = lifespan, BB = [[bounding box]], I = initial [[population]], F = final population
|-
! L
! [[Pattern]]
! BB
! [[MCPS]]
! I
! F

! [[L/I]]
! [[F/I]]
! [[F/L]]
! [[L/MCPS]]
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 944
| 944M
| 16|16
| 124
| 120
| 32
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 885
| 885M
| 16|16
| 105
| 96
| 53
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 822
| 822M
| 16|16
| 97
| 90
| 19
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 776
| 776M
| 16|16
| 105
| 99
| 52
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 750
| 750M
| 16|16
| 106
| 101
| 33
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 650
| 650M
| 5|7
| 14
| 13
| 22
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 395
| [[Procrastinator]] relative
| 6|6
| 18
| 16
| 11
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 248
| [[Procrastinator]] relative
| 3|5
| 9
| 8
| 11
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 247
| [[Procrastinator]] relative
| 4|4
| 9
| 8
| 11
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 246
| [[Procrastinator]] variant
| 4|4
| 7
| 7
| 11
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 235
| Nope
| 4|4
| 9
| 9
| 10
}}
|}

==== Common evolutionary sequences ====

A few common [[evolution]]ary sequences in Life are common in LeapLife as well, like [[lumps of muck]], [[bakery]] and a variant of [[pi-heptomino]]. There are also some other sequences known and investigated for a while that are not as common in Life, like the "butterfly sequence" (different from the butterfly sequence in Life).

A census of {{times|8|8}} soups in LeapLife has been done, similar to the method used in [[List of common evolutionary sequences]]{{cn}}. The result is shown below. Note that the predecessor shown here is not necessarily the bottleneck, but instead the last generation before it reaches 12 cells or more.

{| class="wikitable sortable"
! Sequence !! Pattern !! Lifespan !! Occurrences !! [[Relative frequency|Rel. freq.]]
|-
| Butterfly/Bookend ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
2b3o$bo2bo$o3bo$o$3o!
}}|| 33 || 665 || 1.000
|-
| [[Pi]] variant/House ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
2ob2o$obobo$2bo$b3o$2bo!
}}|| 57 || 329 || 0.495
|-
| [[Lumps of muck]] ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
2bo$b2o$2o2bo$2bo2b2o$4b2o$4bo!
}}|| 19 || 229 || 0.344
|-
| [[Pre-pulsar]] ([[Pi]] variant descendant) ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
bo$bo$obo$bo$bo2$bo$bo$obo$bo$bo!
}}|| 14 || 65 || 0.098
|-
| [[Bakery]] ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
b2o$o2bo$o3bo$bo2bo$2b3o!
}}|| 41 || 57 || 0.086
|-
| [[Traffic light]] colliding with a [[block]] ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
2o4bo$2o3bobo$4bo3bo$5bobo$6bo!
}}|| 62 || 47 || 0.071
|-
| Unnamed region ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
3o$o$o2bo$bob2o$2b2o$2bo!
}}|| 31 || 32 || 0.048
|-
| Unnamed region ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
2b3o$bobobo$2o3b2o!
}}|| 46 || 29 || 0.044
|-
| [[Procrastinator]] ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
2b3o$bo2bo$4bo$o2bo$2b2o$b2o!
}}|| 231 || 25 || 0.038
|-
| Unnamed region ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
3o$2o$o2bo$3bo$4bo$2b3o!
}}|| 76 || 25 || 0.038
|-
| Unnamed region ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
b2o$bobo$o2bo$bo$bo3bo$3bobo$4bo!
}}|| 72 || 23 || 0.035
|-
| Pi + Traffic light ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
6bo$2bo3b2o$2o5b2o$2bo3b2o$6bo!
}}|| 81 || 21 || 0.032
|-
| Long bun ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
5b2o$b2obobo$o3bo$b3o$2bo!
}}|| 45 || 20 || 0.030
|-
| Unnamed region ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
bo$4o$o3bo$4bo$2b3o!
}}|| 29 || 18 || 0.027
|-
| Honeyfarm ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
2bo$bobo$o3bo$o3bo$o3bo$bobo$2bo!
}}|| 14 || 17 || 0.026
|-
| Two [[stairstep hexomino]]es ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
7bo$7b2o$8b2o$9bo3$o$2o$b2o$2bo!
}}|| 34 || 17 || 0.026
|}

=== Catalyses and other reactions ===

The simplest catalysis that exists in LeapLife and not Life is a block catalysis from the corner, due to the B2n transition. There are also some other catalysts, mostly discovered with a LeapLife hack of [[dr]] by [[wwei23]].

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 68, y = 34, rule = B2n3/S23-q
25bo$25bo16bo$17b2o6bo16bobo$4bo12bo2b2o4b3o13b2o$3b2o13b3obo15bo9b2o$
3bo18bo15bo8bo2bo$18b4ob2o13bo6bo2bobo$2o16bo3bo2bo19b2obob2o$2o17bo2b
ob2o20bobo$20bobobo19bobobob2o$21b2obobo17b2o2bo2bo$25b2o21b2o3$59bo$
38b4o4bo8b2obobo$31bo6b4o3bobo7b2obobo2b2o$2o20b2o5b3o13bobo10bobobo2b
o$bo20b2o4bo15b2ob2o6b2obobo2b3o$7b2ob2o15bobo11b2o3bo4b2obobobobo$b2o
2bo2bob2o15bobo10bo2b2obo4b2obobobo2b7o$b2o2b2obo19bo10bobobobo8bobobo
8bo$8bo10b4o16bobobo10bobo2b6o$b5obo10bo3bo15b2obobo7b2obobo7bo$o4bobo
bo12bo18bob2o5bobobo2b7o$obo5b2o8bo2bo5b2o12bo2bo5bobobo$b2o22bo2bo13b
o4b2obobo2b6ob2o$25b3o11b3o6bobobo7bob2o$39bo7bo2bob8o$25b2obo15bo2b2o
bo$25bob2o15b3o3b8o$47b3o8bo$46bo3b2obobobo$46b2o2bob2ob2o!
|viewerconfig = #C [[ THUMBSIZE 2 ZOOM 8 HEIGHT 600 ]]
|position = center
|caption = Some examples of catalysis in LeapLife.
|style = width:300px;
}}

== Variants ==

===HighLeapLife (B2n36/S23-q)===
{{Rule
|name = HighLeapLife
|b = 2n36
|s = 23-q
|char = Chaotic
|hideimg = true
}}

HighLeapLife has a common p96 RRO:

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 7, y = 5, rule = B2n36/S23-q
b2ob3o$2obo2bo$2b2o2bo$3bobo$3b3o!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ AUTOSTART ZOOM 12 GPS 16 LOOP 96 ]]
|caption = The RRO
|style = width:300px;
}}

There is also a p72 oscillator, which was discovered in D4_+1.

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 12, y = 10, rule = B2n36/S23-q
b2o6b2o$ob2o4b2obo$b2o6b2o5$b2o6b2o$ob2o4b2obo$b2o6b2o!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ AUTOSTART ZOOM 12 GPS 16 LOOP 72 ]]
|caption = The p72
|style = width:300px;
}}

===DryLeapLife (B2n37/S23-q)===
{{Rule
|name = DryLeapLife
|b = 2n37
|s = 23-q
|char = Chaotic
|hideimg = true
}}

DryleapLife is similar to LeapLife, with a natural c/7o and a gliderless c/4d, the latter of which was found in D8_1.

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 18, y = 8, rule = B2n37/S23-q
10b5o$b3o7b2ob2o$o3bo6bo4bo$o3bo11b2o$5o12bo$16b2o$15b3o$17bo!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ AUTOSTART ZOOM 12 GPS 16 LOOP 28 ]]
|caption = c/7o and c/4d
|style = width:300px;
}}

===LispLife (B2n3/S23-q4e8)===
{{Rule
|name = LispLife
|b = 2n3
|s = 23-q4e8
|char = Chaotic
|hideimg = true
}}

LispLife is a more active variant of LeapLife. A natural p122 oscillator has been discovered.

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 9, y = 9, rule = B2n3/S23-q4e8
3o$3o$3o4$6b3o$6b3o$6b3o!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ AUTOSTART ZOOM 8 GPS 30 LOOP 122 ]]
|caption = The p122
|style = width:300px;
}}

===tDryLeapLife (B2n37/S2-i3-q4q)===
{{Rule
|name = tDryLeapLife
|b = 2n37
|s = 2-i3-q4q
|char = Chaotic
|hideimg = true
}}

tDryLeapLife has the glider, the [[c/5 orthogonal]] T, and an unnamed 3c/27o.
{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 19, y = 5, rule = B2n37/S2-i3-q4q
16bo$3o4bo7b3o$o5b3o7bo$bo12bobobo$14b2ob2o!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ AUTOSTART ZOOM 8 GPS 30 LOOP 100 ]]
|caption = Common spaceships in tDryLeapLife
|style = width:300px;
}}

==References==
<references>
<ref name="post126288">{{LinkForumThread
|format = ref
|p = 126288
|title = Re: LeapLife (B2n3/S23-q)
|author = FWKnightship
|date = March 20, 2021
}}</ref>
<ref name="post127079">{{LinkForumThread
|format = ref
|p = 127079
|title = Re: LeapLife (B2n3/S23-q)
|author = FWKnightship
|date = March 27, 2021
}}</ref>
<ref name="post127107">{{LinkForumThread
|format = ref
|p = 127107
|title = Re: LeapLife (B2n3/S23-q)
|author = AbhpzTa
|date = March 27, 2021
}}</ref>
<ref name="post128049">{{LinkForumThread
|format = ref
|p = 128049
|title = Re: LeapLife Glider Synthes^2
|author = FWKnightship
|date = April 11, 2021
}}</ref>

<ref name="post160502">{{LinkForumThread
|format = ref
|p = 160502
|title = Re: LeapLife (B2n3/S23-q)
|author = shuich01
|date = April 15, 2023
}}</ref>
<ref name="post160843">{{LinkForumThread
|format = ref
|p = 160843
|title = Re: LeapLife (B2n3/S23-q)
|author = shuich01
|date = April 25, 2023
}}</ref>
</references>

==External links==
* {{LinkForumThread|f=11|t=4267|title=LeapLife (B2n3/S23-q)}}
* {{LinkCatagolueRule|b2n3s23-q|rulename=LeapLife}}
* {{LinkForumThread|f=7|t=5059|title=A LeapLife Status Report (NOW WITH LIFEVIEWER ANIMATION!)}}
* {{LinkForumThread|f=11|t=4865|title=LeapLife Relatives}}
* {{LinkCatagolueRule|b2n36s23-q|rulename=HighLeapLife}}
* {{LinkCatagolueRule|b2n37s23-q|rulename=DryLeapLife}}
* {{LinkForumThread|f=11|t=4418|title=LispLife (B2n3/S23-q4e8)}}
* {{LinkCatagolueRule|b2n3s23-q4e8|rulename=LispLife}}
* {{LinkForumThread|f=11|t=4670|title=tDryLeapLife (B2n37/S2-i3-q4q)}}
* {{LinkCatagolueRule|b2n37s2-i3-q4q|rulename=tDryLeapLife}}

[[Category:Isotropic non-totalistic rules]]

OCA:LeapLife

2023-06-02T07:28:56Z

Ultimium: According to the forums this doesn't seem to be appropiate anymore.

{{Rule
|name = LeapLife
|b = 2n3
|s = 23-q
|char = Chaotic
|hideimg = true
}}
'''LeapLife''' is an [[isotropic non-totalistic cellular automaton]] created by Hunting in January, {{year|2020}}. It differs from [[Conway's Game of Life]] by two transitions, much like {{rl|tlife}}, but is much more stable.

LeapLife ranked eighth in [[OCA Discovery of the Year#2020|OCA Discovery of the Year 2020]]. LeapLife billiard tables ranked last in [[OCA Discovery of the Year#2021|OCA Discovery of the Year 2021]]. LeapLife is also the third most-searched non-totalistic rule on Catagolue, after {{rl|Rule X3VI}} and {{rl|Snowflakes}}.

== Patterns ==

=== Still lives ===

Because LeapLife added one birth transition and removed one survival transition from Life, all [[Still life|still lives]] in LeapLife are still lives in Conway's Game of Life, but the reverse is not true. For example, the [[snake with feather]] fails in LeapLife.

All still lives up to 12 bits have occured naturally. The last of them to occur, [[trans-very long fuse with two tails]], appeared in November 2022, in a soup submitted by [[FWKnightship]]. Notably, [[eater 1]] and [[aircraft carrier]] are significantly more common than they're in Life.

All still lives up to 11 bits have known [[Glider synthesis|syntheses]]. The following (probably outdated) table displays statistics about the costs for strict still lives up to 11 cells. Green indicates a cost lower than one glider per bit; yellow indicates a cost of equal to or more than one glider per bit. Max costs are linked to the corresponding still life.

{|class="wikitable"
|-
! Live cells !! Count !! Max cost
|-
|4
|2
| style="background: #80ff80;" | [[Tub|3]]
|-
|5
|1
| style="background: #80ff80;" | [[Boat|2]]
|-
|6
|5
| style="background: #80ff80;" | [[Snake|4]]
|-
|7
|4
| style="background: #80ff80;" | [[Long snake|4]]
|-
|8
|9
| style="background: #80ff80;" | [[Hook with tail|5]]
|-
|9
|10
| style="background: #ffffa0;" | [[Extra long snake|12]]
|-
|10
|25
| style="background: #ffffa0;" | [[Trans-very long hook with tail|11]]
|-
|11
|44
| style="background: #ffffa0;" | [[Cis-long^3 hook with tail|19]]
|}

=== Oscillators ===

A variety of [[oscillator]]s are present in LeapLife, mostly discovered with [[apgsearch]].

Of all alien oscillators, quite a few of them are especially common, shown below.

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 36, y = 20, rule = B2n3/S23-q
b3o26b2o$o3bo10b2o2b2o9bobo$o3bo9bo2b2o2bo10bo$o3bo10b2o2b2o10bo2bo$b
3o29b2o10$18b2o$2o16bobo$2o16b3o8bobobobo$2bo26b3ob3o$3b2o10b2o12bobob
obo$3b2o10b2o!
|viewerconfig = #C [[ THUMBSIZE 2 ZOOM 12 HEIGHT 450 WIDTH 650 GPS 2 AUTOSTART ]]
|position = center
|caption = From left to right: '''Row 1''': The traffic-light p6, the interchange p6, and the "integral" p4. '''Row 2''': The "two-blocks" p3, the "loaf-block" p4, and an unnamed p10
|style = width:300px;
}}

Most oscillators known before April 2020 can be found in a [https://github.com/HuntingBot/leaplife/blob/master/all-oscillators.rle GitHub repository].

=== Spaceships ===

The [[glider]]s and [[xWSS]]es still work in LeapLife, and there's an additional (2,1)c/8 [[knightship]] called the "lepa".

As of October 2022, all [[spaceship]]s discovered in LeapLife are elementary. The idea of building a [[Demonoid]] in LeapLife was brought up several times, but the spaceship itself is not yet completed. The currently known velocities are c/2, c/3, c/4, c/5, 2c/5, c/6, 2c/7, c/12 orthogonal, c/4, c/5, c/6<ref name="post160843" /> diagonal, and (2,1)c/6,<ref name="post160502" /> (2,1)c/8 knightwise. A table of completed spaceship searches can be found [[User:Ultimium/LeapLife_Spaceship_Search_Status_Page|here]].

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 163, y = 129, rule = B2n3/S23-q
b3o10bo18bo27bo10b2ob2o12b2o4b2o12b2o2b2o$o2bo8b5o12b3ob2o4b3o9b3o7bo
8b2obobob2o11bo4bo14bo2bo$3bo7b2o3b2o10bo5b2o5bo9bo8bobo5bobo7bobo7bob
o4bobo9bobo4bobo$3bo24bo2bo10bo7bo16b2o2bobobobo2b2o6bo8bo7b2o10b2o$ob
o8bo2bo2bo8bo5bo9bo7bo16b2o3bo3bo3b2o5b2o8b2o6b2ob2o4b2ob2o10b2o$11bo
5bo8bob2o3bo5bo5b3o5bo4b3o7bob2o5b2obo5b2o10b2o5bo3bo4bo3bo9bobo$9bo3b
obo3bo6bo6bo6b3o7b3o4bo12b3o3b3o6b2o12b2o8bo4bo15bo$7b2obo2bobo2bob2o
7bo11bo3bobo3bo9bo10bo3bo30b3o4b3o$8bo3bo3bo3bo7b2o2b2o7bo2bo3bo2bo5bo
3b2o5bo3bo3bo3bo4bo2bo8bo2bo$6bo3bo7bo3bo4bo6bo6bo3bobo3bo4b2o5b2o3bo
2b2o3b2o2bo5bobo8bobo$12bo3bo11b2obo12bo3bo11bo2b2o2b2obo7bob2o$7bo4bo
3bo4bo10b2o9b2o3b2o13bo4bobo2bobo2bobo5bobo8bobo$8bo4bobo4bo21bobo3bob
o12b2o3bob4ob4obo6bo10bo36bobo$9b3obobob3o23b3ob3o12b3o3bobob2ob2obobo
5bobo8bobo35bo2bo$8b2o9b2o22b2o3b2o22bo3bo8b2ob2o6b2ob2o30b4o4bo$8bo
11bo39bobo9b2ob2o54b3o3bo2bo$9bo9bo39bo10bo7bo7bobo8bobo27b3o$59b2o9bo
bo3bobo7b3o8b3o30b2o7b2o$59bo7b2o11b2o3bo3bo6bo3bo26b2o3bo5bo$59bo7bo
3bo5bo3bo4b3o8b3o28bo4bo3b2o$60bo26bo10bo33bobo2b2o$87bo10bo26bo2bo6bo
b2o$57b2o10b3o5b3o7bo3b4o3bo26bobo7bo$58bo8b3o9b3o42bo3bo7bo$57b3o28bo
8bo28bob2obob2obo14bo$56b2ob2o10bob3obo10b2o6b2o20b5obobo3bo3bobo12b4o
$71bo5bo9bo10bo20bo4bo2b2o25bo$68b4o5b4o6bo10bo20bob2o7b2o15bo3bob2o$
69bo2bo3bo2bo42bobob2obo15b2o4bo$118b2o2bo20bo4b2o2bo$68b3o7b3o41b4obo
15bob2ob2ob2o$69b2o7b2o37b2ob2o3bobo14bo2b2o3b2o$68b2obo5bob2o29bo7bob
2o5bo15bo$69b3o5b3o30b2o6bo4bob3o11bo4b3ob3o7bobo$69b2o7b2o34bo3b4obo
3bo8bob2ob2o5b3o7bo3bo$68bobo7bobo28b2o3bo6bo14b2o3b3o3bobo12bo$68bob
2o5b2obo28bo4bo22b2obob2o16bobo$68bo11bo25b2o3b2o24b2o2bo2bo2bo$69bo2b
o3bo2bo26bo9b3o16bo6b3obo$73bobo29bobo24bo6b3o$73bobo30b2o7bo17b2o7bo
3bo$73bobo27bo2bo8bo3bo11b4obob2o2bo3bo$70b2obobob2o22b2obobo10bob2o9b
2o4bo2bo3b3o$69bo3bobo3bo19bo4b2o10b2o11b3o4bo3b2o$68b2ob2o3b2ob2o17bo
3b3o23bo2b4o4b2o$70bo7bo24bo8b2obo13b3ob3o$101b3o6b3ob2o17bo5bo$68bo
11bo24bo3bo3bo11bo7bobo3bo$67bobo9bobo16bo2bo6b3o14bo3b2o8bo$67bo13bo
16b4obo2b3o2bo12b2o3b2o3b2o2bo$69b2o3bo3b2o18b2o2bo3bobobo7bobo6bo6b2o
$72bobobo26b2obo3bo7bobob2o5b2o$68bob4ob4obo22bo13b3o5b2o4bo$67b2o11b
2o20b2o5bo19b2o$68bo3bo3bo3bo21b3o3bo6b3o9b2obo$68bob4ob4obo47bo$69b2o
2bobo2b2o33bo3b2o$73bobo35bo4b3o$72b2ob2o34b4obo9bo2bo$73bobo36b3o4bo
6bobo$71bobobobo30b2o8b5o5bo$70bo2bobo2bo42b2o2bobo$70bo2bobo2bo28bobo
10bo4bo$71b3ob3o29bo5bo4b3obobo$70bobo3bobo26b3o4b3o4bo3bo$71bobobobo
27b2o11bo2b2o$74bo30b2o7bobo$72b5o28bobo7bo2bo2bo$106b3o$107bobo8b3o$
108b2o7bo$109bo5b2o$104bobo$98bo5bob2o3b3obo$97bobo4bobo$96b2obobo3b2o
5b2o$96b7obo$96b2o3b3o$92b4o4bobobo$93bo5bo2bo$91bobob3o5b3o$91b2o7bo
3bo$88bob3o7bo$87bobo9bo$86b2obo7bo2b2o$83bob2ob3o$89bob2o5bo2bo$82bo
8b2o4bobo$85bo3bobobo$83b3o3b2o3bo2bo$85bo5bo$85b2ob2o5b2o$85b2o5bobo$
82bo7bo2b2o$76b5o5bo4bob2o$75bo2bo2bobob3o2bo$78b3o2bo$73bo3bo3bo3bo$
73bo3bo2b4o$79b2ob2o$73bo6bob2o$72b5o4bo$71bobo4bo2b3obo$69b3obob2o4b
3o$67bo5bo4bo2b3o$66bo9b2o$65bo3bo3bo3bo$65b3o8bo$67bo8bo$63b2o9b2o$
62bob3o2b2o3b2o$61bo3bo3bo2bo$66bo$59b3o5bo2b2obo$58b4o7b2obo$57bo10b
4o$57bo3b3o5bo$59bo2bobo$52b2o3bo2bo4b2o$50bo3bobobobo4bo$50bo3bob3o6b
o$50bo8b5o$52b5ob2o2bo$52b2o5bo$53bo4b2o$54bobobo$56b2o$55b2ob2o$55b2o
b2o!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ THUMBSIZE 2 ZOOM 4 WIDTH 1000 HEIGHT 560 ]]
|caption = Smallest example of all known simplified velocities. (2, 1)c/6 spaceship not shown for its size
|style = width:300px;
}}

Very few spaceships in LeapLife have syntheses. Only the lepa, xWSSes and their combinations, and the c/12 orthogonal<ref name="post128049" /> have been synthesised.

=== [[Linear growth]] patterns ===

==== Guns ====

Very limited [[gun]] technologies are known in LeapLife. 2-engine p22-based and p24-based guns are discovered early on. p19-based guns are first constructed by FWKnightship in March 2021 using an XWSS salvo as an over-unity reaction.<ref name="post126288" /><ref name="post127079" /> It was quickly superseded by a much smaller design by AbhpzTa, using a sparker-supported 2G-to-3G reaction.<ref name="post127107" />

Guns of period p19N, p22N, and p24N for all sufficiently large N are known as well.

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 67, y = 34, rule = B2n3/S23-q
11bo$10b3o$9bo$9bo4bo$10b2o3bo$11bo3bo$12bo4bo40b2o$14b2o41b6o$16bob2o
37b2o2b3o$16bo3bo34bo5bob2o$54bo4bo$17bo4bo29bobo5bobo$18b2o2b2o14bo2b
o5bo7bo4bo$19bo2bo14b3o8bob2obo5bo$20b2o14b4o7b2o2b3o2b2o$34bo11bo5b6o
$12b3o17b2o7b4o10b2o$12b2o18bo8b3o$11bobobo17bo5bo2bo$15bo2bobo33bo$9b
2o2bo5b2o31bobo$8bo3bobo4bo33b2o$8b3o$6b4o$5bob2o15bo$5bobo17b2o33bo$
3bo20b2o32bobo$b2o3bo52b2o$b3obo$bo4bo$3b2o24bobo$30b2o34bo$30bo33bobo
$65b2o!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ AUTOSTART THUMBSIZE 2 ZOOM 8 HEIGHT 400 WIDTH 650 GPS 16 KILLGLIDERS ]]
|caption = p22 and p24 glider guns
|style = width:300px;
}}

==== Puffers ====

[[Puffer]]s in LeapLife are discovered much later than guns, and very few puffers are known as of now.

The first puffer in LeapLife is the c/2 line puffer discovered by FWKnightship; It can be perturbed into rakes and others.

Some puffers of other velocities are known, including a 2c/5 orthogonal blinker puffer and a c/4 diagonal tubstretcher.

=== Unstable objects and evolutionary sequences ===

==== Methuselahs ====

Due to the nature of the rule, [[methuselah]]s in LeapLife are usually much shorter-lived than methuselahs in Life. The first few methuselahs in LeapLife were discovered by enumerating small patterns; The later methuselahs were found by soup-searching. The longest-lived methuselah currently known is one shown below, lasting 944 generations, found by [[User:Pzq_Alex]].

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 16, y = 16, rule = B2n3/S23-q
o5b2o4bo2bo$o2b4obo2b3obo$b5o2bo4b3o$3bobo4bob2o$bo2b2obo4bo$obo3b5o4b
o$3b4ob3o2bobo$2ob2o3bo2b5o$bobo4bo6bo$3o2bobo5bobo$o4bo2b3obobo$2o2b
4o$2ob3o2bobo3bo$2o2b5o3bob2o$2o2bo2b2obobo2bo$o2b3ob2ob2o2bo!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ ]]
|caption = 944M.
|style = width:300px;
}}

The longest-lived known diehard is the 710-tick diehard shown below:

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 16, y = 16, rule = B2n3/S23-q
2bo5bo3bobo$3b2obob2o3b2o$2bo2b2o2b2o$3b2ob3o4bobo$5b2o2bo2b3o$5bob3o
2bo$bo2bobo3bob3o$o3b3o3bo2b2o$8b2o4bo$3b3o3b4obo$2obo4bobo2bobo$6o7b
3o$o7bob2o$3o3bobobo2bobo$3bo5b2obobo$bo5bobo2bobo!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ ]]
|caption = 710-tick diehard
|style = width:300px;
}}

The following is a table of long-lived methuselahs that were record-breaking at the time it was discovered.

{| class="sortable wikitable"
|-
!colspan=10|Abbreviations: L = lifespan, BB = [[bounding box]], I = initial [[population]], F = final population
|-
! L
! [[Pattern]]
! BB
! [[MCPS]]
! I
! F

! [[L/I]]
! [[F/I]]
! [[F/L]]
! [[L/MCPS]]
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 944
| 944M
| 16|16
| 124
| 120
| 32
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 885
| 885M
| 16|16
| 105
| 96
| 53
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 822
| 822M
| 16|16
| 97
| 90
| 19
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 776
| 776M
| 16|16
| 105
| 99
| 52
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 750
| 750M
| 16|16
| 106
| 101
| 33
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 650
| 650M
| 5|7
| 14
| 13
| 22
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 395
| [[Procrastinator]] relative
| 6|6
| 18
| 16
| 11
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 248
| [[Procrastinator]] relative
| 3|5
| 9
| 8
| 11
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 247
| [[Procrastinator]] relative
| 4|4
| 9
| 8
| 11
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 246
| [[Procrastinator]] variant
| 4|4
| 7
| 7
| 11
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 235
| Nope
| 4|4
| 9
| 9
| 10
}}
|}

==== Common evolutionary sequences ====

A few common [[evolution]]ary sequences in Life are common in LeapLife as well, like [[lumps of muck]], [[bakery]] and a variant of [[pi-heptomino]]. There are also some other sequences known and investigated for a while that are not as common in Life, like the "butterfly sequence" (different from the butterfly sequence in Life).

A census of {{times|8|8}} soups in LeapLife has been done, similar to the method used in [[List of common evolutionary sequences]]. The result is shown below. Note that the predecessor shown here is not necessarily the bottleneck, but instead the last generation before it reaches 12 cells or more.

{| class="wikitable sortable"
! Sequence !! Pattern !! Lifespan !! Occurrences !! [[Relative frequency|Rel. freq.]]
|-
| Butterfly/Bookend ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
2b3o$bo2bo$o3bo$o$3o!
}}|| 33 || 665 || 1.000
|-
| [[Pi]] variant/House ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
2ob2o$obobo$2bo$b3o$2bo!
}}|| 57 || 329 || 0.495
|-
| [[Lumps of muck]] ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
2bo$b2o$2o2bo$2bo2b2o$4b2o$4bo!
}}|| 19 || 229 || 0.344
|-
| [[Pre-pulsar]] ([[Pi]] variant descendant) ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
bo$bo$obo$bo$bo2$bo$bo$obo$bo$bo!
}}|| 14 || 65 || 0.098
|-
| [[Bakery]] ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
b2o$o2bo$o3bo$bo2bo$2b3o!
}}|| 41 || 57 || 0.086
|-
| [[Traffic light]] colliding with a [[block]] ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
2o4bo$2o3bobo$4bo3bo$5bobo$6bo!
}}|| 62 || 47 || 0.071
|-
| Unnamed region ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
3o$o$o2bo$bob2o$2b2o$2bo!
}}|| 31 || 32 || 0.048
|-
| Unnamed region ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
2b3o$bobobo$2o3b2o!
}}|| 46 || 29 || 0.044
|-
| [[Procrastinator]] ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
2b3o$bo2bo$4bo$o2bo$2b2o$b2o!
}}|| 231 || 25 || 0.038
|-
| Unnamed region ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
3o$2o$o2bo$3bo$4bo$2b3o!
}}|| 76 || 25 || 0.038
|-
| Unnamed region ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
b2o$bobo$o2bo$bo$bo3bo$3bobo$4bo!
}}|| 72 || 23 || 0.035
|-
| Pi + Traffic light ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
6bo$2bo3b2o$2o5b2o$2bo3b2o$6bo!
}}|| 81 || 21 || 0.032
|-
| Long bun ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
5b2o$b2obobo$o3bo$b3o$2bo!
}}|| 45 || 20 || 0.030
|-
| Unnamed region ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
bo$4o$o3bo$4bo$2b3o!
}}|| 29 || 18 || 0.027
|-
| Honeyfarm ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
2bo$bobo$o3bo$o3bo$o3bo$bobo$2bo!
}}|| 14 || 17 || 0.026
|-
| Two [[stairstep hexomino]]es ||{{LV:Viewer|x = 0, y = 0, rule = B2n3/S23-q
{{LifeViewer config/evolseq}}
7bo$7b2o$8b2o$9bo3$o$2o$b2o$2bo!
}}|| 34 || 17 || 0.026
|}

=== Catalyses and other reactions ===

The simplest catalysis that exists in LeapLife and not Life is a block catalysis from the corner, due to the B2n transition. There are also some other catalysts, mostly discovered with a LeapLife hack of [[dr]] by [[wwei23]].

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 68, y = 34, rule = B2n3/S23-q
25bo$25bo16bo$17b2o6bo16bobo$4bo12bo2b2o4b3o13b2o$3b2o13b3obo15bo9b2o$
3bo18bo15bo8bo2bo$18b4ob2o13bo6bo2bobo$2o16bo3bo2bo19b2obob2o$2o17bo2b
ob2o20bobo$20bobobo19bobobob2o$21b2obobo17b2o2bo2bo$25b2o21b2o3$59bo$
38b4o4bo8b2obobo$31bo6b4o3bobo7b2obobo2b2o$2o20b2o5b3o13bobo10bobobo2b
o$bo20b2o4bo15b2ob2o6b2obobo2b3o$7b2ob2o15bobo11b2o3bo4b2obobobobo$b2o
2bo2bob2o15bobo10bo2b2obo4b2obobobo2b7o$b2o2b2obo19bo10bobobobo8bobobo
8bo$8bo10b4o16bobobo10bobo2b6o$b5obo10bo3bo15b2obobo7b2obobo7bo$o4bobo
bo12bo18bob2o5bobobo2b7o$obo5b2o8bo2bo5b2o12bo2bo5bobobo$b2o22bo2bo13b
o4b2obobo2b6ob2o$25b3o11b3o6bobobo7bob2o$39bo7bo2bob8o$25b2obo15bo2b2o
bo$25bob2o15b3o3b8o$47b3o8bo$46bo3b2obobobo$46b2o2bob2ob2o!
|viewerconfig = #C [[ THUMBSIZE 2 ZOOM 8 HEIGHT 600 ]]
|position = center
|caption = Some examples of catalysis in LeapLife.
|style = width:300px;
}}

== Variants ==

===HighLeapLife (B2n36/S23-q)===
{{Rule
|name = HighLeapLife
|b = 2n36
|s = 23-q
|char = Chaotic
|hideimg = true
}}

HighLeapLife has a common p96 RRO:

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 7, y = 5, rule = B2n36/S23-q
b2ob3o$2obo2bo$2b2o2bo$3bobo$3b3o!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ AUTOSTART ZOOM 12 GPS 16 LOOP 96 ]]
|caption = The RRO
|style = width:300px;
}}

There is also a p72 oscillator, which was discovered in D4_+1.

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 12, y = 10, rule = B2n36/S23-q
b2o6b2o$ob2o4b2obo$b2o6b2o5$b2o6b2o$ob2o4b2obo$b2o6b2o!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ AUTOSTART ZOOM 12 GPS 16 LOOP 72 ]]
|caption = The p72
|style = width:300px;
}}

===DryLeapLife (B2n37/S23-q)===
{{Rule
|name = DryLeapLife
|b = 2n37
|s = 23-q
|char = Chaotic
|hideimg = true
}}

DryleapLife is similar to LeapLife, with a natural c/7o and a gliderless c/4d, the latter of which was found in D8_1.

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 18, y = 8, rule = B2n37/S23-q
10b5o$b3o7b2ob2o$o3bo6bo4bo$o3bo11b2o$5o12bo$16b2o$15b3o$17bo!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ AUTOSTART ZOOM 12 GPS 16 LOOP 28 ]]
|caption = c/7o and c/4d
|style = width:300px;
}}

===LispLife (B2n3/S23-q4e8)===
{{Rule
|name = LispLife
|b = 2n3
|s = 23-q4e8
|char = Chaotic
|hideimg = true
}}

LispLife is a more active variant of LeapLife. A natural p122 oscillator has been discovered.

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 9, y = 9, rule = B2n3/S23-q4e8
3o$3o$3o4$6b3o$6b3o$6b3o!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ AUTOSTART ZOOM 8 GPS 30 LOOP 122 ]]
|caption = The p122
|style = width:300px;
}}

===tDryLeapLife (B2n37/S2-i3-q4q)===
{{Rule
|name = tDryLeapLife
|b = 2n37
|s = 2-i3-q4q
|char = Chaotic
|hideimg = true
}}

tDryLeapLife has the glider, the [[c/5 orthogonal]] T, and an unnamed 3c/27o.
{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 19, y = 5, rule = B2n37/S2-i3-q4q
16bo$3o4bo7b3o$o5b3o7bo$bo12bobobo$14b2ob2o!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ AUTOSTART ZOOM 8 GPS 30 LOOP 100 ]]
|caption = Common spaceships in tDryLeapLife
|style = width:300px;
}}

==References==
<references>
<ref name="post126288">{{LinkForumThread
|format = ref
|p = 126288
|title = Re: LeapLife (B2n3/S23-q)
|author = FWKnightship
|date = March 20, 2021
}}</ref>
<ref name="post127079">{{LinkForumThread
|format = ref
|p = 127079
|title = Re: LeapLife (B2n3/S23-q)
|author = FWKnightship
|date = March 27, 2021
}}</ref>
<ref name="post127107">{{LinkForumThread
|format = ref
|p = 127107
|title = Re: LeapLife (B2n3/S23-q)
|author = AbhpzTa
|date = March 27, 2021
}}</ref>
<ref name="post128049">{{LinkForumThread
|format = ref
|p = 128049
|title = Re: LeapLife Glider Synthes^2
|author = FWKnightship
|date = April 11, 2021
}}</ref>
<ref name="post141156">{{LinkForumThread
|format = ref
|p = 141156
|title = Re: LeapLife Glider Synthes^2
|author = mniemiec
|date = February 3, 2022
}}</ref>
<ref name="post160502">{{LinkForumThread
|format = ref
|p = 160502
|title = Re: LeapLife (B2n3/S23-q)
|author = shuich01
|date = April 15, 2023
}}</ref>
<ref name="post160843">{{LinkForumThread
|format = ref
|p = 160843
|title = Re: LeapLife (B2n3/S23-q)
|author = shuich01
|date = April 25, 2023
}}</ref>
</references>

==External links==
* {{LinkForumThread|f=11|t=4267|title=LeapLife (B2n3/S23-q)}}
* {{LinkCatagolueRule|b2n3s23-q|rulename=LeapLife}}
* {{LinkForumThread|f=7|t=5059|title=A LeapLife Status Report (NOW WITH LIFEVIEWER ANIMATION!)}}
* {{LinkForumThread|f=11|t=4865|title=LeapLife Relatives}}
* {{LinkCatagolueRule|b2n36s23-q|rulename=HighLeapLife}}
* {{LinkCatagolueRule|b2n37s23-q|rulename=DryLeapLife}}
* {{LinkForumThread|f=11|t=4418|title=LispLife (B2n3/S23-q4e8)}}
* {{LinkCatagolueRule|b2n3s23-q4e8|rulename=LispLife}}
* {{LinkForumThread|f=11|t=4670|title=tDryLeapLife (B2n37/S2-i3-q4q)}}
* {{LinkCatagolueRule|b2n37s2-i3-q4q|rulename=tDryLeapLife}}

[[Category:Isotropic non-totalistic rules]]

User:Ultimium/LeapLife Spaceship Search Status Page

2023-05-22T13:37:05Z

Ultimium: /* Known spaceships by height */

It is probably still a good idea to upload my LeapLife Spaceship Search Status, I assume.

== Known spaceships by width ==

{|class="wikitable"
|-
! Velocity !! Asymmetric !! Odd-symmetric !! Even-symmetric !! Gutter !! Odd glide-symmetric !! Even glide-symmetric
|-
| (1,0)c/2
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 20
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 21
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 26
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 29
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
|-
| (1,0)c/3
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 11
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 17
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 22
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 21
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
|-
| (1,0)c/4
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 9
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 15
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 16
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 15
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
|-
| (1,1)c/4
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 3
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
|-
| (2,0)c/4
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 5
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 11
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 12
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 11
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 5
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 12
|-
| (1,0)c/5
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 10
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 15
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 14
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 19
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
|-
| (1,1)c/5
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 10
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
|-
| (2,0)c/5
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 11
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 17
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 16
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 23
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
|-
| (1,0)c/6
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 10
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 17
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 18
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 19
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
|-
| (1,1)c/6
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 8
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
|-
| (2,1)c/6
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 11
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
|-
| (1,0)c/7
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 9
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 17
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 16
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 19
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
|-
| (2,0)c/7
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 9
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 15
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 16
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 19
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
|-
| (3,0)c/7
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 10
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 21
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 20
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 21
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
|-
| (1,0)c/8
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 8
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 13
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 16
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 17
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
|-
| (2,0)c/8
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 7
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 17
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 7
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 15
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
|-
| (3,0)c/8
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 10
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 19
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 20
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 21
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
|-
| (1,0)c/9
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 4
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 9
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 4
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 9
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
|-
| (2,0)c/9
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 7
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 15
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 7
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 15
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
|-
| (4,0)c/9
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 10
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 21
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 20
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 21
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
|-
| (1,0)c/10
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 3
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 7
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 3
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 7
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
|-
| (3,0)c/10
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 5
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 11
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 5
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 11
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
| style="background: #c0c0c0;" | -
|}

== Known spaceships by height ==

{|class="wikitable"
|-
! Velocity !! minimum height
|-
| (1,0)c/2
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 11
|-
| (1,0)c/3
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 8
|-
| (1,0)c/4
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 9
|-
| (1,1)c/4
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 3
|-
| (2,0)c/4
| style="background: #80ff80;" | 6
|-
| (1,1)c/5
| style="background: #ffa0a0;" | 9
|}

User:Ultimium/LeapLife Spaceship Search Status Page

2023-05-22T13:25:58Z

Ultimium: /* Known spaceships by height */

2023-04-25T07:37:24Z

Ultimium: Created page with "Can someone add references to the article? TBH I'm not enough of a LifeWiki user to add references proficiently. ~~~~"

Can someone add references to the article? TBH I'm not enough of a LifeWiki user to add references proficiently. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 07:37, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

OCA:LeapLife

2023-04-25T07:11:04Z

Ultimium:

{{Rule
|name = LeapLife
|b = 2n3
|s = 23-q
|char = Chaotic
}}
'''LeapLife''' is an [[isotropic non-totalistic cellular automaton]] created by Hunting in January, {{year|2020}}. It differs from [[Conway's Game of Life]] by two transitions, much like {{rl|tlife}}, but is much more stable.

LeapLife ranked eighth in [[OCA Discovery of the Year#2020|OCA Discovery of the Year 2020]]. LeapLife billiard tables ranked last in [[OCA Discovery of the Year#2021|OCA Discovery of the Year 2021]]. LeapLife is also the third most-searched non-totalistic rule on Catagolue, after {{rl|Rule X3VI}} and {{rl|Snowflakes}}.

== Patterns ==

=== Still lives ===

Because LeapLife added one birth transition and removed one survival transition from Life, all [[Still life|still lives]] in LeapLife are still lives in Conway's Game of Life, but the reverse is not true. For example, the [[snake with feather]] fails in LeapLife.

All still lives up to 12 bits have occured naturally. The last of them to occur, [[trans-very long fuse with two tails]], appeared in November 2022, in a soup submitted by [[FWKnightship]]. Notably, [[eater 1]] and [[aircraft carrier]] are significantly more common than they're in Life.

All still lives up to 11 bits have known [[Glider synthesis|syntheses]]. The following (probably outdated) table displays statistics about the costs for strict still lives up to 11 cells. Green indicates a cost lower than one glider per bit; yellow indicates a cost of equal to or more than one glider per bit. Max costs are linked to the corresponding still life.

{|class="wikitable"
|-
! Live cells !! Count !! Max cost
|-
|4
|2
| style="background: #80ff80;" | [[Tub|3]]
|-
|5
|1
| style="background: #80ff80;" | [[Boat|2]]
|-
|6
|5
| style="background: #80ff80;" | [[Snake|4]]
|-
|7
|4
| style="background: #80ff80;" | [[Long snake|4]]
|-
|8
|9
| style="background: #80ff80;" | [[Hook with tail|5]]
|-
|9
|10
| style="background: #ffffa0;" | [[Extra long snake|12]]
|-
|10
|25
| style="background: #ffffa0;" | [[Trans-very long hook with tail|11]]
|-
|11
|44
| style="background: #ffffa0;" | [[Cis-long^3 hook with tail|21]]
|}

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 154, y = 155, rule = B2n3/S23-qSuper
148.pA$146.2pA$2.pA144.2pA4.pA$pA.pA148.2pA$.2pA149.2pA$6.W$7.W131.W
8.pA$5.3W129.2W7.2pA$138.2W7.2pA3$133.S.S$133.2S$134.S9$23.Q.Q$24.2Q$
24.Q7$36.O$37.O$35.3O8$110.M$108.2M$109.2M6$38.M$39.2M$38.2M2$43.M.M$
44.2M$44.M20$72.2H$73.H$67.2H3.H$68.H2.H$68.H.H$69.H27$42.2M$43.2M$
42.M7$114.3O$114.O$115.O10$128.2Q$128.Q.Q$128.Q11$133.2U$132.2U$11.2U
121.U$10.U.U137.2pA$12.U137.pA.pA$144.3pA3.pA$144.pA$145.pA2$5.2pA$6.
2pA$5.pA140.2pA$146.pA.pA$146.pA!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ THUMBSIZE 2 ZOOM 10 HEIGHT 450 LOOP 300 GRID OFF GPS 16 AUTOSTART ]]
|caption = 21-glider synthesis of the currently most expensive 11-bitter, cis-long^3 hook with tail, by [[Mark Niemiec]]
|style = width:300px;
}}

=== Oscillators ===

A variety of [[oscillator]]s are present in LeapLife, mostly discovered with [[apgsearch]].

Of all alien oscillators, quite a few of them are especially common, shown below.

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 36, y = 20, rule = B2n3/S23-q
b3o26b2o$o3bo10b2o2b2o9bobo$o3bo9bo2b2o2bo10bo$o3bo10b2o2b2o10bo2bo$b
3o29b2o10$18b2o$2o16bobo$2o16b3o8bobobobo$2bo26b3ob3o$3b2o10b2o12bobob
obo$3b2o10b2o!
|viewerconfig = #C [[ THUMBSIZE 2 ZOOM 12 HEIGHT 450 WIDTH 650 GPS 2 AUTOSTART ]]
|position = center
|caption = From left to right: '''Row 1''': The traffic-light p6, the interchange p6, and the "integral" p4. '''Row 2''': The "two-blocks" p3, the "loaf-block" p4, and an unnamed p10
|style = width:300px;
}}

Most oscillators known before April 2020 can be found in a [https://github.com/HuntingBot/leaplife/blob/master/all-oscillators.rle GitHub repository].

=== Spaceships ===

The [[glider]]s and [[xWSS]]es still work in LeapLife, and there's an additional (2,1)c/8 [[knightship]] called the "lepa".

As of October 2022, all [[spaceship]]s discovered in LeapLife are elementary. The idea of building a [[Demonoid]] in LeapLife was brought up several times, but the spaceship itself is not yet completed. The currently known velocities are c/2, c/3, c/4, c/5, 2c/5, c/6, 2c/7, c/12 orthogonal, c/4, c/5 diagonal, and (2,1)c/6, (2,1)c/8 knightwise. A table of completed spaceship searches can be found [[User:Ultimium/LeapLife_Spaceship_Search_Status_Page|here]].

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 152, y = 68, rule = B2n3/S23-q
b3o10bo18bo27bo10b2ob2o12b2o4b2o12b2o2b2o$o2bo8b5o12b3ob2o4b3o9b3o7bo
8b2obobob2o11bo4bo14bo2bo$3bo7b2o3b2o10bo5b2o5bo9bo8bobo5bobo7bobo7bob
o4bobo9bobo4bobo$3bo24bo2bo10bo7bo16b2o2bobobobo2b2o6bo8bo7b2o10b2o$ob
o8bo2bo2bo8bo5bo9bo7bo16b2o3bo3bo3b2o5b2o8b2o6b2ob2o4b2ob2o10b2o$11bo
5bo8bob2o3bo5bo5b3o5bo4b3o7bob2o5b2obo5b2o10b2o5bo3bo4bo3bo9bobo$9bo3b
obo3bo6bo6bo6b3o7b3o4bo12b3o3b3o6b2o12b2o8bo4bo15bo$7b2obo2bobo2bob2o
7bo11bo3bobo3bo9bo10bo3bo30b3o4b3o$8bo3bo3bo3bo7b2o2b2o7bo2bo3bo2bo5bo
3b2o5bo3bo3bo3bo4bo2bo8bo2bo$6bo3bo7bo3bo4bo6bo6bo3bobo3bo4b2o5b2o3bo
2b2o3b2o2bo5bobo8bobo$12bo3bo11b2obo12bo3bo11bo2b2o2b2obo7bob2o$7bo4bo
3bo4bo10b2o9b2o3b2o13bo4bobo2bobo2bobo5bobo8bobo$8bo4bobo4bo21bobo3bob
o12b2o3bob4ob4obo6bo10bo36bobo$9b3obobob3o23b3ob3o12b3o3bobob2ob2obobo
5bobo8bobo35bo2bo$8b2o9b2o22b2o3b2o22bo3bo8b2ob2o6b2ob2o30b4o4bo$8bo
11bo39bobo9b2ob2o54b3o3bo2bo$9bo9bo39bo10bo7bo7bobo8bobo27b3o$59b2o9bo
bo3bobo7b3o8b3o30b2o7b2o$59bo7b2o11b2o3bo3bo6bo3bo26b2o3bo5bo$59bo7bo
3bo5bo3bo4b3o8b3o28bo4bo3b2o8bobo$60bo26bo10bo33bobo2b2o8bo3bo$87bo10b
o26bo2bo6bob2o12bo$57b2o10b3o5b3o7bo3b4o3bo26bobo7bo13bobo$58bo8b3o9b
3o42bo3bo7bo$57b3o28bo8bo28bob2obob2obo$56b2ob2o10bob3obo10b2o6b2o20b
5obobo3bo3bobo$71bo5bo9bo10bo20bo4bo2b2o$68b4o5b4o6bo10bo20bob2o7b2o$
69bo2bo3bo2bo42bobob2obo$118b2o2bo$68b3o7b3o41b4obo$69b2o7b2o37b2ob2o
3bobo$68b2obo5bob2o29bo7bob2o5bo$69b3o5b3o30b2o6bo4bob3o$69b2o7b2o34bo
3b4obo3bo$68bobo7bobo28b2o3bo6bo$68bob2o5b2obo28bo4bo$68bo11bo25b2o3b
2o$69bo2bo3bo2bo26bo9b3o$73bobo29bobo$73bobo30b2o7bo$73bobo27bo2bo8bo
3bo$70b2obobob2o22b2obobo10bob2o$69bo3bobo3bo19bo4b2o10b2o$68b2ob2o3b
2ob2o17bo3b3o$70bo7bo24bo8b2obo$101b3o6b3ob2o$68bo11bo24bo3bo3bo$67bob
o9bobo16bo2bo6b3o$67bo13bo16b4obo2b3o2bo$69b2o3bo3b2o18b2o2bo3bobobo$
72bobobo26b2obo3bo$68bob4ob4obo22bo$67b2o11b2o20b2o5bo$68bo3bo3bo3bo
21b3o3bo$68bob4ob4obo$69b2o2bobo2b2o$73bobo$72b2ob2o$73bobo$71bobobobo
$70bo2bobo2bo$70bo2bobo2bo$71b3ob3o$70bobo3bobo$71bobobobo$74bo$72b5o!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ THUMBSIZE 2 ZOOM 6 WIDTH 1000 HEIGHT 560 ]]
|caption = Smallest example of all known simplified velocities. (2, 1)c/6 spaceship not shown for its size
|style = width:300px;
}}

Very few spaceships in LeapLife have syntheses. Only the lepa, xWSSes and their combinations, and the c/12 have been synthesised.

=== [[Linear growth]] patterns ===

==== Guns ====

Very limited [[gun]] technologies are known in LeapLife. 2-engine p22-based and p24-based guns are discovered early on. p19-based guns are first constructed by FWKnightship in March 2021 using an XWSS salvo as an over-unity reaction. It was quickly superseded by a much smaller design by AbhpzTa, using a sparker-supported 2G-to-3G reaction.

Guns of period p19N, p22N, and p24N for all sufficiently large N are known as well.

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 67, y = 34, rule = B2n3/S23-q
11bo$10b3o$9bo$9bo4bo$10b2o3bo$11bo3bo$12bo4bo40b2o$14b2o41b6o$16bob2o
37b2o2b3o$16bo3bo34bo5bob2o$54bo4bo$17bo4bo29bobo5bobo$18b2o2b2o14bo2b
o5bo7bo4bo$19bo2bo14b3o8bob2obo5bo$20b2o14b4o7b2o2b3o2b2o$34bo11bo5b6o
$12b3o17b2o7b4o10b2o$12b2o18bo8b3o$11bobobo17bo5bo2bo$15bo2bobo33bo$9b
2o2bo5b2o31bobo$8bo3bobo4bo33b2o$8b3o$6b4o$5bob2o15bo$5bobo17b2o33bo$
3bo20b2o32bobo$b2o3bo52b2o$b3obo$bo4bo$3b2o24bobo$30b2o34bo$30bo33bobo
$65b2o!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ AUTOSTART THUMBSIZE 2 ZOOM 8 HEIGHT 400 WIDTH 650 GPS 16 KILLGLIDERS ]]
|caption = p22 and p24 glider guns
|style = width:300px;
}}

==== Puffers ====

[[Puffer]]s in LeapLife are discovered much later than guns, and very few puffers are known as of now.

The first puffer in LeapLife is the c/2 line puffer discovered by FWKnightship; It can be perturbed into rakes and others.

Some puffers of other velocities are known, including a 2c/5 orthogonal blinker puffer and a c/4 diagonal tubstretcher.

=== Unstable objects and evolutionary sequences ===

==== Methuselahs ====

Due to the nature of the rule, [[methuselah]]s in LeapLife are usually much shorter-lived than methuselahs in Life. The first few methuselahs in LeapLife were discovered by enumerating small patterns; The later methuselahs were found by soup-searching. The longest-lived methuselah currently known is one shown below, lasting 944 generations, found by [[User:Pzq_Alex]].

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 16, y = 16, rule = B2n3/S23-q
o5b2o4bo2bo$o2b4obo2b3obo$b5o2bo4b3o$3bobo4bob2o$bo2b2obo4bo$obo3b5o4b
o$3b4ob3o2bobo$2ob2o3bo2b5o$bobo4bo6bo$3o2bobo5bobo$o4bo2b3obobo$2o2b
4o$2ob3o2bobo3bo$2o2b5o3bob2o$2o2bo2b2obobo2bo$o2b3ob2ob2o2bo!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ ]]
|caption = 944M.
|style = width:300px;
}}

The longest-lived known diehard is the 710-tick diehard shown below:

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 16, y = 16, rule = B2n3/S23-q
2bo5bo3bobo$3b2obob2o3b2o$2bo2b2o2b2o$3b2ob3o4bobo$5b2o2bo2b3o$5bob3o
2bo$bo2bobo3bob3o$o3b3o3bo2b2o$8b2o4bo$3b3o3b4obo$2obo4bobo2bobo$6o7b
3o$o7bob2o$3o3bobobo2bobo$3bo5b2obobo$bo5bobo2bobo!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ ]]
|caption = 710-tick diehard
|style = width:300px;
}}

The following is a table of long-lived methuselahs that were record-breaking at the time it was discovered.

{| class="sortable wikitable"
|-
! Lifespan (L)
! [[Pattern]]
! [[Bounding box]]
! [[MCPS]]
! Initial [[population]] (I)
! Final population (F)

! [[L/I]]
! [[F/I]]
! [[F/L]]
! [[L/MCPS]]
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 944
| 944M
| 16|16
| 124
| 120
| 32
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 885
| 885M
| 16|16
| 105
| 96
| 53
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 822
| 822M
| 16|16
| 97
| 90
| 19
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 776
| 776M
| 16|16
| 105
| 99
| 52
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 750
| 750M
| 16|16
| 106
| 101
| 33
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 650
| 650M
| 5|7
| 14
| 13
| 22
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 395
| Big-R relative
| 6|6
| 18
| 16
| 11
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 248
| Big-R relative
| 3|5
| 9
| 8
| 11
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 247
| Big-R relative
| 4|4
| 9
| 8
| 11
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 246
| Big-R
| 4|4
| 7
| 7
| 11
}}
{{LongLivedMethuselah
| 235
| Nope
| 4|4
| 9
| 9
| 10
}}
|}

==== Common evolutionary sequences ====

A few common [[evolution]]ary sequences in Life are common in LeapLife as well, like [[lumps of muck]], [[bakery]] and a variant of [[pi-heptomino]]. There are also some other sequences known and investigated for a while that are not as common in Life, like the "butterfly sequence" (different from the butterfly sequence in Life).

A census of {{times|8|8}} soups in LeapLife has been done, similar to the method used in [[List of common evolutionary sequences]]. The following is the result:

=== Catalyses and other reactions ===

The simplest catalysis that exists in LeapLife and not Life is a block catalysis from the corner, due to the B2n transition. There are also some other catalysts, mostly discovered with a LeapLife hack of [[dr]] by [[wwei23]].

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 6, y = 5, rule = B2n3/S23-q
4b2o$3b2o2$2o$2o!
|viewerconfig = #C [[ THUMBSIZE 3 ZOOM 36 HEIGHT 600 GPS 4 AUTOSTART T 0 PAUSE 3 T 6 PAUSE 1 LOOP 7 ]]
|position = center
|caption = An example of the block corner catalysis, where only a single corner temporarily dies
|style = width:300px;
}}

(TODO)

== Variants ==

===HighLeapLife (B2n36/S23-q)===

HighLeapLife has a common p96 RRO:

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 7, y = 5, rule = B2n36/S23-q
b2ob3o$2obo2bo$2b2o2bo$3bobo$3b3o!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ AUTOSTART ZOOM 12 GPS 16 LOOP 96 ]]
|caption = The RRO
|style = width:300px;
}}

There is also a p72 oscillator, which was discovered in D4_+1.

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 12, y = 10, rule = B2n36/S23-q
b2o6b2o$ob2o4b2obo$b2o6b2o5$b2o6b2o$ob2o4b2obo$b2o6b2o!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ AUTOSTART ZOOM 12 GPS 16 LOOP 72 ]]
|caption = The p72
|style = width:300px;
}}

===DryLeapLife (B2n37/S23-q)===

DryleapLife is similar to LeapLife, with a natural c/7o and a gliderless c/4d, the latter of which was found in D8_1.

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 18, y = 8, rule = B2n37/S23-q
10b5o$b3o7b2ob2o$o3bo6bo4bo$o3bo11b2o$5o12bo$16b2o$15b3o$17bo!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ AUTOSTART ZOOM 12 GPS 16 LOOP 28 ]]
|caption = c/7o and c/4d
|style = width:300px;
}}

===LispLife (B2n3/S23-q4e8)===

LispLife is a more active variant of LeapLife. A natural p122 oscillator has been discovered.

{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 9, y = 9, rule = B2n3/S23-q4e8
3o$3o$3o4$6b3o$6b3o$6b3o!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ AUTOSTART ZOOM 8 GPS 30 LOOP 122 ]]
|caption = The p122
|style = width:300px;
}}

===tDryLeapLife (B2n37/S2-i3-q4q)===

tDryLeapLife has the glider, the [[c/5 orthogonal]] T, and an unnamed 3c/27o.
{{EmbedViewer
|rle = x = 19, y = 5, rule = B2n37/S2-i3-q4q
16bo$3o4bo7b3o$o5b3o7bo$bo12bobobo$14b2ob2o!
|position = center
|viewerconfig = #C [[ AUTOSTART ZOOM 8 GPS 30 LOOP 100 ]]
|caption = Common spaceships in tDryLeapLife
|style = width:300px;
}}

==External links==
* {{LinkForumThread|f=11|t=4267|title=LeapLife (B2n3/S23-q)}}
* {{LinkCatagolueRule|b2n3s23-q|rulename=LeapLife}}
* {{LinkForumThread|f=7|t=5059|title=A LeapLife Status Report (NOW WITH LIFEVIEWER ANIMATION!)}}
* {{LinkForumThread|f=11|t=4865|title=LeapLife Relatives}}
* {{LinkForumThread|f=11|t=4418|title=LispLife (B2n3/S23-q4e8)}}
* {{LinkCatagolueRule|b2n36s23-q|rulename=HighLeapLife}}
* {{LinkCatagolueRule|b2n37s23-q|rulename=DryLeapLife}}
* {{LinkCatagolueRule|b2n3s23-q4e8|rulename=LispLife}}
* {{LinkCatagolueRule|b2n3s2-i3-q4q|rulename=tDryLeapLife}}

OCA:LeapLife

2023-04-25T06:54:16Z

Ultimium:

LifeWiki:Tiki bar

2023-04-25T06:37:11Z

Ultimium: /* A modest proposal */

[[File:Taka Tiki Break 250.jpg|right|thumb|250px|Taka Tiki Break]]
<div style="clear: both; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em">__TOC__</div>
'''Welcome, one and all, to the Tiki bar!''' This page is used to discuss the technical issues, policies, and operations of the LifeWiki. Or just sit down, relax, and enjoy a cocktail.

<div style="font-size:1.4em;text-align:center" class="plainlinks">[{{fullurl:LifeWiki:Tiki bar|action=edit&section=new}} Click here to start a new Tiki bar discussion.]</div>

==Welcome to the Tiki bar==
Wikipedia has the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump Village pump], Wiktionary has the [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Beer_parlour Beer parlour], but the LifeWiki's lacked a central page for discussion so far other than [[User talk:Nathaniel]]. So I took the liberty to create the Tiki bar to facilitate discussion in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere. Welcome! [[User:Apple Bottom|Apple Bottom]] ([[User talk:Apple Bottom|talk]]) 11:09, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

==Archived discussions==
:''Note: active discussions are never archived while still active.''

* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2016]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2016.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2017]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2017.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2018]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2018.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2019]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2019.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2020]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2020.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2021]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2021.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2022]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2022.

== Redirects from misspelling ==

I fail to see why redirects from misspellings are prohibited. [[User:Atavoidirc|Atavoidirc]] ([[User talk:Atavoidirc|talk]]) 21:40, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

* I think there are too many possible ways to misspell something (just multiply the number of letters in the title by (number of letters in the alphabet - 1) and on top of that add misspellings that add/remove/exchange letters), so that it becomes unreasonable to make redirects for them. For another example, should [[jrake]] be redirected to [[rake]], or to [[krake]] (note that letters j and k are adjacent on a common keyboard layout), or maybe to a disambiguation page created specifically for the purpose of distinguishing possible misspellings? ''Some'' redirects for really common misspellings may be acceptable - but I think it is necessary to show explicitly that these misspellings are indeed common, and there are few such cases.
: In any case, I do not think it is helpful to quickly make dozens of redirects for misspellings - it clutters the logs of recent changes for editors, and it does not seem a noticeable improvement for readers. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 07:06, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
: (Added later) Although the following does not necessarily imply anything specific (I think the wiki should not promote an incorrect spelling, even if it becomes common), here are results of a quick forum search: "candelfobra" - 0 matches, "candlefobra" - 0 matches, "candelfrobra" - 16 matches, "[[candlefrobra]]" - 36 matches. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 12:06, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

** Personally i think redirects from misspellings that are not just typos (e.g. Candelfobra) should be allowed. I've made this specific misspelling several times before, so i know at least one person who would benefit from it. [[User:Atavoidirc|Atavoidirc]] ([[User talk:Atavoidirc|talk]]) 11:25, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

::: My vote would definitely be to not add misspelling-redirects, and to remove any that have been added. We've already got lots of spelling and punctuation ''variants'' showing up in the [https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Special:AllPages?from=Strict+still-life&to=&namespace=0 All Pages lists], and those lists will get extremely cluttered if we also add every possible misspelling of every article name -- or even every reasonable misspelling.

::: Of course there's a checkbox to hide redirects, but the problem I see is that current policy is fairly consistent about having redirects be valid variant spellings -- terms that people have actually used or might actually use.

::: So if we add things like "Suprise", we're kind of implying that "suprise" is a valid name that someone has used for something. People might click on it thinking, "what's that, a pun on 'sup' so it's some kind of eater?" and then mysteriously find no explanation of why "suprise" is listed. I'd much rather avoid that unlikely potential confusion, than avoid the unlikely potential confusion that someone can't find the [[Surprise]] article because they typed "suprise".

::: In other words, given that the lexicon of Life terms includes all kinds of things like "Catagolue" that '''look''' like misspellings but are actually completely purposeful and have meaning... there's useful information in the current collection of redirects, and it's not an improvement to add a random scattering of misspellings that are really just misspellings. People can perfectly well figure out how to spell "surprise" right, in the incredibly rare cases when they accidentally mistype it and don't get a LifeWiki article match. [[User:Dvgrn|Dvgrn]] ([[User talk:Dvgrn|talk]]) 14:59, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

* (Replying here to a message left at [[Talk:T-tetsons]], since it is possible that that talk page will be deleted later:) I do not see why "T-tetsons" or "T-tetson" should mean something specific. There is a page [[Tumbling T-tetson]] on this wiki, and there is an entry "tumbling T-tetson" in Life Lexicon. There is a page [[Twirling T-tetsons 2]] on this wiki, and there is an entry "twirling T-tetsons II" in Life Lexicon. However, I cannot find "T-tetson" or "T-tetsons" ''by itself'' in Life Lexicon. On the forums, the only example I found which might be related is in the thread "Help with names" ([https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2333 link]) where there was an attempt to translate a set of words/terms into another language. I think that "T-tetsons" does not by itself mean anything at all, so I proposed the redirect for deletion. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 00:16, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

===2023===
This tiki bar discussion did not finish in 2022. I think it is incomplete (for one thing, it implicitly assumes that everyone knows what this is about). Before this discussion started, several redirects-from-misspellings [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?target=Atavoidirc&namespace=all&tagfilter=mw-new-redirect&start=&end=&limit=50&title=Special%3AContributions were created] in a short timespan, without any edit summaries or other explanation. Overall, this looks like trying to anticipate misspellings before these misspellings actually happen. I do not support making lots of redirects "just in case". But one added or removed redirect does not globally change anything.<br />I think drawing the attention of everyone to redirects is unfortunate, because the wiki is about writing pages that describe or explain something -- redirects are a relatively minor feature, and ideally should "just work" without becoming the focus of a tiki bar discussion. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 11:15, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

== Proposed deletion of redirects from personal names to pages about a different subject ==

There is a number of redirects from names of people to pages that are not about the person ([[Alain Noels]], [[Christiaan Hartman]], [[Kees Kwekkeboom]], [[Roger Banks]], [[Steven Eker]], and likely more). I propose that such redirects be deleted.

I believe it is unacceptable to have an imprecise redirect from a personal name. That may incorrectly suggest that the person is known only for one specific contribution (the one mentioned on the target page of the redirect), and also does not provide any context before directing the reader to another subject.

I think either there should be a separate non-redirect page for a person, or (less preferable) a redirect to a category for discoveries made by the person, or there should be no page at all (i.e. no redirect to anything). [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 23:19, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

:Good issue to raise. It would be good to have an explicit "policy" about such things. I think we also need a similar agreement about whether and when a person should be linked at all even if there is little likelihood of the link ever having a landing (I'm thinking mainly of well-aged red links). [[User:Book|Book]] ([[User talk:Book|talk]]) 23:37, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

:: In general, I like red links; they are a very simple lightweight way to tell other editors "This page is missing", and they interact nicely with other available tools.<br />Speaking of pages '''about people''' specifically (and excluding all other LifeWiki topics), I'm inclined to agree that it's probably better to unlink long-missing pages about people. My reason is that such pages are harder to write, and the usual simple "process" of starting a short stub to be expanded later does not really work when writing about a person. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 05:46, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

== Usage of a non-default viewer theme ==

I added to several pages patterns that use <tt><nowiki>#C [[ THEME Book ]]</nowiki></tt> (this viewer theme is related to [[Conway's Game of Life: Mathematics and Construction|the book]]), as an attempt to understand how to improve presentation of patterns in pages. (For my edits adding this theme, see current versions of pages [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Lightweight_spaceship&oldid=116360 LWSS], [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Middleweight_spaceship&oldid=116358 MWSS], [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Heavyweight_spaceship&oldid=116373 HWSS], [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Blockic&oldid=116372 Blockic].) I chose this theme because I like how it displays "off" cells that were "on" differently from cells that were always "off", in the same way as in the patterns printed in the book.

The first (more specific) question here is: '''does <tt><nowiki>#C [[ THEME Book ]]</nowiki></tt> look fine in the LifeWiki?''' Is it a good idea to optionally use this LifeViewer theme, in those cases when it seems preferable to display history trail? Or it is better to stick with the default theme everywhere without exceptions?

I note that there was already [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Heavyweight_spaceship&diff=116368&oldid=116362 an objection] to one of my edits, on the grounds of consistency with the rest of the wiki. However, I think presentation of patterns across the wiki is currently already inconsistent in several distinct ways. For instance, sometimes static images are used - and that may be preferable in some cases but not others. Another example is that {{tl|EmbedViewer}} is used often but not everywhere - again, there may be good valid reasons for that. Hence a second, less specific question: '''how to improve presentation of patterns in the wiki?'''

Any feedback to the above? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:02, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

: Yes to theme Book (no pun intended). Good choice for the reasons and usage you state. [[User:Book|Book]] ([[User talk:Book|talk]]) 17:45, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

: I personally think that themes with history cells should be avoided on the wiki except in cases where the history cells provide a substantial benefit in understanding the pattern. With regard to the consistency issues mentioned above, many pages have static images because they were created before LifeViewer existed. Sometimes [[LV:viewer]] is used because {{tl|EmbedViewer}} adds an additional frame and caption that is not always desired. Neither of these represents inconsistency in how the wiki is currently updated.<br/>
:~[[User:Sokwe|Sokwe]] 01:31, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

One of "use cases" where I was changing the theme is when history cells make it easier to see how ''a certain pattern is composed of smaller parts''. For oscillating patterns, currently available features of LifeViewer make it possible to show the reaction envelope, by auto-running the pattern for one complete cycle (with history cells enabled) and then auto-stopping. In [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?oldid=125635 p8 glider reflector], it seems to help to see how a p128 oscillator is made out of two 180° reflectors. I used the same technique in [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?oldid=125316 p143 Bandersnatch loop] to show how catalysts are arranged relative to the reaction. There are other pages where I used "THEME Book + AUTOSTART + STOP" combination to show reaction envelopes. Would this be considered a valid use case? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 02:46, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Another common "use case" is when showing ''a complete glider synthesis of a pattern''. I think it becomes significantly easier to understand an animated synthesis (i.e. to see "how it works") if gliders leave traces behind them, and pauses are inserted in appropriate points. An example of this usage can be seen in [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Amphisbaena&oldid=124776 Amphisbaena]. If anyone is interested, I think I can write a more detailed explaination for how I was formatting glider syntheses with the "Book" theme -- I'm trying to be reasonably consistent with syntheses. Thanks for any feedback. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 02:46, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

== Creating pages in the OCA namespace ==

<s>As we all know,</s> well maybe not, but that's not important, I have an incomplete OCA:LeapLife page, currently under my user namespace. I'm considering completing it and moving it to the OCA namespace soon, and I would like to 1. know if there's any objection to it. 2. Know what makes an OCA rule notable enough to have an entry in LifeWiki.

Additionally, it was once planned to create some subpages under OCA:LeapLife, to document the many patterns of LeapLife. 3. Is this acceptable, and will this cause any trouble to the LifeWiki? [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 08:16, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

: I support the idea. If in doubt about whether the page is well-written / well-formatted / up-to-date / etc., the template {{tl|stub}} can always be added on the top of the page, as a lightweight way to indicate that it may need expansion. Subpages are already used - see for example [[OCA:HighLife/Bomber]], [[OCA:Pedestrian Life/List of common objects]]. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:49, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

::I am fine with the proposal in the description, but not with the proposal in the title — the OCA namespace is there for a reason, and if pages on specific OCA pages are moved to mainspace, it will cause confusion over what exists in CGOL itself and what doesn't. [[User:HotdogPi|HotdogPi]] ([[User talk:HotdogPi|talk]]) 11:22, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

:::Apologies - fixed now. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 11:59, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

[[User:Ultimium/OCA:LeapLife]] is halfway now. Do anyone have suggestions? Especially what to say in the Oscillators section.

* Is the current version considered ready to be moved to the OCA namespace? I do not want to move it without making sure that main contributor(s) are okay with that. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 03:05, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

: If anyone thinks the page is good enough to be moved in its current state, move it. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 09:50, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

:: I just did a round of editing. I'm not yet moving the page right now -- will wait for others a few days. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 11:32, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

::: I see that you added a note about [[trans-very long fuse with two tails]] appearing naturally. I think in this case I would rather correct the inaccurate information in the article outright, instead of making the page self-contradictory; I've already done the appropriate edit now. <br /> Unrelatedly, I noticed that hotdogPi keep adding trivias (like the block corner catalysis) to the page. I don't think reverting someone else' contribution is polite, but I can think of quite a few things that are as noteworthy as the block catalysis, so maybe they shouldn't appear on an overview article of LeapLife. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 03:28, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

:::: Is it possible to expand that part into a section on catalyses and other reactions in LeapLife, based on what is currently known? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 07:04, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

::::: If someone is interested in doing so (without going into too much details), go for it. (And indeed there are a non-zero amount of catalysts in LeapLife, if not much.) I would hestitate to mention reactions that are essentially due to the B2n or S3-q, though. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 02:08, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Looks like there are a few to-be-done sections now. Since I don't know much of writing wiki pages, is anyone interested to help me? [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 01:35, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

: A problem that I encountered while making the methuselah list: Do we usually remove non-interacting cells for methuselahs from soup search? Especially when no one has done the minimalization at that time. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 02:58, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

===A modest proposal===

Any objections to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Be_bold boldly] moving the LeapLife page to the OCA namespace? This would make it beneficial to the wide public of people interested in LeapLife (and not just relatively few enthusiasts who already know where to look). Then further discussion of incompleteness/improvements can go directly on the talk page of the article. (And this Tiki bar section would gradually become inactive and go to archives.)<br />Of course, one might say that the page is incomplete -- but then again, I doubt there are many "complete" articles on LifeWiki. In some sense everything here is a work-in-progress. Even seemingly "mission-critical" articles like [[Conway's Game of Life]] or {{rl|HighLife}} are incomplete, in the sense that I can imagine how those pages could be expanded further. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 03:52, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

: I would prefer to fill in all the "(TODO)"s first. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 04:11, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

: Additionally, I would like to hear other people's opinion on the content. There is currently a lack of discussion. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 04:22, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

:: Re "(TODO)"s: understood -- I just wanted to say that this discussion could potentially continue indefinitely long, because it's always possible to improve something.<br />Re: lack of discussion: this is usual (and I think it's to be expected) for on-wiki discussions. There are often few (if any) quick responses. Partly this is because the community is small, and even fewer people have LifeWiki accounts. Partly this may be because the content of the article could just as well be discussed on its talk page over time -- Tiki bar is probably best reserved for "large-scale" questions that are relevant to multiple different pages, or the way the website functions, etc. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 04:30, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

::: Indeed; If you think it might be appropiate to move this discussion to [[User talk:Ultimium/OCA:LeapLife]] and/or continue the discussion about the page on [[User talk:Ultimium/OCA:LeapLife]], I would do so. <br /> The lack of discussion is not just applicable to this page; I think not many pages on LifeWiki took comparable effort to most articles on Wikipedia. That might be because the nature of LifeWiki, most articles are stubs and it is a stub because there are not much to write about it. But I definitely would like to see more well-written pages with people discussing. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 06:33, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

==Regarding the censuses==
Many object pages, for instance [[Octagon 2]], state their commonness with their rank among all objects in Achim Flammenkamp's census, then their rank among only oscillators in Catagolue. Is the reason that infinite-growth patterns are excluded in Achim's census, or that it's meant to be more representative of the dynamics of ash in an infinite non-sparse universe? Is this truly worth it having (at present) (159214128553422*16**2)/(1829196*2048**2)>5312 times fewer initial random cells simulated and (159214128553422*16**2)/(1829196*2048**2*(-(1-0.375)*lg_2(1-0.375)-0.375*lg_2(0.375)))>5566 times fewer bits of entropy?

Should this information, when only given in the form of a commonness rank (and sometimes also expected number of soups per occurrence), have an infobox section instead?

Also, speaking of which, what should be done with the pages for strict still lifes with the sections stating that all with sufficiently few cells (including them) are known to be constructible within a maximum number of gliders? These aren't useful, surely, to duplicate information so much, can we assume that people looking for this information (that is numerical and conducive to being presented in tabular form) will go to Catagolue instead? Especially those with apgcode-only titles, pages here aren't necessary for lookup by conventional name if they have none. [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 13:51, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

: Re: infobox -- my preference would be to leave the commonness/occurrence information in plain text. The infoboxes are already long enough, so that they often conflict with sufficiently wide viewers not fitting to the left of the infobox, and it is sometimes necessary to reorder sections to avoid that conflict. As a consequence, I'd prefer not to make infoboxes even taller than they are. Stating what is known in the text also gives more flexibility. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 14:13, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
: Re: synthesis -- the glider synthesis sections of pages could contain information not only about the current cheapest synthesis cost, but also historical information about when the synthesis was found, and also about previously known / alternate syntheses. Here is an example: [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Krake&oldid=118147 Krake]. I'm slowly adding this kind of information to pages. I think this is useful and interesting to readers - instead of just the cheapest glider cost, show the syntheses themselves and tell when/how these were found. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 14:13, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

==Should LifeWiki be more like the chessprogramming wiki?==
It contains things like [https://www.chessprogramming.org/Algorithms an article on general algorithms] and others on things like bitwise operators (that don't pertain inherently to the nature of the problem it documents (playing chess as well as possible with finite resources), but are useful to human endeavours to solve it), should we have some (covering things that arise frequently enough in the study or implementation of cellular automata to be worth detailing with more specifics than Wikipedia) also?

Specifically, should there be pages here with contents of at least some of the sections of [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators]], in the instructive style of the other tutorial pages on how to set up and use various other software? Perhaps also one on writing simple row-based search programs that find oscillators and spaceships in equivalent multistate Wolfram rules for given widths in 2D ones. If we had one explaining the idea of [https://gist.github.com/DavidBuchanan314/acae2aab38953759aacc114b417ed0b9 David Buchanan's simulator] (not the specifics of the conversion to YUV4MPEG but the simulation, using it as a basis for teaching (being that Python is a simple language to read, though it has doubtless been thought of before)), and perhaps even some of the ideas in [https://gist.github.com/DroneBetter/4f5d775e7c37f062ce750d4a8fefc84a my fork], perhaps such a page could link to [https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html the Stanford bit-twiddling hacks] page (which may be of a great deal of interest to the kinds of people who'd be interested in such articles), or even an intermediate page here? I could create such an explanation of Buchanan's and my programs in my user area, then see whether it's deemed sufficiently useful to be moved to the mainspace, if anyone would like. [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 01:16, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

* There are some forum discussions that seem relevant to the idea of documenting various interesting technical details of algorithms e.g. [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1792 Searching algorithms], [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=22858#p22858 Re: 3c/7 othogonal and 2c/9 diagonal spaceships], [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=136037#p136037 Re: Beta Reader Thread for Game of Life Textbook] and others. I personally like the idea -- if someone understands something and can explain it in words, why not do that? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 04:39, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

** I don't know enough about those to do so (though I hope to one day), however I have made [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators/bitwise SWAR Life]] (covering my program up to the three different simulation modes and implementation of manifolds), being that I have some more time on my hands now I think I will make another regarding the application of the Pólya enumeration theorem to implementing efficient indexing methods for binary matrices under symmetry eventually (after finishing and optimising and cleaning my program for that), if it's okay

** Since the user Magma from the ConwayLife lounge taught me about the Pólya enumeration theorem, I made my "[https://github.com/DroneBetter/ChessPieceVision/blob/main/eightfold%20reducer.py eightfold reducer]" its own program (much was made when I was relatively new to Python and the rest only as a proof-of-concept, I will eventually get around to cleaning it up (optimising and reducing some things) and adding the rest of the class methods), it was originally only an implementation of my idea for exhaustively generating single canonical representations of nonequivalent states under symmetry in square boards (more efficiently than iterating over all states and discarding those that are not their own lexicographically-minimal orientation), but that I realised could have efficient indexing methods using the theorem, and I more recently made a "[https://gist.github.com/DroneBetter/90318584a0ad6a0f4d1c418d3da132cd dimensional INT enumerator]," originally for confirming the number of 3D Moore transitions in [[Isotropic_non-totalistic_cellular_automaton#Table_of_isotropic_non-totalistic_rulespaces|the INT rulespace table]] and supporting arbitrarily many dimensions but then today modified for returning closed forms for numbers of nonequivalent binary hypercubes in terms of width using the theorem, given a number of dimensions (see the comment on the gist for a brief explanation). Being that the first one only pertains to cellular automata slightly (ie. the indexing methods are useful for parallelisation, initialising the threads at the beginnings of different slices of the search space (that would be able to proceed through with the even more efficient next() method)) and the second only extremely tenuously (and to a more theoretical area of the study of cellular automata), would it be okay for me to make articles about their ideas (and explaining their implementations' specifics (such that the pages contains within them both a set of instructions to implement the idea and documentation of a functionally complete demonstration), like I did in the bitwise SWAR Life page)? [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 03:56, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

*** I have made [[Pólya enumeration theorem]] and [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators/eightfold reducer]] now :-) [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 17:51, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

== Attempting to show huge patterns in infoboxes ==

What is the current consensus on attempting to show huge patterns in infoboxes (with the alternative being to display the pattern in a viewer inside the text)? I am not sure whether changes like [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Traffic_lights_extruder&diff=121113&oldid=103147 this] or [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Spiral_growth&diff=121106&oldid=100868 this] are improvements. It seems like infoboxes work better for small patterns. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 00:00, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
: And some bigger patterns end up looking like smudged fingerprints in the infobox. But I think we need the categorization that follows from infobox, as well as the standard presentation. Maybe do both presentations? And while we're at it, maybe agree on a max width for whatever is shown to the left of an infobox? [[User:Book|Book]] ([[User talk:Book|talk]]) 17:55, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

:* I think it would be much better to have some reasonable '''upper limit on the width of the infobox itself''', to leave enough space for the main part of the page. The automatic categorization could in principle be done in a completely invisible way without enforcing any particular layout/presentation (e.g. see {{tl|Glossary}}). I'm not convinced that all pages need to be indiscriminately converted to infobox-based layout - being able to explain/describe/show the pattern in some reasonably good way is more important than any "standard presentation". Sufficiently large patterns simply do not fit well in the infobox. Some patterns may be better shown as images or schemes, and/or by explaining/describing/showing smaller components. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 19:00, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

::OK, I see the issue and the benefit. Hiding the infobox in these cases would be good, if 1)the data in the hidden infobox still functioned as usual in terms of all the things it triggers; 2) the article displayed important infobox data in its text. How does one do #1? [[User:Book|Book]] ([[User talk:Book|talk]]) 23:57, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

* No significant updates so far, just adding links back to related forum posts for future reference: [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=158434#p158434 p158434] [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=158438#p158438 p158438]. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 05:43, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

==Regarding programming language syntax colouring support in code blocks==
It would greatly benefit [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators/bitwise SWAR Life]] and [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators/eightfold reducer]] if we were to have this. Also, how do I prevent linebreaks followed by indentation (which appear often in my programming, as you may expect) causing code blocks to generate others nested inside them? Neither <nowiki><pre> nor <code></nowiki> seem to allow this. And is there a way to have inline monospaced text (ie. without line breaks) like the Python docs? [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 17:51, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

* What about <nowiki><blockquote><pre>...</pre></blockquote></nowiki>? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 17:58, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

<blockquote><pre>
class Thingy:
pass

def example():
print("Hello World!")
</pre></blockquote>

==Regarding "known" information==
For instance, [[List of period-2 oscillators with 17 cells]] says there are 199 known such oscillators, implying that the explicit examples provide only a lower boun, however [https://oeis.org/A056614 A056614](17)=199 and Mark Niemiec had a section of a page, entitled [https://conwaylife.com/ref/mniemiec/p2.htm#p2-17 The 199 seventeen-bit period 2 oscillators], do these count as sufficient sources in and of themselves or should a program be provided to act as proof of the nonexistence of any more? As mentioned above, I cited my program for the confirmation of the disputed number of 3D INT transitions in [[Isotropic non-totalistic cellular automaton#Table_of_isotropic_non-totalistic_rulespaces|the table]], should this be the convention for proofs of other such values that are given in pages but currently imply that they're only accurate to as far as is known and not objective?

I don't think the OEIS would add values not known to be correct (assuming no bugs in implementations), being that they say "Thousands of people use the sequence database every day. Please take great care that the terms you send are absolutely correct. The standards are those of a mathematics reference work." as you edit a sequence, but [https://oeis.org/A231427 A231427] was amended with the discovery of the rattlesnake, so perhaps not too rigorous when it comes to Life matters. {{unsigned|DroneBetter|21:55, 3 January 2023‎}}

* Added the two references to pages [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=List_of_period-2_oscillators_with_17_cells&diff=126123&oldid=121447 for 17 cells] and [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=List_of_period-2_oscillators_with_18_cells&diff=126124&oldid=121464 for 18 cells] -- these links seem to be useful as ways of helping the curious reader to find more information. I think it is safe to leave "known" in -- a computer program may have bugs, a mathematical proof may have gaps, and so on. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 05:18, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

== Single column vs Two columns of EmbedViewer ==

What is the reason to restrict layout to stacking all {{tl|EmbedViewer}} in a single column like [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Jason%27s_p33&curid=2480&diff=126035&oldid=126034 in this edit]? That could made the page overly long with much whitespace around. Well, I am not suggesting possibilities for three or more columns — which would made the page too wide — I am just curious about the case of two columns. [[User:GUYTU6J|GUYTU6J]] ([[User talk:GUYTU6J|talk]]) 14:42, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
:Actually, I prefer three, which is what I use on my userpages. [[User:HotdogPi|HotdogPi]] ([[User talk:HotdogPi|talk]]) 15:04, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

* The question in the first sentence appears to be about the specific edit. As explained in the edit summary, it is a revert to a single column. The reverted edit is a previous edit made by someone else ([https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff=126024&oldid=111614 diff=126024&oldid=111614]), changing the layout from single column to double column, with false edit summary stating "The last version still looks too wide for me". The edit summary is false, because the edit made the gallery more wide, not less. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 15:13, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
: More generally for the main/OCA namespaces, single-column galleries are preferable, because a two-column gallery already does not fit to the left of the infobox. For galleries in later sections of the page that can be reasonably assumed to appear strictly below the infobox on all devices, two columns could be used. Three columns are already too wide, even without the infobox. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 15:13, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

:: By "looks too wide for me" I meant individual viewers, not the sum of two. Is there a demonstration for a two-column gallery failed to fit to the left of infobox? [[User:GUYTU6J|GUYTU6J]] ([[User talk:GUYTU6J|talk]]) 15:23, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

::* https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=158624#p158624 [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 15:44, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Is there a potential way to make it change based on screen width? On my screen, 5 columns easily fit to the left of the infobox, and 1 column leaves a ridiculous amount of white space. --[[User:Galoomba|Galoomba]] ([[User talk:Galoomba|talk]]) 07:33, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

* For static images only, the <tt><gallery>...</gallery></tt> tag should work ([https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Snake&oldid=127486#Extensibility example]). For embedded viewers, I'm not aware of any existing solution.<br/>See also a forum thread for all infobox-related issues/discussions: [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5981 link]. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:29, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

== Adding kinetic symmetry to infoboxes ==

Currently, pattern symmetries are tracked by an invisible template at the bottom of the pattern page which does nothing other than add a category. I don't like this, since it's in stark contrast to every other pattern statistic which is tracked in the pattern infobox. However, the current system is in place for basically every oscillator and spaceship with time symmetry, so moving things to the infobox would take a long time and require a lot of changes. I think it'd be worth it, however, since kinetic symmetry is currently only described in the currently rather obscure [[kinetic symmetry]] page. Having this in the infobox would direct more traffic to that page, increase the understanding of kinetic symmetry in the Life community, and also make the symmetries of patterns far more obvious and clear since people wouldn't have to sift through the twenty categories each pattern is in to find out what each pattern is classified as.

Any thoughts? - [[User:AwesoMan3000|AwesoMan3000]] ([[User talk:AwesoMan3000|talk]]) 10:54, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
: It's doable. However, a script that does it automatically would also need to look at the bounding box, as the templates don't distinguish between odd and even symmetry. [[User:HotdogPi|HotdogPi]] ([[User talk:HotdogPi|talk]]) 14:03, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
:: Would a script even be able to distinguish between a D2_+1 pattern that flips across the edges and vertices of cells (-f+e) and a D2_+2 pattern that flips through the faces and edges of cells (-e+e)? Both are orthogonally flipping oscillators which would have odd by even bounding boxes. - [[User:AwesoMan3000|AwesoMan3000]] ([[User talk:AwesoMan3000|talk]]) 14:24, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

* I like the idea to add specific kinetic symmetry to the infobox (and perhaps create corresponding categories for every possible value, so that objects with a given symmetry can be viewed).<br/>However, on the other hand the infoboxes are already quite tall, and significantly reduce the available width for the main content that is located in the beginning of the page.<br/>Given that there are several related-but-distinct issues with infoboxes (as evidenced by the Tiki bar), would it be possible to discuss infobox-related questions as part of a broader discussion of infoboxes (perhaps preferably on the forum rather than on the wiki, so that forum members without LifeWiki accounts could reply as well)? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 06:55, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

* A forum thread for infobox-related issues: [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5981 link]. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 06:19, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

=="Oscillators made of still lifes"==
I was perusing Catagolue (by means of my program), and found a D4_+1 oscillator comprised of still lifes, already named the {{LinkCatagolue|xp5_y025a404a52z6a40653x35604a6z65206acxca60256zy04a52025a4|patternname=half-tub harbour|style=raw}}, that also has rarer (single-occurrence) {{LinkCatagolue|xp5_y125a404a6z06a40653x35604a52z4a5206acxca60256zy2652025a4|patternname=C4_1|style=raw}} and {{LinkCatagolue|xp5_y125a404a6z25a40653x35604a6z065206acxca6025a4zy2652025a4|patternname=D4_x1|style=raw}} variants. There wasn't any result for "oscillator made of oscillators," only [[Constellation]] (which seems vaguely fitting but not very), should a page be created dedicated to oscillators that are separable into still lifes (that hassle each other) in at least one phase? Are there any other such cases to document? [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 22:50, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
: Amendment: I didn't notice the much more common {{LinkCatagolue|xp5_y135a404a53z35a40653x35604a53zca5206acxca6025aczy1ca52025|patternname=D8_1 occurrence|style=raw}} (due ot it having lower volatility and not appearing in my sortings) <small><span class="autosigned">— Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/DroneBetter|contribs]]) 23:40, 28 March 2023</span></small>

Apologies if the following is a bit off-topic; one interesting kind of oscillators is those where several consecutive phases consist of nothing but [[Spaceship|gliders]] and stationary objects, in such a way that the oscillator permanently becomes a strictly-lower-period pattern if all the gliders are instantly removed from one of such phases. These oscillators look quite cool and may well deserve a dedicated collection. Here's a recently posted alien example: [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=159731#p159731 post159731] ({{cata|object/xp33_033eky3g8oe6zzgoc84y3koz11y7133/b2ek3eikq4acejrw5ay6i7cs2-ek3acjry4ajrty5acjq6cn8|Catagolue}}). In Life, several examples are the [[p143 Bandersnatch loop]] (and its period-doubling stabilisation), {{cata|object/xp253_y52egoy233yk33y2oge2zy133y7488oy033y633y0o884y733zccyd111yi111ydcczyn6d9e6w6e9d6zzzzyn6b976w679b6z33yd88oyio88yd33zy1ccy0ggy12111y0ccy6ccy01112y1ggy0cczy54701y2ccykccy21074/b3s23|this p253}}, {{cata|object/xp160_y42egoy533z0oggzx23ye8sky3cczz66y3572yeo8zyr113zy8ooy531e8/b3s23|this p160}}, the (capped) [[period-563 glider gun]]. There should be more examples, even not counting adjustable glider shuttles. (And even more, if the requirements are relaxed to allow any oscillators with temporary internal well-separated gliders.) [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 06:36, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

== Pauses in glider syntheses ==

Why do most glider synthesis LifeViewer embeds have pauses in them? I get it's to see important intermediates (although sometimes it pauses before the gliders even collide) but it's really awkward to watch.
<br>On a related note, why do they all have a copy of the final object on the right side? Seems redundant. --[[User:Galoomba|Galoomba]] ([[User talk:Galoomba|talk]]) 09:02, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

* Some (not all) glider syntheses have pauses in them, because I decided to add pauses in them. I'm not aware of any previous conventions regarding of how exactly to represent glider syntheses on LifeWiki. The relatively long pause {{eq|T|20}} (before the gliders collide) in particular is so that it is visible where each glider comes from, and it is easier to see that the synthesis is [[rewind]]able.<br />The reason behind adding a copy of the (stationary) final object is because [[Mark Niemiec's database|Mark Niemiec's glider synthesis database]] does this, and I did not really want to invent something entirely new from scratch, when there are existing tested ideas that can be reused in this context. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:22, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

* If this can be useful for setting future guidelines, I think I could write a more detailed explaination for my particular choices when formatting syntheses. Earlier [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=LifeWiki:Tiki_bar&diff=125750&oldid=125749 I already asked] about that on Tiki bar, but got no response there so far. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:21, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

== Volatility rounding ==

Seems like volatility is rounded to two decimal places, and there are categories for each of those. But is it rounded up, down, or to nearest? This also applies to heat. --[[User:Galoomba|Galoomba]] ([[User talk:Galoomba|talk]]) 16:54, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

LifeWiki:Tiki bar

2023-04-25T06:33:10Z

Ultimium: /* A modest proposal */

[[File:Taka Tiki Break 250.jpg|right|thumb|250px|Taka Tiki Break]]
<div style="clear: both; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em">__TOC__</div>
'''Welcome, one and all, to the Tiki bar!''' This page is used to discuss the technical issues, policies, and operations of the LifeWiki. Or just sit down, relax, and enjoy a cocktail.

<div style="font-size:1.4em;text-align:center" class="plainlinks">[{{fullurl:LifeWiki:Tiki bar|action=edit&section=new}} Click here to start a new Tiki bar discussion.]</div>

==Welcome to the Tiki bar==
Wikipedia has the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump Village pump], Wiktionary has the [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Beer_parlour Beer parlour], but the LifeWiki's lacked a central page for discussion so far other than [[User talk:Nathaniel]]. So I took the liberty to create the Tiki bar to facilitate discussion in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere. Welcome! [[User:Apple Bottom|Apple Bottom]] ([[User talk:Apple Bottom|talk]]) 11:09, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

==Archived discussions==
:''Note: active discussions are never archived while still active.''

* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2016]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2016.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2017]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2017.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2018]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2018.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2019]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2019.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2020]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2020.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2021]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2021.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2022]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2022.

== Redirects from misspelling ==

I fail to see why redirects from misspellings are prohibited. [[User:Atavoidirc|Atavoidirc]] ([[User talk:Atavoidirc|talk]]) 21:40, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

* I think there are too many possible ways to misspell something (just multiply the number of letters in the title by (number of letters in the alphabet - 1) and on top of that add misspellings that add/remove/exchange letters), so that it becomes unreasonable to make redirects for them. For another example, should [[jrake]] be redirected to [[rake]], or to [[krake]] (note that letters j and k are adjacent on a common keyboard layout), or maybe to a disambiguation page created specifically for the purpose of distinguishing possible misspellings? ''Some'' redirects for really common misspellings may be acceptable - but I think it is necessary to show explicitly that these misspellings are indeed common, and there are few such cases.
: In any case, I do not think it is helpful to quickly make dozens of redirects for misspellings - it clutters the logs of recent changes for editors, and it does not seem a noticeable improvement for readers. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 07:06, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
: (Added later) Although the following does not necessarily imply anything specific (I think the wiki should not promote an incorrect spelling, even if it becomes common), here are results of a quick forum search: "candelfobra" - 0 matches, "candlefobra" - 0 matches, "candelfrobra" - 16 matches, "[[candlefrobra]]" - 36 matches. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 12:06, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

** Personally i think redirects from misspellings that are not just typos (e.g. Candelfobra) should be allowed. I've made this specific misspelling several times before, so i know at least one person who would benefit from it. [[User:Atavoidirc|Atavoidirc]] ([[User talk:Atavoidirc|talk]]) 11:25, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

::: My vote would definitely be to not add misspelling-redirects, and to remove any that have been added. We've already got lots of spelling and punctuation ''variants'' showing up in the [https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Special:AllPages?from=Strict+still-life&to=&namespace=0 All Pages lists], and those lists will get extremely cluttered if we also add every possible misspelling of every article name -- or even every reasonable misspelling.

::: Of course there's a checkbox to hide redirects, but the problem I see is that current policy is fairly consistent about having redirects be valid variant spellings -- terms that people have actually used or might actually use.

::: So if we add things like "Suprise", we're kind of implying that "suprise" is a valid name that someone has used for something. People might click on it thinking, "what's that, a pun on 'sup' so it's some kind of eater?" and then mysteriously find no explanation of why "suprise" is listed. I'd much rather avoid that unlikely potential confusion, than avoid the unlikely potential confusion that someone can't find the [[Surprise]] article because they typed "suprise".

::: In other words, given that the lexicon of Life terms includes all kinds of things like "Catagolue" that '''look''' like misspellings but are actually completely purposeful and have meaning... there's useful information in the current collection of redirects, and it's not an improvement to add a random scattering of misspellings that are really just misspellings. People can perfectly well figure out how to spell "surprise" right, in the incredibly rare cases when they accidentally mistype it and don't get a LifeWiki article match. [[User:Dvgrn|Dvgrn]] ([[User talk:Dvgrn|talk]]) 14:59, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

* (Replying here to a message left at [[Talk:T-tetsons]], since it is possible that that talk page will be deleted later:) I do not see why "T-tetsons" or "T-tetson" should mean something specific. There is a page [[Tumbling T-tetson]] on this wiki, and there is an entry "tumbling T-tetson" in Life Lexicon. There is a page [[Twirling T-tetsons 2]] on this wiki, and there is an entry "twirling T-tetsons II" in Life Lexicon. However, I cannot find "T-tetson" or "T-tetsons" ''by itself'' in Life Lexicon. On the forums, the only example I found which might be related is in the thread "Help with names" ([https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2333 link]) where there was an attempt to translate a set of words/terms into another language. I think that "T-tetsons" does not by itself mean anything at all, so I proposed the redirect for deletion. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 00:16, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

===2023===
This tiki bar discussion did not finish in 2022. I think it is incomplete (for one thing, it implicitly assumes that everyone knows what this is about). Before this discussion started, several redirects-from-misspellings [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?target=Atavoidirc&namespace=all&tagfilter=mw-new-redirect&start=&end=&limit=50&title=Special%3AContributions were created] in a short timespan, without any edit summaries or other explanation. Overall, this looks like trying to anticipate misspellings before these misspellings actually happen. I do not support making lots of redirects "just in case". But one added or removed redirect does not globally change anything.<br />I think drawing the attention of everyone to redirects is unfortunate, because the wiki is about writing pages that describe or explain something -- redirects are a relatively minor feature, and ideally should "just work" without becoming the focus of a tiki bar discussion. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 11:15, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

== Proposed deletion of redirects from personal names to pages about a different subject ==

There is a number of redirects from names of people to pages that are not about the person ([[Alain Noels]], [[Christiaan Hartman]], [[Kees Kwekkeboom]], [[Roger Banks]], [[Steven Eker]], and likely more). I propose that such redirects be deleted.

I believe it is unacceptable to have an imprecise redirect from a personal name. That may incorrectly suggest that the person is known only for one specific contribution (the one mentioned on the target page of the redirect), and also does not provide any context before directing the reader to another subject.

I think either there should be a separate non-redirect page for a person, or (less preferable) a redirect to a category for discoveries made by the person, or there should be no page at all (i.e. no redirect to anything). [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 23:19, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

:Good issue to raise. It would be good to have an explicit "policy" about such things. I think we also need a similar agreement about whether and when a person should be linked at all even if there is little likelihood of the link ever having a landing (I'm thinking mainly of well-aged red links). [[User:Book|Book]] ([[User talk:Book|talk]]) 23:37, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

:: In general, I like red links; they are a very simple lightweight way to tell other editors "This page is missing", and they interact nicely with other available tools.<br />Speaking of pages '''about people''' specifically (and excluding all other LifeWiki topics), I'm inclined to agree that it's probably better to unlink long-missing pages about people. My reason is that such pages are harder to write, and the usual simple "process" of starting a short stub to be expanded later does not really work when writing about a person. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 05:46, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

== Usage of a non-default viewer theme ==

I added to several pages patterns that use <tt><nowiki>#C [[ THEME Book ]]</nowiki></tt> (this viewer theme is related to [[Conway's Game of Life: Mathematics and Construction|the book]]), as an attempt to understand how to improve presentation of patterns in pages. (For my edits adding this theme, see current versions of pages [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Lightweight_spaceship&oldid=116360 LWSS], [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Middleweight_spaceship&oldid=116358 MWSS], [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Heavyweight_spaceship&oldid=116373 HWSS], [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Blockic&oldid=116372 Blockic].) I chose this theme because I like how it displays "off" cells that were "on" differently from cells that were always "off", in the same way as in the patterns printed in the book.

The first (more specific) question here is: '''does <tt><nowiki>#C [[ THEME Book ]]</nowiki></tt> look fine in the LifeWiki?''' Is it a good idea to optionally use this LifeViewer theme, in those cases when it seems preferable to display history trail? Or it is better to stick with the default theme everywhere without exceptions?

I note that there was already [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Heavyweight_spaceship&diff=116368&oldid=116362 an objection] to one of my edits, on the grounds of consistency with the rest of the wiki. However, I think presentation of patterns across the wiki is currently already inconsistent in several distinct ways. For instance, sometimes static images are used - and that may be preferable in some cases but not others. Another example is that {{tl|EmbedViewer}} is used often but not everywhere - again, there may be good valid reasons for that. Hence a second, less specific question: '''how to improve presentation of patterns in the wiki?'''

Any feedback to the above? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:02, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

: Yes to theme Book (no pun intended). Good choice for the reasons and usage you state. [[User:Book|Book]] ([[User talk:Book|talk]]) 17:45, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

: I personally think that themes with history cells should be avoided on the wiki except in cases where the history cells provide a substantial benefit in understanding the pattern. With regard to the consistency issues mentioned above, many pages have static images because they were created before LifeViewer existed. Sometimes [[LV:viewer]] is used because {{tl|EmbedViewer}} adds an additional frame and caption that is not always desired. Neither of these represents inconsistency in how the wiki is currently updated.<br/>
:~[[User:Sokwe|Sokwe]] 01:31, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

One of "use cases" where I was changing the theme is when history cells make it easier to see how ''a certain pattern is composed of smaller parts''. For oscillating patterns, currently available features of LifeViewer make it possible to show the reaction envelope, by auto-running the pattern for one complete cycle (with history cells enabled) and then auto-stopping. In [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?oldid=125635 p8 glider reflector], it seems to help to see how a p128 oscillator is made out of two 180° reflectors. I used the same technique in [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?oldid=125316 p143 Bandersnatch loop] to show how catalysts are arranged relative to the reaction. There are other pages where I used "THEME Book + AUTOSTART + STOP" combination to show reaction envelopes. Would this be considered a valid use case? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 02:46, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Another common "use case" is when showing ''a complete glider synthesis of a pattern''. I think it becomes significantly easier to understand an animated synthesis (i.e. to see "how it works") if gliders leave traces behind them, and pauses are inserted in appropriate points. An example of this usage can be seen in [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Amphisbaena&oldid=124776 Amphisbaena]. If anyone is interested, I think I can write a more detailed explaination for how I was formatting glider syntheses with the "Book" theme -- I'm trying to be reasonably consistent with syntheses. Thanks for any feedback. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 02:46, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

== Creating pages in the OCA namespace ==

<s>As we all know,</s> well maybe not, but that's not important, I have an incomplete OCA:LeapLife page, currently under my user namespace. I'm considering completing it and moving it to the OCA namespace soon, and I would like to 1. know if there's any objection to it. 2. Know what makes an OCA rule notable enough to have an entry in LifeWiki.

Additionally, it was once planned to create some subpages under OCA:LeapLife, to document the many patterns of LeapLife. 3. Is this acceptable, and will this cause any trouble to the LifeWiki? [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 08:16, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

: I support the idea. If in doubt about whether the page is well-written / well-formatted / up-to-date / etc., the template {{tl|stub}} can always be added on the top of the page, as a lightweight way to indicate that it may need expansion. Subpages are already used - see for example [[OCA:HighLife/Bomber]], [[OCA:Pedestrian Life/List of common objects]]. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:49, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

::I am fine with the proposal in the description, but not with the proposal in the title — the OCA namespace is there for a reason, and if pages on specific OCA pages are moved to mainspace, it will cause confusion over what exists in CGOL itself and what doesn't. [[User:HotdogPi|HotdogPi]] ([[User talk:HotdogPi|talk]]) 11:22, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

:::Apologies - fixed now. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 11:59, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

[[User:Ultimium/OCA:LeapLife]] is halfway now. Do anyone have suggestions? Especially what to say in the Oscillators section.

* Is the current version considered ready to be moved to the OCA namespace? I do not want to move it without making sure that main contributor(s) are okay with that. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 03:05, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

: If anyone thinks the page is good enough to be moved in its current state, move it. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 09:50, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

:: I just did a round of editing. I'm not yet moving the page right now -- will wait for others a few days. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 11:32, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

::: I see that you added a note about [[trans-very long fuse with two tails]] appearing naturally. I think in this case I would rather correct the inaccurate information in the article outright, instead of making the page self-contradictory; I've already done the appropriate edit now. <br /> Unrelatedly, I noticed that hotdogPi keep adding trivias (like the block corner catalysis) to the page. I don't think reverting someone else' contribution is polite, but I can think of quite a few things that are as noteworthy as the block catalysis, so maybe they shouldn't appear on an overview article of LeapLife. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 03:28, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

:::: Is it possible to expand that part into a section on catalyses and other reactions in LeapLife, based on what is currently known? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 07:04, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

::::: If someone is interested in doing so (without going into too much details), go for it. (And indeed there are a non-zero amount of catalysts in LeapLife, if not much.) I would hestitate to mention reactions that are essentially due to the B2n or S3-q, though. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 02:08, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Looks like there are a few to-be-done sections now. Since I don't know much of writing wiki pages, is anyone interested to help me? [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 01:35, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

: A problem that I encountered while making the methuselah list: Do we usually remove non-interacting cells for methuselahs from soup search? Especially when no one has done the minimalization at that time. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 02:58, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

===A modest proposal===

Any objections to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Be_bold boldly] moving the LeapLife page to the OCA namespace? This would make it beneficial to the wide public of people interested in LeapLife (and not just relatively few enthusiasts who already know where to look). Then further discussion of incompleteness/improvements can go directly on the talk page of the article. (And this Tiki bar section would gradually become inactive and go to archives.)<br />Of course, one might say that the page is incomplete -- but then again, I doubt there are many "complete" articles on LifeWiki. In some sense everything here is a work-in-progress. Even seemingly "mission-critical" articles like [[Conway's Game of Life]] or {{rl|HighLife}} are incomplete, in the sense that I can imagine how those pages could be expanded further. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 03:52, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

: I would prefer to fill in all the "(TODO)"s first. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 04:11, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

: Additionally, I would like to hear other people's opinion on the content. There is currently a lack of discussion. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 04:22, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

:: Re "(TODO)"s: understood -- I just wanted to say that this discussion could potentially continue indefinitely long, because it's always possible to improve something.<br />Re: lack of discussion: this is usual (and I think it's to be expected) for on-wiki discussions. There are often few (if any) quick responses. Partly this is because the community is small, and even fewer people have LifeWiki accounts. Partly this may be because the content of the article could just as well be discussed on its talk page over time -- Tiki bar is probably best reserved for "large-scale" questions that are relevant to multiple different pages, or the way the website functions, etc. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 04:30, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

::: Indeed; If you think it might be appropiate to move this discussion to [[User talk:Ultimium/OCA:LeapLife]] and/or continue the discussion about the page on [[User talk:Ultimium/OCA:LeapLife]], I would do so. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 06:33, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

==Regarding the censuses==
Many object pages, for instance [[Octagon 2]], state their commonness with their rank among all objects in Achim Flammenkamp's census, then their rank among only oscillators in Catagolue. Is the reason that infinite-growth patterns are excluded in Achim's census, or that it's meant to be more representative of the dynamics of ash in an infinite non-sparse universe? Is this truly worth it having (at present) (159214128553422*16**2)/(1829196*2048**2)>5312 times fewer initial random cells simulated and (159214128553422*16**2)/(1829196*2048**2*(-(1-0.375)*lg_2(1-0.375)-0.375*lg_2(0.375)))>5566 times fewer bits of entropy?

Should this information, when only given in the form of a commonness rank (and sometimes also expected number of soups per occurrence), have an infobox section instead?

Also, speaking of which, what should be done with the pages for strict still lifes with the sections stating that all with sufficiently few cells (including them) are known to be constructible within a maximum number of gliders? These aren't useful, surely, to duplicate information so much, can we assume that people looking for this information (that is numerical and conducive to being presented in tabular form) will go to Catagolue instead? Especially those with apgcode-only titles, pages here aren't necessary for lookup by conventional name if they have none. [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 13:51, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

: Re: infobox -- my preference would be to leave the commonness/occurrence information in plain text. The infoboxes are already long enough, so that they often conflict with sufficiently wide viewers not fitting to the left of the infobox, and it is sometimes necessary to reorder sections to avoid that conflict. As a consequence, I'd prefer not to make infoboxes even taller than they are. Stating what is known in the text also gives more flexibility. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 14:13, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
: Re: synthesis -- the glider synthesis sections of pages could contain information not only about the current cheapest synthesis cost, but also historical information about when the synthesis was found, and also about previously known / alternate syntheses. Here is an example: [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Krake&oldid=118147 Krake]. I'm slowly adding this kind of information to pages. I think this is useful and interesting to readers - instead of just the cheapest glider cost, show the syntheses themselves and tell when/how these were found. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 14:13, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

==Should LifeWiki be more like the chessprogramming wiki?==
It contains things like [https://www.chessprogramming.org/Algorithms an article on general algorithms] and others on things like bitwise operators (that don't pertain inherently to the nature of the problem it documents (playing chess as well as possible with finite resources), but are useful to human endeavours to solve it), should we have some (covering things that arise frequently enough in the study or implementation of cellular automata to be worth detailing with more specifics than Wikipedia) also?

Specifically, should there be pages here with contents of at least some of the sections of [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators]], in the instructive style of the other tutorial pages on how to set up and use various other software? Perhaps also one on writing simple row-based search programs that find oscillators and spaceships in equivalent multistate Wolfram rules for given widths in 2D ones. If we had one explaining the idea of [https://gist.github.com/DavidBuchanan314/acae2aab38953759aacc114b417ed0b9 David Buchanan's simulator] (not the specifics of the conversion to YUV4MPEG but the simulation, using it as a basis for teaching (being that Python is a simple language to read, though it has doubtless been thought of before)), and perhaps even some of the ideas in [https://gist.github.com/DroneBetter/4f5d775e7c37f062ce750d4a8fefc84a my fork], perhaps such a page could link to [https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html the Stanford bit-twiddling hacks] page (which may be of a great deal of interest to the kinds of people who'd be interested in such articles), or even an intermediate page here? I could create such an explanation of Buchanan's and my programs in my user area, then see whether it's deemed sufficiently useful to be moved to the mainspace, if anyone would like. [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 01:16, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

* There are some forum discussions that seem relevant to the idea of documenting various interesting technical details of algorithms e.g. [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1792 Searching algorithms], [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=22858#p22858 Re: 3c/7 othogonal and 2c/9 diagonal spaceships], [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=136037#p136037 Re: Beta Reader Thread for Game of Life Textbook] and others. I personally like the idea -- if someone understands something and can explain it in words, why not do that? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 04:39, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

** I don't know enough about those to do so (though I hope to one day), however I have made [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators/bitwise SWAR Life]] (covering my program up to the three different simulation modes and implementation of manifolds), being that I have some more time on my hands now I think I will make another regarding the application of the Pólya enumeration theorem to implementing efficient indexing methods for binary matrices under symmetry eventually (after finishing and optimising and cleaning my program for that), if it's okay

** Since the user Magma from the ConwayLife lounge taught me about the Pólya enumeration theorem, I made my "[https://github.com/DroneBetter/ChessPieceVision/blob/main/eightfold%20reducer.py eightfold reducer]" its own program (much was made when I was relatively new to Python and the rest only as a proof-of-concept, I will eventually get around to cleaning it up (optimising and reducing some things) and adding the rest of the class methods), it was originally only an implementation of my idea for exhaustively generating single canonical representations of nonequivalent states under symmetry in square boards (more efficiently than iterating over all states and discarding those that are not their own lexicographically-minimal orientation), but that I realised could have efficient indexing methods using the theorem, and I more recently made a "[https://gist.github.com/DroneBetter/90318584a0ad6a0f4d1c418d3da132cd dimensional INT enumerator]," originally for confirming the number of 3D Moore transitions in [[Isotropic_non-totalistic_cellular_automaton#Table_of_isotropic_non-totalistic_rulespaces|the INT rulespace table]] and supporting arbitrarily many dimensions but then today modified for returning closed forms for numbers of nonequivalent binary hypercubes in terms of width using the theorem, given a number of dimensions (see the comment on the gist for a brief explanation). Being that the first one only pertains to cellular automata slightly (ie. the indexing methods are useful for parallelisation, initialising the threads at the beginnings of different slices of the search space (that would be able to proceed through with the even more efficient next() method)) and the second only extremely tenuously (and to a more theoretical area of the study of cellular automata), would it be okay for me to make articles about their ideas (and explaining their implementations' specifics (such that the pages contains within them both a set of instructions to implement the idea and documentation of a functionally complete demonstration), like I did in the bitwise SWAR Life page)? [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 03:56, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

*** I have made [[Pólya enumeration theorem]] and [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators/eightfold reducer]] now :-) [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 17:51, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

== Attempting to show huge patterns in infoboxes ==

What is the current consensus on attempting to show huge patterns in infoboxes (with the alternative being to display the pattern in a viewer inside the text)? I am not sure whether changes like [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Traffic_lights_extruder&diff=121113&oldid=103147 this] or [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Spiral_growth&diff=121106&oldid=100868 this] are improvements. It seems like infoboxes work better for small patterns. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 00:00, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
: And some bigger patterns end up looking like smudged fingerprints in the infobox. But I think we need the categorization that follows from infobox, as well as the standard presentation. Maybe do both presentations? And while we're at it, maybe agree on a max width for whatever is shown to the left of an infobox? [[User:Book|Book]] ([[User talk:Book|talk]]) 17:55, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

:* I think it would be much better to have some reasonable '''upper limit on the width of the infobox itself''', to leave enough space for the main part of the page. The automatic categorization could in principle be done in a completely invisible way without enforcing any particular layout/presentation (e.g. see {{tl|Glossary}}). I'm not convinced that all pages need to be indiscriminately converted to infobox-based layout - being able to explain/describe/show the pattern in some reasonably good way is more important than any "standard presentation". Sufficiently large patterns simply do not fit well in the infobox. Some patterns may be better shown as images or schemes, and/or by explaining/describing/showing smaller components. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 19:00, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

::OK, I see the issue and the benefit. Hiding the infobox in these cases would be good, if 1)the data in the hidden infobox still functioned as usual in terms of all the things it triggers; 2) the article displayed important infobox data in its text. How does one do #1? [[User:Book|Book]] ([[User talk:Book|talk]]) 23:57, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

* No significant updates so far, just adding links back to related forum posts for future reference: [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=158434#p158434 p158434] [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=158438#p158438 p158438]. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 05:43, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

==Regarding programming language syntax colouring support in code blocks==
It would greatly benefit [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators/bitwise SWAR Life]] and [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators/eightfold reducer]] if we were to have this. Also, how do I prevent linebreaks followed by indentation (which appear often in my programming, as you may expect) causing code blocks to generate others nested inside them? Neither <nowiki><pre> nor <code></nowiki> seem to allow this. And is there a way to have inline monospaced text (ie. without line breaks) like the Python docs? [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 17:51, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

* What about <nowiki><blockquote><pre>...</pre></blockquote></nowiki>? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 17:58, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

<blockquote><pre>
class Thingy:
pass

def example():
print("Hello World!")
</pre></blockquote>

==Regarding "known" information==
For instance, [[List of period-2 oscillators with 17 cells]] says there are 199 known such oscillators, implying that the explicit examples provide only a lower boun, however [https://oeis.org/A056614 A056614](17)=199 and Mark Niemiec had a section of a page, entitled [https://conwaylife.com/ref/mniemiec/p2.htm#p2-17 The 199 seventeen-bit period 2 oscillators], do these count as sufficient sources in and of themselves or should a program be provided to act as proof of the nonexistence of any more? As mentioned above, I cited my program for the confirmation of the disputed number of 3D INT transitions in [[Isotropic non-totalistic cellular automaton#Table_of_isotropic_non-totalistic_rulespaces|the table]], should this be the convention for proofs of other such values that are given in pages but currently imply that they're only accurate to as far as is known and not objective?

I don't think the OEIS would add values not known to be correct (assuming no bugs in implementations), being that they say "Thousands of people use the sequence database every day. Please take great care that the terms you send are absolutely correct. The standards are those of a mathematics reference work." as you edit a sequence, but [https://oeis.org/A231427 A231427] was amended with the discovery of the rattlesnake, so perhaps not too rigorous when it comes to Life matters. {{unsigned|DroneBetter|21:55, 3 January 2023‎}}

* Added the two references to pages [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=List_of_period-2_oscillators_with_17_cells&diff=126123&oldid=121447 for 17 cells] and [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=List_of_period-2_oscillators_with_18_cells&diff=126124&oldid=121464 for 18 cells] -- these links seem to be useful as ways of helping the curious reader to find more information. I think it is safe to leave "known" in -- a computer program may have bugs, a mathematical proof may have gaps, and so on. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 05:18, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

== Single column vs Two columns of EmbedViewer ==

What is the reason to restrict layout to stacking all {{tl|EmbedViewer}} in a single column like [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Jason%27s_p33&curid=2480&diff=126035&oldid=126034 in this edit]? That could made the page overly long with much whitespace around. Well, I am not suggesting possibilities for three or more columns — which would made the page too wide — I am just curious about the case of two columns. [[User:GUYTU6J|GUYTU6J]] ([[User talk:GUYTU6J|talk]]) 14:42, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
:Actually, I prefer three, which is what I use on my userpages. [[User:HotdogPi|HotdogPi]] ([[User talk:HotdogPi|talk]]) 15:04, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

* The question in the first sentence appears to be about the specific edit. As explained in the edit summary, it is a revert to a single column. The reverted edit is a previous edit made by someone else ([https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff=126024&oldid=111614 diff=126024&oldid=111614]), changing the layout from single column to double column, with false edit summary stating "The last version still looks too wide for me". The edit summary is false, because the edit made the gallery more wide, not less. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 15:13, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
: More generally for the main/OCA namespaces, single-column galleries are preferable, because a two-column gallery already does not fit to the left of the infobox. For galleries in later sections of the page that can be reasonably assumed to appear strictly below the infobox on all devices, two columns could be used. Three columns are already too wide, even without the infobox. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 15:13, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

:: By "looks too wide for me" I meant individual viewers, not the sum of two. Is there a demonstration for a two-column gallery failed to fit to the left of infobox? [[User:GUYTU6J|GUYTU6J]] ([[User talk:GUYTU6J|talk]]) 15:23, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

::* https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=158624#p158624 [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 15:44, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Is there a potential way to make it change based on screen width? On my screen, 5 columns easily fit to the left of the infobox, and 1 column leaves a ridiculous amount of white space. --[[User:Galoomba|Galoomba]] ([[User talk:Galoomba|talk]]) 07:33, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

* For static images only, the <tt><gallery>...</gallery></tt> tag should work ([https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Snake&oldid=127486#Extensibility example]). For embedded viewers, I'm not aware of any existing solution.<br/>See also a forum thread for all infobox-related issues/discussions: [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5981 link]. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:29, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

== Adding kinetic symmetry to infoboxes ==

Currently, pattern symmetries are tracked by an invisible template at the bottom of the pattern page which does nothing other than add a category. I don't like this, since it's in stark contrast to every other pattern statistic which is tracked in the pattern infobox. However, the current system is in place for basically every oscillator and spaceship with time symmetry, so moving things to the infobox would take a long time and require a lot of changes. I think it'd be worth it, however, since kinetic symmetry is currently only described in the currently rather obscure [[kinetic symmetry]] page. Having this in the infobox would direct more traffic to that page, increase the understanding of kinetic symmetry in the Life community, and also make the symmetries of patterns far more obvious and clear since people wouldn't have to sift through the twenty categories each pattern is in to find out what each pattern is classified as.

Any thoughts? - [[User:AwesoMan3000|AwesoMan3000]] ([[User talk:AwesoMan3000|talk]]) 10:54, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
: It's doable. However, a script that does it automatically would also need to look at the bounding box, as the templates don't distinguish between odd and even symmetry. [[User:HotdogPi|HotdogPi]] ([[User talk:HotdogPi|talk]]) 14:03, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
:: Would a script even be able to distinguish between a D2_+1 pattern that flips across the edges and vertices of cells (-f+e) and a D2_+2 pattern that flips through the faces and edges of cells (-e+e)? Both are orthogonally flipping oscillators which would have odd by even bounding boxes. - [[User:AwesoMan3000|AwesoMan3000]] ([[User talk:AwesoMan3000|talk]]) 14:24, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

* I like the idea to add specific kinetic symmetry to the infobox (and perhaps create corresponding categories for every possible value, so that objects with a given symmetry can be viewed).<br/>However, on the other hand the infoboxes are already quite tall, and significantly reduce the available width for the main content that is located in the beginning of the page.<br/>Given that there are several related-but-distinct issues with infoboxes (as evidenced by the Tiki bar), would it be possible to discuss infobox-related questions as part of a broader discussion of infoboxes (perhaps preferably on the forum rather than on the wiki, so that forum members without LifeWiki accounts could reply as well)? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 06:55, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

* A forum thread for infobox-related issues: [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5981 link]. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 06:19, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

=="Oscillators made of still lifes"==
I was perusing Catagolue (by means of my program), and found a D4_+1 oscillator comprised of still lifes, already named the {{LinkCatagolue|xp5_y025a404a52z6a40653x35604a6z65206acxca60256zy04a52025a4|patternname=half-tub harbour|style=raw}}, that also has rarer (single-occurrence) {{LinkCatagolue|xp5_y125a404a6z06a40653x35604a52z4a5206acxca60256zy2652025a4|patternname=C4_1|style=raw}} and {{LinkCatagolue|xp5_y125a404a6z25a40653x35604a6z065206acxca6025a4zy2652025a4|patternname=D4_x1|style=raw}} variants. There wasn't any result for "oscillator made of oscillators," only [[Constellation]] (which seems vaguely fitting but not very), should a page be created dedicated to oscillators that are separable into still lifes (that hassle each other) in at least one phase? Are there any other such cases to document? [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 22:50, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
: Amendment: I didn't notice the much more common {{LinkCatagolue|xp5_y135a404a53z35a40653x35604a53zca5206acxca6025aczy1ca52025|patternname=D8_1 occurrence|style=raw}} (due ot it having lower volatility and not appearing in my sortings) <small><span class="autosigned">— Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/DroneBetter|contribs]]) 23:40, 28 March 2023</span></small>

Apologies if the following is a bit off-topic; one interesting kind of oscillators is those where several consecutive phases consist of nothing but [[Spaceship|gliders]] and stationary objects, in such a way that the oscillator permanently becomes a strictly-lower-period pattern if all the gliders are instantly removed from one of such phases. These oscillators look quite cool and may well deserve a dedicated collection. Here's a recently posted alien example: [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=159731#p159731 post159731] ({{cata|object/xp33_033eky3g8oe6zzgoc84y3koz11y7133/b2ek3eikq4acejrw5ay6i7cs2-ek3acjry4ajrty5acjq6cn8|Catagolue}}). In Life, several examples are the [[p143 Bandersnatch loop]] (and its period-doubling stabilisation), {{cata|object/xp253_y52egoy233yk33y2oge2zy133y7488oy033y633y0o884y733zccyd111yi111ydcczyn6d9e6w6e9d6zzzzyn6b976w679b6z33yd88oyio88yd33zy1ccy0ggy12111y0ccy6ccy01112y1ggy0cczy54701y2ccykccy21074/b3s23|this p253}}, {{cata|object/xp160_y42egoy533z0oggzx23ye8sky3cczz66y3572yeo8zyr113zy8ooy531e8/b3s23|this p160}}, the (capped) [[period-563 glider gun]]. There should be more examples, even not counting adjustable glider shuttles. (And even more, if the requirements are relaxed to allow any oscillators with temporary internal well-separated gliders.) [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 06:36, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

== Pauses in glider syntheses ==

Why do most glider synthesis LifeViewer embeds have pauses in them? I get it's to see important intermediates (although sometimes it pauses before the gliders even collide) but it's really awkward to watch.
<br>On a related note, why do they all have a copy of the final object on the right side? Seems redundant. --[[User:Galoomba|Galoomba]] ([[User talk:Galoomba|talk]]) 09:02, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

* Some (not all) glider syntheses have pauses in them, because I decided to add pauses in them. I'm not aware of any previous conventions regarding of how exactly to represent glider syntheses on LifeWiki. The relatively long pause {{eq|T|20}} (before the gliders collide) in particular is so that it is visible where each glider comes from, and it is easier to see that the synthesis is [[rewind]]able.<br />The reason behind adding a copy of the (stationary) final object is because [[Mark Niemiec's database|Mark Niemiec's glider synthesis database]] does this, and I did not really want to invent something entirely new from scratch, when there are existing tested ideas that can be reused in this context. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:22, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

* If this can be useful for setting future guidelines, I think I could write a more detailed explaination for my particular choices when formatting syntheses. Earlier [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=LifeWiki:Tiki_bar&diff=125750&oldid=125749 I already asked] about that on Tiki bar, but got no response there so far. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:21, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

== Volatility rounding ==

Seems like volatility is rounded to two decimal places, and there are categories for each of those. But is it rounded up, down, or to nearest? This also applies to heat. --[[User:Galoomba|Galoomba]] ([[User talk:Galoomba|talk]]) 16:54, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

LifeWiki:Tiki bar

2023-04-25T04:22:24Z

Ultimium: /* A modest proposal */

[[File:Taka Tiki Break 250.jpg|right|thumb|250px|Taka Tiki Break]]
<div style="clear: both; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em">__TOC__</div>
'''Welcome, one and all, to the Tiki bar!''' This page is used to discuss the technical issues, policies, and operations of the LifeWiki. Or just sit down, relax, and enjoy a cocktail.

<div style="font-size:1.4em;text-align:center" class="plainlinks">[{{fullurl:LifeWiki:Tiki bar|action=edit&section=new}} Click here to start a new Tiki bar discussion.]</div>

==Welcome to the Tiki bar==
Wikipedia has the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump Village pump], Wiktionary has the [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Beer_parlour Beer parlour], but the LifeWiki's lacked a central page for discussion so far other than [[User talk:Nathaniel]]. So I took the liberty to create the Tiki bar to facilitate discussion in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere. Welcome! [[User:Apple Bottom|Apple Bottom]] ([[User talk:Apple Bottom|talk]]) 11:09, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

==Archived discussions==
:''Note: active discussions are never archived while still active.''

* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2016]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2016.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2017]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2017.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2018]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2018.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2019]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2019.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2020]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2020.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2021]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2021.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2022]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2022.

== Redirects from misspelling ==

I fail to see why redirects from misspellings are prohibited. [[User:Atavoidirc|Atavoidirc]] ([[User talk:Atavoidirc|talk]]) 21:40, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

* I think there are too many possible ways to misspell something (just multiply the number of letters in the title by (number of letters in the alphabet - 1) and on top of that add misspellings that add/remove/exchange letters), so that it becomes unreasonable to make redirects for them. For another example, should [[jrake]] be redirected to [[rake]], or to [[krake]] (note that letters j and k are adjacent on a common keyboard layout), or maybe to a disambiguation page created specifically for the purpose of distinguishing possible misspellings? ''Some'' redirects for really common misspellings may be acceptable - but I think it is necessary to show explicitly that these misspellings are indeed common, and there are few such cases.
: In any case, I do not think it is helpful to quickly make dozens of redirects for misspellings - it clutters the logs of recent changes for editors, and it does not seem a noticeable improvement for readers. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 07:06, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
: (Added later) Although the following does not necessarily imply anything specific (I think the wiki should not promote an incorrect spelling, even if it becomes common), here are results of a quick forum search: "candelfobra" - 0 matches, "candlefobra" - 0 matches, "candelfrobra" - 16 matches, "[[candlefrobra]]" - 36 matches. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 12:06, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

** Personally i think redirects from misspellings that are not just typos (e.g. Candelfobra) should be allowed. I've made this specific misspelling several times before, so i know at least one person who would benefit from it. [[User:Atavoidirc|Atavoidirc]] ([[User talk:Atavoidirc|talk]]) 11:25, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

::: My vote would definitely be to not add misspelling-redirects, and to remove any that have been added. We've already got lots of spelling and punctuation ''variants'' showing up in the [https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Special:AllPages?from=Strict+still-life&to=&namespace=0 All Pages lists], and those lists will get extremely cluttered if we also add every possible misspelling of every article name -- or even every reasonable misspelling.

::: Of course there's a checkbox to hide redirects, but the problem I see is that current policy is fairly consistent about having redirects be valid variant spellings -- terms that people have actually used or might actually use.

::: So if we add things like "Suprise", we're kind of implying that "suprise" is a valid name that someone has used for something. People might click on it thinking, "what's that, a pun on 'sup' so it's some kind of eater?" and then mysteriously find no explanation of why "suprise" is listed. I'd much rather avoid that unlikely potential confusion, than avoid the unlikely potential confusion that someone can't find the [[Surprise]] article because they typed "suprise".

::: In other words, given that the lexicon of Life terms includes all kinds of things like "Catagolue" that '''look''' like misspellings but are actually completely purposeful and have meaning... there's useful information in the current collection of redirects, and it's not an improvement to add a random scattering of misspellings that are really just misspellings. People can perfectly well figure out how to spell "surprise" right, in the incredibly rare cases when they accidentally mistype it and don't get a LifeWiki article match. [[User:Dvgrn|Dvgrn]] ([[User talk:Dvgrn|talk]]) 14:59, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

* (Replying here to a message left at [[Talk:T-tetsons]], since it is possible that that talk page will be deleted later:) I do not see why "T-tetsons" or "T-tetson" should mean something specific. There is a page [[Tumbling T-tetson]] on this wiki, and there is an entry "tumbling T-tetson" in Life Lexicon. There is a page [[Twirling T-tetsons 2]] on this wiki, and there is an entry "twirling T-tetsons II" in Life Lexicon. However, I cannot find "T-tetson" or "T-tetsons" ''by itself'' in Life Lexicon. On the forums, the only example I found which might be related is in the thread "Help with names" ([https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2333 link]) where there was an attempt to translate a set of words/terms into another language. I think that "T-tetsons" does not by itself mean anything at all, so I proposed the redirect for deletion. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 00:16, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

===2023===
This tiki bar discussion did not finish in 2022. I think it is incomplete (for one thing, it implicitly assumes that everyone knows what this is about). Before this discussion started, several redirects-from-misspellings [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?target=Atavoidirc&namespace=all&tagfilter=mw-new-redirect&start=&end=&limit=50&title=Special%3AContributions were created] in a short timespan, without any edit summaries or other explanation. Overall, this looks like trying to anticipate misspellings before these misspellings actually happen. I do not support making lots of redirects "just in case". But one added or removed redirect does not globally change anything.<br />I think drawing the attention of everyone to redirects is unfortunate, because the wiki is about writing pages that describe or explain something -- redirects are a relatively minor feature, and ideally should "just work" without becoming the focus of a tiki bar discussion. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 11:15, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

== Proposed deletion of redirects from personal names to pages about a different subject ==

There is a number of redirects from names of people to pages that are not about the person ([[Alain Noels]], [[Christiaan Hartman]], [[Kees Kwekkeboom]], [[Roger Banks]], [[Steven Eker]], and likely more). I propose that such redirects be deleted.

I believe it is unacceptable to have an imprecise redirect from a personal name. That may incorrectly suggest that the person is known only for one specific contribution (the one mentioned on the target page of the redirect), and also does not provide any context before directing the reader to another subject.

I think either there should be a separate non-redirect page for a person, or (less preferable) a redirect to a category for discoveries made by the person, or there should be no page at all (i.e. no redirect to anything). [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 23:19, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

:Good issue to raise. It would be good to have an explicit "policy" about such things. I think we also need a similar agreement about whether and when a person should be linked at all even if there is little likelihood of the link ever having a landing (I'm thinking mainly of well-aged red links). [[User:Book|Book]] ([[User talk:Book|talk]]) 23:37, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

:: In general, I like red links; they are a very simple lightweight way to tell other editors "This page is missing", and they interact nicely with other available tools.<br />Speaking of pages '''about people''' specifically (and excluding all other LifeWiki topics), I'm inclined to agree that it's probably better to unlink long-missing pages about people. My reason is that such pages are harder to write, and the usual simple "process" of starting a short stub to be expanded later does not really work when writing about a person. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 05:46, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

== Usage of a non-default viewer theme ==

I added to several pages patterns that use <tt><nowiki>#C [[ THEME Book ]]</nowiki></tt> (this viewer theme is related to [[Conway's Game of Life: Mathematics and Construction|the book]]), as an attempt to understand how to improve presentation of patterns in pages. (For my edits adding this theme, see current versions of pages [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Lightweight_spaceship&oldid=116360 LWSS], [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Middleweight_spaceship&oldid=116358 MWSS], [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Heavyweight_spaceship&oldid=116373 HWSS], [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Blockic&oldid=116372 Blockic].) I chose this theme because I like how it displays "off" cells that were "on" differently from cells that were always "off", in the same way as in the patterns printed in the book.

The first (more specific) question here is: '''does <tt><nowiki>#C [[ THEME Book ]]</nowiki></tt> look fine in the LifeWiki?''' Is it a good idea to optionally use this LifeViewer theme, in those cases when it seems preferable to display history trail? Or it is better to stick with the default theme everywhere without exceptions?

I note that there was already [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Heavyweight_spaceship&diff=116368&oldid=116362 an objection] to one of my edits, on the grounds of consistency with the rest of the wiki. However, I think presentation of patterns across the wiki is currently already inconsistent in several distinct ways. For instance, sometimes static images are used - and that may be preferable in some cases but not others. Another example is that {{tl|EmbedViewer}} is used often but not everywhere - again, there may be good valid reasons for that. Hence a second, less specific question: '''how to improve presentation of patterns in the wiki?'''

Any feedback to the above? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:02, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

: Yes to theme Book (no pun intended). Good choice for the reasons and usage you state. [[User:Book|Book]] ([[User talk:Book|talk]]) 17:45, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

: I personally think that themes with history cells should be avoided on the wiki except in cases where the history cells provide a substantial benefit in understanding the pattern. With regard to the consistency issues mentioned above, many pages have static images because they were created before LifeViewer existed. Sometimes [[LV:viewer]] is used because {{tl|EmbedViewer}} adds an additional frame and caption that is not always desired. Neither of these represents inconsistency in how the wiki is currently updated.<br/>
:~[[User:Sokwe|Sokwe]] 01:31, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

One of "use cases" where I was changing the theme is when history cells make it easier to see how ''a certain pattern is composed of smaller parts''. For oscillating patterns, currently available features of LifeViewer make it possible to show the reaction envelope, by auto-running the pattern for one complete cycle (with history cells enabled) and then auto-stopping. In [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?oldid=125635 p8 glider reflector], it seems to help to see how a p128 oscillator is made out of two 180° reflectors. I used the same technique in [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?oldid=125316 p143 Bandersnatch loop] to show how catalysts are arranged relative to the reaction. There are other pages where I used "THEME Book + AUTOSTART + STOP" combination to show reaction envelopes. Would this be considered a valid use case? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 02:46, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Another common "use case" is when showing ''a complete glider synthesis of a pattern''. I think it becomes significantly easier to understand an animated synthesis (i.e. to see "how it works") if gliders leave traces behind them, and pauses are inserted in appropriate points. An example of this usage can be seen in [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Amphisbaena&oldid=124776 Amphisbaena]. If anyone is interested, I think I can write a more detailed explaination for how I was formatting glider syntheses with the "Book" theme -- I'm trying to be reasonably consistent with syntheses. Thanks for any feedback. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 02:46, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

== Creating pages in the OCA namespace ==

<s>As we all know,</s> well maybe not, but that's not important, I have an incomplete OCA:LeapLife page, currently under my user namespace. I'm considering completing it and moving it to the OCA namespace soon, and I would like to 1. know if there's any objection to it. 2. Know what makes an OCA rule notable enough to have an entry in LifeWiki.

Additionally, it was once planned to create some subpages under OCA:LeapLife, to document the many patterns of LeapLife. 3. Is this acceptable, and will this cause any trouble to the LifeWiki? [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 08:16, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

: I support the idea. If in doubt about whether the page is well-written / well-formatted / up-to-date / etc., the template {{tl|stub}} can always be added on the top of the page, as a lightweight way to indicate that it may need expansion. Subpages are already used - see for example [[OCA:HighLife/Bomber]], [[OCA:Pedestrian Life/List of common objects]]. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:49, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

::I am fine with the proposal in the description, but not with the proposal in the title — the OCA namespace is there for a reason, and if pages on specific OCA pages are moved to mainspace, it will cause confusion over what exists in CGOL itself and what doesn't. [[User:HotdogPi|HotdogPi]] ([[User talk:HotdogPi|talk]]) 11:22, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

:::Apologies - fixed now. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 11:59, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

[[User:Ultimium/OCA:LeapLife]] is halfway now. Do anyone have suggestions? Especially what to say in the Oscillators section.

* Is the current version considered ready to be moved to the OCA namespace? I do not want to move it without making sure that main contributor(s) are okay with that. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 03:05, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

: If anyone thinks the page is good enough to be moved in its current state, move it. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 09:50, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

:: I just did a round of editing. I'm not yet moving the page right now -- will wait for others a few days. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 11:32, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

::: I see that you added a note about [[trans-very long fuse with two tails]] appearing naturally. I think in this case I would rather correct the inaccurate information in the article outright, instead of making the page self-contradictory; I've already done the appropriate edit now. <br /> Unrelatedly, I noticed that hotdogPi keep adding trivias (like the block corner catalysis) to the page. I don't think reverting someone else' contribution is polite, but I can think of quite a few things that are as noteworthy as the block catalysis, so maybe they shouldn't appear on an overview article of LeapLife. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 03:28, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

:::: Is it possible to expand that part into a section on catalyses and other reactions in LeapLife, based on what is currently known? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 07:04, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

::::: If someone is interested in doing so (without going into too much details), go for it. (And indeed there are a non-zero amount of catalysts in LeapLife, if not much.) I would hestitate to mention reactions that are essentially due to the B2n or S3-q, though. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 02:08, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Looks like there are a few to-be-done sections now. Since I don't know much of writing wiki pages, is anyone interested to help me? [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 01:35, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

: A problem that I encountered while making the methuselah list: Do we usually remove non-interacting cells for methuselahs from soup search? Especially when no one has done the minimalization at that time. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 02:58, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

===A modest proposal===

Any objections to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Be_bold boldly] moving the LeapLife page to the OCA namespace? This would make it beneficial to the wide public of people interested in LeapLife (and not just relatively few enthusiasts who already know where to look). Then further discussion of incompleteness/improvements can go directly on the talk page of the article. (And this Tiki bar section would gradually become inactive and go to archives.)<br />Of course, one might say that the page is incomplete -- but then again, I doubt there are many "complete" articles on LifeWiki. In some sense everything here is a work-in-progress. Even seemingly "mission-critical" articles like [[Conway's Game of Life]] or {{rl|HighLife}} are incomplete, in the sense that I can imagine how those pages could be expanded further. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 03:52, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

: I would prefer to fill in all the "(TODO)"s first. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 04:11, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

: Additionally, I would like to hear other people's opinion on the content. There is currently a lack of discussion. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 04:22, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

==Regarding the censuses==
Many object pages, for instance [[Octagon 2]], state their commonness with their rank among all objects in Achim Flammenkamp's census, then their rank among only oscillators in Catagolue. Is the reason that infinite-growth patterns are excluded in Achim's census, or that it's meant to be more representative of the dynamics of ash in an infinite non-sparse universe? Is this truly worth it having (at present) (159214128553422*16**2)/(1829196*2048**2)>5312 times fewer initial random cells simulated and (159214128553422*16**2)/(1829196*2048**2*(-(1-0.375)*lg_2(1-0.375)-0.375*lg_2(0.375)))>5566 times fewer bits of entropy?

Should this information, when only given in the form of a commonness rank (and sometimes also expected number of soups per occurrence), have an infobox section instead?

Also, speaking of which, what should be done with the pages for strict still lifes with the sections stating that all with sufficiently few cells (including them) are known to be constructible within a maximum number of gliders? These aren't useful, surely, to duplicate information so much, can we assume that people looking for this information (that is numerical and conducive to being presented in tabular form) will go to Catagolue instead? Especially those with apgcode-only titles, pages here aren't necessary for lookup by conventional name if they have none. [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 13:51, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

: Re: infobox -- my preference would be to leave the commonness/occurrence information in plain text. The infoboxes are already long enough, so that they often conflict with sufficiently wide viewers not fitting to the left of the infobox, and it is sometimes necessary to reorder sections to avoid that conflict. As a consequence, I'd prefer not to make infoboxes even taller than they are. Stating what is known in the text also gives more flexibility. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 14:13, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
: Re: synthesis -- the glider synthesis sections of pages could contain information not only about the current cheapest synthesis cost, but also historical information about when the synthesis was found, and also about previously known / alternate syntheses. Here is an example: [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Krake&oldid=118147 Krake]. I'm slowly adding this kind of information to pages. I think this is useful and interesting to readers - instead of just the cheapest glider cost, show the syntheses themselves and tell when/how these were found. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 14:13, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

==Should LifeWiki be more like the chessprogramming wiki?==
It contains things like [https://www.chessprogramming.org/Algorithms an article on general algorithms] and others on things like bitwise operators (that don't pertain inherently to the nature of the problem it documents (playing chess as well as possible with finite resources), but are useful to human endeavours to solve it), should we have some (covering things that arise frequently enough in the study or implementation of cellular automata to be worth detailing with more specifics than Wikipedia) also?

Specifically, should there be pages here with contents of at least some of the sections of [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators]], in the instructive style of the other tutorial pages on how to set up and use various other software? Perhaps also one on writing simple row-based search programs that find oscillators and spaceships in equivalent multistate Wolfram rules for given widths in 2D ones. If we had one explaining the idea of [https://gist.github.com/DavidBuchanan314/acae2aab38953759aacc114b417ed0b9 David Buchanan's simulator] (not the specifics of the conversion to YUV4MPEG but the simulation, using it as a basis for teaching (being that Python is a simple language to read, though it has doubtless been thought of before)), and perhaps even some of the ideas in [https://gist.github.com/DroneBetter/4f5d775e7c37f062ce750d4a8fefc84a my fork], perhaps such a page could link to [https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html the Stanford bit-twiddling hacks] page (which may be of a great deal of interest to the kinds of people who'd be interested in such articles), or even an intermediate page here? I could create such an explanation of Buchanan's and my programs in my user area, then see whether it's deemed sufficiently useful to be moved to the mainspace, if anyone would like. [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 01:16, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

* There are some forum discussions that seem relevant to the idea of documenting various interesting technical details of algorithms e.g. [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1792 Searching algorithms], [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=22858#p22858 Re: 3c/7 othogonal and 2c/9 diagonal spaceships], [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=136037#p136037 Re: Beta Reader Thread for Game of Life Textbook] and others. I personally like the idea -- if someone understands something and can explain it in words, why not do that? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 04:39, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

** I don't know enough about those to do so (though I hope to one day), however I have made [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators/bitwise SWAR Life]] (covering my program up to the three different simulation modes and implementation of manifolds), being that I have some more time on my hands now I think I will make another regarding the application of the Pólya enumeration theorem to implementing efficient indexing methods for binary matrices under symmetry eventually (after finishing and optimising and cleaning my program for that), if it's okay

** Since the user Magma from the ConwayLife lounge taught me about the Pólya enumeration theorem, I made my "[https://github.com/DroneBetter/ChessPieceVision/blob/main/eightfold%20reducer.py eightfold reducer]" its own program (much was made when I was relatively new to Python and the rest only as a proof-of-concept, I will eventually get around to cleaning it up (optimising and reducing some things) and adding the rest of the class methods), it was originally only an implementation of my idea for exhaustively generating single canonical representations of nonequivalent states under symmetry in square boards (more efficiently than iterating over all states and discarding those that are not their own lexicographically-minimal orientation), but that I realised could have efficient indexing methods using the theorem, and I more recently made a "[https://gist.github.com/DroneBetter/90318584a0ad6a0f4d1c418d3da132cd dimensional INT enumerator]," originally for confirming the number of 3D Moore transitions in [[Isotropic_non-totalistic_cellular_automaton#Table_of_isotropic_non-totalistic_rulespaces|the INT rulespace table]] and supporting arbitrarily many dimensions but then today modified for returning closed forms for numbers of nonequivalent binary hypercubes in terms of width using the theorem, given a number of dimensions (see the comment on the gist for a brief explanation). Being that the first one only pertains to cellular automata slightly (ie. the indexing methods are useful for parallelisation, initialising the threads at the beginnings of different slices of the search space (that would be able to proceed through with the even more efficient next() method)) and the second only extremely tenuously (and to a more theoretical area of the study of cellular automata), would it be okay for me to make articles about their ideas (and explaining their implementations' specifics (such that the pages contains within them both a set of instructions to implement the idea and documentation of a functionally complete demonstration), like I did in the bitwise SWAR Life page)? [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 03:56, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

*** I have made [[Pólya enumeration theorem]] and [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators/eightfold reducer]] now :-) [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 17:51, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

== Attempting to show huge patterns in infoboxes ==

What is the current consensus on attempting to show huge patterns in infoboxes (with the alternative being to display the pattern in a viewer inside the text)? I am not sure whether changes like [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Traffic_lights_extruder&diff=121113&oldid=103147 this] or [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Spiral_growth&diff=121106&oldid=100868 this] are improvements. It seems like infoboxes work better for small patterns. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 00:00, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
: And some bigger patterns end up looking like smudged fingerprints in the infobox. But I think we need the categorization that follows from infobox, as well as the standard presentation. Maybe do both presentations? And while we're at it, maybe agree on a max width for whatever is shown to the left of an infobox? [[User:Book|Book]] ([[User talk:Book|talk]]) 17:55, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

:* I think it would be much better to have some reasonable '''upper limit on the width of the infobox itself''', to leave enough space for the main part of the page. The automatic categorization could in principle be done in a completely invisible way without enforcing any particular layout/presentation (e.g. see {{tl|Glossary}}). I'm not convinced that all pages need to be indiscriminately converted to infobox-based layout - being able to explain/describe/show the pattern in some reasonably good way is more important than any "standard presentation". Sufficiently large patterns simply do not fit well in the infobox. Some patterns may be better shown as images or schemes, and/or by explaining/describing/showing smaller components. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 19:00, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

::OK, I see the issue and the benefit. Hiding the infobox in these cases would be good, if 1)the data in the hidden infobox still functioned as usual in terms of all the things it triggers; 2) the article displayed important infobox data in its text. How does one do #1? [[User:Book|Book]] ([[User talk:Book|talk]]) 23:57, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

* No significant updates so far, just adding links back to related forum posts for future reference: [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=158434#p158434 p158434] [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=158438#p158438 p158438]. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 05:43, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

==Regarding programming language syntax colouring support in code blocks==
It would greatly benefit [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators/bitwise SWAR Life]] and [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators/eightfold reducer]] if we were to have this. Also, how do I prevent linebreaks followed by indentation (which appear often in my programming, as you may expect) causing code blocks to generate others nested inside them? Neither <nowiki><pre> nor <code></nowiki> seem to allow this. And is there a way to have inline monospaced text (ie. without line breaks) like the Python docs? [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 17:51, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

* What about <nowiki><blockquote><pre>...</pre></blockquote></nowiki>? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 17:58, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

<blockquote><pre>
class Thingy:
pass

def example():
print("Hello World!")
</pre></blockquote>

==Regarding "known" information==
For instance, [[List of period-2 oscillators with 17 cells]] says there are 199 known such oscillators, implying that the explicit examples provide only a lower boun, however [https://oeis.org/A056614 A056614](17)=199 and Mark Niemiec had a section of a page, entitled [https://conwaylife.com/ref/mniemiec/p2.htm#p2-17 The 199 seventeen-bit period 2 oscillators], do these count as sufficient sources in and of themselves or should a program be provided to act as proof of the nonexistence of any more? As mentioned above, I cited my program for the confirmation of the disputed number of 3D INT transitions in [[Isotropic non-totalistic cellular automaton#Table_of_isotropic_non-totalistic_rulespaces|the table]], should this be the convention for proofs of other such values that are given in pages but currently imply that they're only accurate to as far as is known and not objective?

I don't think the OEIS would add values not known to be correct (assuming no bugs in implementations), being that they say "Thousands of people use the sequence database every day. Please take great care that the terms you send are absolutely correct. The standards are those of a mathematics reference work." as you edit a sequence, but [https://oeis.org/A231427 A231427] was amended with the discovery of the rattlesnake, so perhaps not too rigorous when it comes to Life matters. {{unsigned|DroneBetter|21:55, 3 January 2023‎}}

* Added the two references to pages [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=List_of_period-2_oscillators_with_17_cells&diff=126123&oldid=121447 for 17 cells] and [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=List_of_period-2_oscillators_with_18_cells&diff=126124&oldid=121464 for 18 cells] -- these links seem to be useful as ways of helping the curious reader to find more information. I think it is safe to leave "known" in -- a computer program may have bugs, a mathematical proof may have gaps, and so on. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 05:18, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

== Single column vs Two columns of EmbedViewer ==

What is the reason to restrict layout to stacking all {{tl|EmbedViewer}} in a single column like [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Jason%27s_p33&curid=2480&diff=126035&oldid=126034 in this edit]? That could made the page overly long with much whitespace around. Well, I am not suggesting possibilities for three or more columns — which would made the page too wide — I am just curious about the case of two columns. [[User:GUYTU6J|GUYTU6J]] ([[User talk:GUYTU6J|talk]]) 14:42, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
:Actually, I prefer three, which is what I use on my userpages. [[User:HotdogPi|HotdogPi]] ([[User talk:HotdogPi|talk]]) 15:04, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

* The question in the first sentence appears to be about the specific edit. As explained in the edit summary, it is a revert to a single column. The reverted edit is a previous edit made by someone else ([https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff=126024&oldid=111614 diff=126024&oldid=111614]), changing the layout from single column to double column, with false edit summary stating "The last version still looks too wide for me". The edit summary is false, because the edit made the gallery more wide, not less. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 15:13, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
: More generally for the main/OCA namespaces, single-column galleries are preferable, because a two-column gallery already does not fit to the left of the infobox. For galleries in later sections of the page that can be reasonably assumed to appear strictly below the infobox on all devices, two columns could be used. Three columns are already too wide, even without the infobox. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 15:13, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

:: By "looks too wide for me" I meant individual viewers, not the sum of two. Is there a demonstration for a two-column gallery failed to fit to the left of infobox? [[User:GUYTU6J|GUYTU6J]] ([[User talk:GUYTU6J|talk]]) 15:23, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

::* https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=158624#p158624 [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 15:44, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Is there a potential way to make it change based on screen width? On my screen, 5 columns easily fit to the left of the infobox, and 1 column leaves a ridiculous amount of white space. --[[User:Galoomba|Galoomba]] ([[User talk:Galoomba|talk]]) 07:33, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

* For static images only, the <tt><gallery>...</gallery></tt> tag should work ([https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Snake&oldid=127486#Extensibility example]). For embedded viewers, I'm not aware of any existing solution.<br/>See also a forum thread for all infobox-related issues/discussions: [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5981 link]. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:29, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

== Adding kinetic symmetry to infoboxes ==

Currently, pattern symmetries are tracked by an invisible template at the bottom of the pattern page which does nothing other than add a category. I don't like this, since it's in stark contrast to every other pattern statistic which is tracked in the pattern infobox. However, the current system is in place for basically every oscillator and spaceship with time symmetry, so moving things to the infobox would take a long time and require a lot of changes. I think it'd be worth it, however, since kinetic symmetry is currently only described in the currently rather obscure [[kinetic symmetry]] page. Having this in the infobox would direct more traffic to that page, increase the understanding of kinetic symmetry in the Life community, and also make the symmetries of patterns far more obvious and clear since people wouldn't have to sift through the twenty categories each pattern is in to find out what each pattern is classified as.

Any thoughts? - [[User:AwesoMan3000|AwesoMan3000]] ([[User talk:AwesoMan3000|talk]]) 10:54, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
: It's doable. However, a script that does it automatically would also need to look at the bounding box, as the templates don't distinguish between odd and even symmetry. [[User:HotdogPi|HotdogPi]] ([[User talk:HotdogPi|talk]]) 14:03, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
:: Would a script even be able to distinguish between a D2_+1 pattern that flips across the edges and vertices of cells (-f+e) and a D2_+2 pattern that flips through the faces and edges of cells (-e+e)? Both are orthogonally flipping oscillators which would have odd by even bounding boxes. - [[User:AwesoMan3000|AwesoMan3000]] ([[User talk:AwesoMan3000|talk]]) 14:24, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

* I like the idea to add specific kinetic symmetry to the infobox (and perhaps create corresponding categories for every possible value, so that objects with a given symmetry can be viewed).<br/>However, on the other hand the infoboxes are already quite tall, and significantly reduce the available width for the main content that is located in the beginning of the page.<br/>Given that there are several related-but-distinct issues with infoboxes (as evidenced by the Tiki bar), would it be possible to discuss infobox-related questions as part of a broader discussion of infoboxes (perhaps preferably on the forum rather than on the wiki, so that forum members without LifeWiki accounts could reply as well)? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 06:55, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

* A forum thread for infobox-related issues: [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5981 link]. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 06:19, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

=="Oscillators made of still lifes"==
I was perusing Catagolue (by means of my program), and found a D4_+1 oscillator comprised of still lifes, already named the {{LinkCatagolue|xp5_y025a404a52z6a40653x35604a6z65206acxca60256zy04a52025a4|patternname=half-tub harbour|style=raw}}, that also has rarer (single-occurrence) {{LinkCatagolue|xp5_y125a404a6z06a40653x35604a52z4a5206acxca60256zy2652025a4|patternname=C4_1|style=raw}} and {{LinkCatagolue|xp5_y125a404a6z25a40653x35604a6z065206acxca6025a4zy2652025a4|patternname=D4_x1|style=raw}} variants. There wasn't any result for "oscillator made of oscillators," only [[Constellation]] (which seems vaguely fitting but not very), should a page be created dedicated to oscillators that are separable into still lifes (that hassle each other) in at least one phase? Are there any other such cases to document? [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 22:50, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
: Amendment: I didn't notice the much more common {{LinkCatagolue|xp5_y135a404a53z35a40653x35604a53zca5206acxca6025aczy1ca52025|patternname=D8_1 occurrence|style=raw}} (due ot it having lower volatility and not appearing in my sortings) <small><span class="autosigned">— Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/DroneBetter|contribs]]) 23:40, 28 March 2023</span></small>

Apologies if the following is a bit off-topic; one interesting kind of oscillators is those where several consecutive phases consist of nothing but [[Spaceship|gliders]] and stationary objects, in such a way that the oscillator permanently becomes a strictly-lower-period pattern if all the gliders are instantly removed from one of such phases. These oscillators look quite cool and may well deserve a dedicated collection. Here's a recently posted alien example: [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=159731#p159731 post159731] ({{cata|object/xp33_033eky3g8oe6zzgoc84y3koz11y7133/b2ek3eikq4acejrw5ay6i7cs2-ek3acjry4ajrty5acjq6cn8|Catagolue}}). In Life, several examples are the [[p143 Bandersnatch loop]] (and its period-doubling stabilisation), {{cata|object/xp253_y52egoy233yk33y2oge2zy133y7488oy033y633y0o884y733zccyd111yi111ydcczyn6d9e6w6e9d6zzzzyn6b976w679b6z33yd88oyio88yd33zy1ccy0ggy12111y0ccy6ccy01112y1ggy0cczy54701y2ccykccy21074/b3s23|this p253}}, {{cata|object/xp160_y42egoy533z0oggzx23ye8sky3cczz66y3572yeo8zyr113zy8ooy531e8/b3s23|this p160}}, the (capped) [[period-563 glider gun]]. There should be more examples, even not counting adjustable glider shuttles. (And even more, if the requirements are relaxed to allow any oscillators with temporary internal well-separated gliders.) [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 06:36, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

== Pauses in glider syntheses ==

Why do most glider synthesis LifeViewer embeds have pauses in them? I get it's to see important intermediates (although sometimes it pauses before the gliders even collide) but it's really awkward to watch.
<br>On a related note, why do they all have a copy of the final object on the right side? Seems redundant. --[[User:Galoomba|Galoomba]] ([[User talk:Galoomba|talk]]) 09:02, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

* Some (not all) glider syntheses have pauses in them, because I decided to add pauses in them. I'm not aware of any previous conventions regarding of how exactly to represent glider syntheses on LifeWiki. The relatively long pause {{eq|T|20}} (before the gliders collide) in particular is so that it is visible where each glider comes from, and it is easier to see that the synthesis is [[rewind]]able.<br />The reason behind adding a copy of the (stationary) final object is because [[Mark Niemiec's database|Mark Niemiec's glider synthesis database]] does this, and I did not really want to invent something entirely new from scratch, when there are existing tested ideas that can be reused in this context. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:22, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

* If this can be useful for setting future guidelines, I think I could write a more detailed explaination for my particular choices when formatting syntheses. Earlier [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=LifeWiki:Tiki_bar&diff=125750&oldid=125749 I already asked] about that on Tiki bar, but got no response there so far. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:21, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

== Volatility rounding ==

Seems like volatility is rounded to two decimal places, and there are categories for each of those. But is it rounded up, down, or to nearest? This also applies to heat. --[[User:Galoomba|Galoomba]] ([[User talk:Galoomba|talk]]) 16:54, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

LifeWiki:Tiki bar

2023-04-25T04:11:38Z

2023-04-25T02:58:43Z

Ultimium: /* Creating pages in the OCA namespace */ question

[[File:Taka Tiki Break 250.jpg|right|thumb|250px|Taka Tiki Break]]
<div style="clear: both; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em">__TOC__</div>
'''Welcome, one and all, to the Tiki bar!''' This page is used to discuss the technical issues, policies, and operations of the LifeWiki. Or just sit down, relax, and enjoy a cocktail.

<div style="font-size:1.4em;text-align:center" class="plainlinks">[{{fullurl:LifeWiki:Tiki bar|action=edit&section=new}} Click here to start a new Tiki bar discussion.]</div>

==Welcome to the Tiki bar==
Wikipedia has the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump Village pump], Wiktionary has the [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Beer_parlour Beer parlour], but the LifeWiki's lacked a central page for discussion so far other than [[User talk:Nathaniel]]. So I took the liberty to create the Tiki bar to facilitate discussion in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere. Welcome! [[User:Apple Bottom|Apple Bottom]] ([[User talk:Apple Bottom|talk]]) 11:09, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

==Archived discussions==
:''Note: active discussions are never archived while still active.''

* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2016]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2016.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2017]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2017.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2018]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2018.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2019]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2019.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2020]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2020.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2021]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2021.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2022]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2022.

== Redirects from misspelling ==

I fail to see why redirects from misspellings are prohibited. [[User:Atavoidirc|Atavoidirc]] ([[User talk:Atavoidirc|talk]]) 21:40, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

* I think there are too many possible ways to misspell something (just multiply the number of letters in the title by (number of letters in the alphabet - 1) and on top of that add misspellings that add/remove/exchange letters), so that it becomes unreasonable to make redirects for them. For another example, should [[jrake]] be redirected to [[rake]], or to [[krake]] (note that letters j and k are adjacent on a common keyboard layout), or maybe to a disambiguation page created specifically for the purpose of distinguishing possible misspellings? ''Some'' redirects for really common misspellings may be acceptable - but I think it is necessary to show explicitly that these misspellings are indeed common, and there are few such cases.
: In any case, I do not think it is helpful to quickly make dozens of redirects for misspellings - it clutters the logs of recent changes for editors, and it does not seem a noticeable improvement for readers. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 07:06, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
: (Added later) Although the following does not necessarily imply anything specific (I think the wiki should not promote an incorrect spelling, even if it becomes common), here are results of a quick forum search: "candelfobra" - 0 matches, "candlefobra" - 0 matches, "candelfrobra" - 16 matches, "[[candlefrobra]]" - 36 matches. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 12:06, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

** Personally i think redirects from misspellings that are not just typos (e.g. Candelfobra) should be allowed. I've made this specific misspelling several times before, so i know at least one person who would benefit from it. [[User:Atavoidirc|Atavoidirc]] ([[User talk:Atavoidirc|talk]]) 11:25, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

::: My vote would definitely be to not add misspelling-redirects, and to remove any that have been added. We've already got lots of spelling and punctuation ''variants'' showing up in the [https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Special:AllPages?from=Strict+still-life&to=&namespace=0 All Pages lists], and those lists will get extremely cluttered if we also add every possible misspelling of every article name -- or even every reasonable misspelling.

::: Of course there's a checkbox to hide redirects, but the problem I see is that current policy is fairly consistent about having redirects be valid variant spellings -- terms that people have actually used or might actually use.

::: So if we add things like "Suprise", we're kind of implying that "suprise" is a valid name that someone has used for something. People might click on it thinking, "what's that, a pun on 'sup' so it's some kind of eater?" and then mysteriously find no explanation of why "suprise" is listed. I'd much rather avoid that unlikely potential confusion, than avoid the unlikely potential confusion that someone can't find the [[Surprise]] article because they typed "suprise".

::: In other words, given that the lexicon of Life terms includes all kinds of things like "Catagolue" that '''look''' like misspellings but are actually completely purposeful and have meaning... there's useful information in the current collection of redirects, and it's not an improvement to add a random scattering of misspellings that are really just misspellings. People can perfectly well figure out how to spell "surprise" right, in the incredibly rare cases when they accidentally mistype it and don't get a LifeWiki article match. [[User:Dvgrn|Dvgrn]] ([[User talk:Dvgrn|talk]]) 14:59, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

* (Replying here to a message left at [[Talk:T-tetsons]], since it is possible that that talk page will be deleted later:) I do not see why "T-tetsons" or "T-tetson" should mean something specific. There is a page [[Tumbling T-tetson]] on this wiki, and there is an entry "tumbling T-tetson" in Life Lexicon. There is a page [[Twirling T-tetsons 2]] on this wiki, and there is an entry "twirling T-tetsons II" in Life Lexicon. However, I cannot find "T-tetson" or "T-tetsons" ''by itself'' in Life Lexicon. On the forums, the only example I found which might be related is in the thread "Help with names" ([https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2333 link]) where there was an attempt to translate a set of words/terms into another language. I think that "T-tetsons" does not by itself mean anything at all, so I proposed the redirect for deletion. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 00:16, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

===2023===
This tiki bar discussion did not finish in 2022. I think it is incomplete (for one thing, it implicitly assumes that everyone knows what this is about). Before this discussion started, several redirects-from-misspellings [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?target=Atavoidirc&namespace=all&tagfilter=mw-new-redirect&start=&end=&limit=50&title=Special%3AContributions were created] in a short timespan, without any edit summaries or other explanation. Overall, this looks like trying to anticipate misspellings before these misspellings actually happen. I do not support making lots of redirects "just in case". But one added or removed redirect does not globally change anything.<br />I think drawing the attention of everyone to redirects is unfortunate, because the wiki is about writing pages that describe or explain something -- redirects are a relatively minor feature, and ideally should "just work" without becoming the focus of a tiki bar discussion. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 11:15, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

== Proposed deletion of redirects from personal names to pages about a different subject ==

There is a number of redirects from names of people to pages that are not about the person ([[Alain Noels]], [[Christiaan Hartman]], [[Kees Kwekkeboom]], [[Roger Banks]], [[Steven Eker]], and likely more). I propose that such redirects be deleted.

I believe it is unacceptable to have an imprecise redirect from a personal name. That may incorrectly suggest that the person is known only for one specific contribution (the one mentioned on the target page of the redirect), and also does not provide any context before directing the reader to another subject.

I think either there should be a separate non-redirect page for a person, or (less preferable) a redirect to a category for discoveries made by the person, or there should be no page at all (i.e. no redirect to anything). [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 23:19, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

:Good issue to raise. It would be good to have an explicit "policy" about such things. I think we also need a similar agreement about whether and when a person should be linked at all even if there is little likelihood of the link ever having a landing (I'm thinking mainly of well-aged red links). [[User:Book|Book]] ([[User talk:Book|talk]]) 23:37, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

:: In general, I like red links; they are a very simple lightweight way to tell other editors "This page is missing", and they interact nicely with other available tools.<br />Speaking of pages '''about people''' specifically (and excluding all other LifeWiki topics), I'm inclined to agree that it's probably better to unlink long-missing pages about people. My reason is that such pages are harder to write, and the usual simple "process" of starting a short stub to be expanded later does not really work when writing about a person. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 05:46, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

== Usage of a non-default viewer theme ==

I added to several pages patterns that use <tt><nowiki>#C [[ THEME Book ]]</nowiki></tt> (this viewer theme is related to [[Conway's Game of Life: Mathematics and Construction|the book]]), as an attempt to understand how to improve presentation of patterns in pages. (For my edits adding this theme, see current versions of pages [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Lightweight_spaceship&oldid=116360 LWSS], [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Middleweight_spaceship&oldid=116358 MWSS], [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Heavyweight_spaceship&oldid=116373 HWSS], [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Blockic&oldid=116372 Blockic].) I chose this theme because I like how it displays "off" cells that were "on" differently from cells that were always "off", in the same way as in the patterns printed in the book.

The first (more specific) question here is: '''does <tt><nowiki>#C [[ THEME Book ]]</nowiki></tt> look fine in the LifeWiki?''' Is it a good idea to optionally use this LifeViewer theme, in those cases when it seems preferable to display history trail? Or it is better to stick with the default theme everywhere without exceptions?

I note that there was already [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Heavyweight_spaceship&diff=116368&oldid=116362 an objection] to one of my edits, on the grounds of consistency with the rest of the wiki. However, I think presentation of patterns across the wiki is currently already inconsistent in several distinct ways. For instance, sometimes static images are used - and that may be preferable in some cases but not others. Another example is that {{tl|EmbedViewer}} is used often but not everywhere - again, there may be good valid reasons for that. Hence a second, less specific question: '''how to improve presentation of patterns in the wiki?'''

Any feedback to the above? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:02, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

: Yes to theme Book (no pun intended). Good choice for the reasons and usage you state. [[User:Book|Book]] ([[User talk:Book|talk]]) 17:45, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

: I personally think that themes with history cells should be avoided on the wiki except in cases where the history cells provide a substantial benefit in understanding the pattern. With regard to the consistency issues mentioned above, many pages have static images because they were created before LifeViewer existed. Sometimes [[LV:viewer]] is used because {{tl|EmbedViewer}} adds an additional frame and caption that is not always desired. Neither of these represents inconsistency in how the wiki is currently updated.<br/>
:~[[User:Sokwe|Sokwe]] 01:31, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

One of "use cases" where I was changing the theme is when history cells make it easier to see how ''a certain pattern is composed of smaller parts''. For oscillating patterns, currently available features of LifeViewer make it possible to show the reaction envelope, by auto-running the pattern for one complete cycle (with history cells enabled) and then auto-stopping. In [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?oldid=125635 p8 glider reflector], it seems to help to see how a p128 oscillator is made out of two 180° reflectors. I used the same technique in [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?oldid=125316 p143 Bandersnatch loop] to show how catalysts are arranged relative to the reaction. There are other pages where I used "THEME Book + AUTOSTART + STOP" combination to show reaction envelopes. Would this be considered a valid use case? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 02:46, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Another common "use case" is when showing ''a complete glider synthesis of a pattern''. I think it becomes significantly easier to understand an animated synthesis (i.e. to see "how it works") if gliders leave traces behind them, and pauses are inserted in appropriate points. An example of this usage can be seen in [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Amphisbaena&oldid=124776 Amphisbaena]. If anyone is interested, I think I can write a more detailed explaination for how I was formatting glider syntheses with the "Book" theme -- I'm trying to be reasonably consistent with syntheses. Thanks for any feedback. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 02:46, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

== Creating pages in the OCA namespace ==

<s>As we all know,</s> well maybe not, but that's not important, I have an incomplete OCA:LeapLife page, currently under my user namespace. I'm considering completing it and moving it to the OCA namespace soon, and I would like to 1. know if there's any objection to it. 2. Know what makes an OCA rule notable enough to have an entry in LifeWiki.

Additionally, it was once planned to create some subpages under OCA:LeapLife, to document the many patterns of LeapLife. 3. Is this acceptable, and will this cause any trouble to the LifeWiki? [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 08:16, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

: I support the idea. If in doubt about whether the page is well-written / well-formatted / up-to-date / etc., the template {{tl|stub}} can always be added on the top of the page, as a lightweight way to indicate that it may need expansion. Subpages are already used - see for example [[OCA:HighLife/Bomber]], [[OCA:Pedestrian Life/List of common objects]]. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:49, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

::I am fine with the proposal in the description, but not with the proposal in the title — the OCA namespace is there for a reason, and if pages on specific OCA pages are moved to mainspace, it will cause confusion over what exists in CGOL itself and what doesn't. [[User:HotdogPi|HotdogPi]] ([[User talk:HotdogPi|talk]]) 11:22, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

:::Apologies - fixed now. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 11:59, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

[[User:Ultimium/OCA:LeapLife]] is halfway now. Do anyone have suggestions? Especially what to say in the Oscillators section.

* Is the current version considered ready to be moved to the OCA namespace? I do not want to move it without making sure that main contributor(s) are okay with that. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 03:05, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

: If anyone thinks the page is good enough to be moved in its current state, move it. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 09:50, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

:: I just did a round of editing. I'm not yet moving the page right now -- will wait for others a few days. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 11:32, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

::: I see that you added a note about [[trans-very long fuse with two tails]] appearing naturally. I think in this case I would rather correct the inaccurate information in the article outright, instead of making the page self-contradictory; I've already done the appropriate edit now. <br /> Unrelatedly, I noticed that hotdogPi keep adding trivias (like the block corner catalysis) to the page. I don't think reverting someone else' contribution is polite, but I can think of quite a few things that are as noteworthy as the block catalysis, so maybe they shouldn't appear on an overview article of LeapLife. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 03:28, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

:::: Is it possible to expand that part into a section on catalyses and other reactions in LeapLife, based on what is currently known? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 07:04, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

::::: If someone is interested in doing so (without going into too much details), go for it. (And indeed there are a non-zero amount of catalysts in LeapLife, if not much.) I would hestitate to mention reactions that are essentially due to the B2n or S3-q, though. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 02:08, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Looks like there are a few to-be-done sections now. Since I don't know much of writing wiki pages, is anyone interested to help me? [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 01:35, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

: A problem that I encountered while making the methuselah list: Do we usually remove non-interacting cells for methuselahs from soup search? Especially when no one has done the minimalization at that time. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 02:58, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

==Regarding the censuses==
Many object pages, for instance [[Octagon 2]], state their commonness with their rank among all objects in Achim Flammenkamp's census, then their rank among only oscillators in Catagolue. Is the reason that infinite-growth patterns are excluded in Achim's census, or that it's meant to be more representative of the dynamics of ash in an infinite non-sparse universe? Is this truly worth it having (at present) (159214128553422*16**2)/(1829196*2048**2)>5312 times fewer initial random cells simulated and (159214128553422*16**2)/(1829196*2048**2*(-(1-0.375)*lg_2(1-0.375)-0.375*lg_2(0.375)))>5566 times fewer bits of entropy?

Should this information, when only given in the form of a commonness rank (and sometimes also expected number of soups per occurrence), have an infobox section instead?

Also, speaking of which, what should be done with the pages for strict still lifes with the sections stating that all with sufficiently few cells (including them) are known to be constructible within a maximum number of gliders? These aren't useful, surely, to duplicate information so much, can we assume that people looking for this information (that is numerical and conducive to being presented in tabular form) will go to Catagolue instead? Especially those with apgcode-only titles, pages here aren't necessary for lookup by conventional name if they have none. [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 13:51, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

: Re: infobox -- my preference would be to leave the commonness/occurrence information in plain text. The infoboxes are already long enough, so that they often conflict with sufficiently wide viewers not fitting to the left of the infobox, and it is sometimes necessary to reorder sections to avoid that conflict. As a consequence, I'd prefer not to make infoboxes even taller than they are. Stating what is known in the text also gives more flexibility. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 14:13, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
: Re: synthesis -- the glider synthesis sections of pages could contain information not only about the current cheapest synthesis cost, but also historical information about when the synthesis was found, and also about previously known / alternate syntheses. Here is an example: [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Krake&oldid=118147 Krake]. I'm slowly adding this kind of information to pages. I think this is useful and interesting to readers - instead of just the cheapest glider cost, show the syntheses themselves and tell when/how these were found. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 14:13, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

==Should LifeWiki be more like the chessprogramming wiki?==
It contains things like [https://www.chessprogramming.org/Algorithms an article on general algorithms] and others on things like bitwise operators (that don't pertain inherently to the nature of the problem it documents (playing chess as well as possible with finite resources), but are useful to human endeavours to solve it), should we have some (covering things that arise frequently enough in the study or implementation of cellular automata to be worth detailing with more specifics than Wikipedia) also?

Specifically, should there be pages here with contents of at least some of the sections of [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators]], in the instructive style of the other tutorial pages on how to set up and use various other software? Perhaps also one on writing simple row-based search programs that find oscillators and spaceships in equivalent multistate Wolfram rules for given widths in 2D ones. If we had one explaining the idea of [https://gist.github.com/DavidBuchanan314/acae2aab38953759aacc114b417ed0b9 David Buchanan's simulator] (not the specifics of the conversion to YUV4MPEG but the simulation, using it as a basis for teaching (being that Python is a simple language to read, though it has doubtless been thought of before)), and perhaps even some of the ideas in [https://gist.github.com/DroneBetter/4f5d775e7c37f062ce750d4a8fefc84a my fork], perhaps such a page could link to [https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html the Stanford bit-twiddling hacks] page (which may be of a great deal of interest to the kinds of people who'd be interested in such articles), or even an intermediate page here? I could create such an explanation of Buchanan's and my programs in my user area, then see whether it's deemed sufficiently useful to be moved to the mainspace, if anyone would like. [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 01:16, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

* There are some forum discussions that seem relevant to the idea of documenting various interesting technical details of algorithms e.g. [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1792 Searching algorithms], [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=22858#p22858 Re: 3c/7 othogonal and 2c/9 diagonal spaceships], [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=136037#p136037 Re: Beta Reader Thread for Game of Life Textbook] and others. I personally like the idea -- if someone understands something and can explain it in words, why not do that? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 04:39, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

** I don't know enough about those to do so (though I hope to one day), however I have made [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators/bitwise SWAR Life]] (covering my program up to the three different simulation modes and implementation of manifolds), being that I have some more time on my hands now I think I will make another regarding the application of the Pólya enumeration theorem to implementing efficient indexing methods for binary matrices under symmetry eventually (after finishing and optimising and cleaning my program for that), if it's okay

** Since the user Magma from the ConwayLife lounge taught me about the Pólya enumeration theorem, I made my "[https://github.com/DroneBetter/ChessPieceVision/blob/main/eightfold%20reducer.py eightfold reducer]" its own program (much was made when I was relatively new to Python and the rest only as a proof-of-concept, I will eventually get around to cleaning it up (optimising and reducing some things) and adding the rest of the class methods), it was originally only an implementation of my idea for exhaustively generating single canonical representations of nonequivalent states under symmetry in square boards (more efficiently than iterating over all states and discarding those that are not their own lexicographically-minimal orientation), but that I realised could have efficient indexing methods using the theorem, and I more recently made a "[https://gist.github.com/DroneBetter/90318584a0ad6a0f4d1c418d3da132cd dimensional INT enumerator]," originally for confirming the number of 3D Moore transitions in [[Isotropic_non-totalistic_cellular_automaton#Table_of_isotropic_non-totalistic_rulespaces|the INT rulespace table]] and supporting arbitrarily many dimensions but then today modified for returning closed forms for numbers of nonequivalent binary hypercubes in terms of width using the theorem, given a number of dimensions (see the comment on the gist for a brief explanation). Being that the first one only pertains to cellular automata slightly (ie. the indexing methods are useful for parallelisation, initialising the threads at the beginnings of different slices of the search space (that would be able to proceed through with the even more efficient next() method)) and the second only extremely tenuously (and to a more theoretical area of the study of cellular automata), would it be okay for me to make articles about their ideas (and explaining their implementations' specifics (such that the pages contains within them both a set of instructions to implement the idea and documentation of a functionally complete demonstration), like I did in the bitwise SWAR Life page)? [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 03:56, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

*** I have made [[Pólya enumeration theorem]] and [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators/eightfold reducer]] now :-) [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 17:51, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

== Attempting to show huge patterns in infoboxes ==

What is the current consensus on attempting to show huge patterns in infoboxes (with the alternative being to display the pattern in a viewer inside the text)? I am not sure whether changes like [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Traffic_lights_extruder&diff=121113&oldid=103147 this] or [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Spiral_growth&diff=121106&oldid=100868 this] are improvements. It seems like infoboxes work better for small patterns. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 00:00, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
: And some bigger patterns end up looking like smudged fingerprints in the infobox. But I think we need the categorization that follows from infobox, as well as the standard presentation. Maybe do both presentations? And while we're at it, maybe agree on a max width for whatever is shown to the left of an infobox? [[User:Book|Book]] ([[User talk:Book|talk]]) 17:55, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

:* I think it would be much better to have some reasonable '''upper limit on the width of the infobox itself''', to leave enough space for the main part of the page. The automatic categorization could in principle be done in a completely invisible way without enforcing any particular layout/presentation (e.g. see {{tl|Glossary}}). I'm not convinced that all pages need to be indiscriminately converted to infobox-based layout - being able to explain/describe/show the pattern in some reasonably good way is more important than any "standard presentation". Sufficiently large patterns simply do not fit well in the infobox. Some patterns may be better shown as images or schemes, and/or by explaining/describing/showing smaller components. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 19:00, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

::OK, I see the issue and the benefit. Hiding the infobox in these cases would be good, if 1)the data in the hidden infobox still functioned as usual in terms of all the things it triggers; 2) the article displayed important infobox data in its text. How does one do #1? [[User:Book|Book]] ([[User talk:Book|talk]]) 23:57, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

* No significant updates so far, just adding links back to related forum posts for future reference: [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=158434#p158434 p158434] [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=158438#p158438 p158438]. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 05:43, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

==Regarding programming language syntax colouring support in code blocks==
It would greatly benefit [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators/bitwise SWAR Life]] and [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators/eightfold reducer]] if we were to have this. Also, how do I prevent linebreaks followed by indentation (which appear often in my programming, as you may expect) causing code blocks to generate others nested inside them? Neither <nowiki><pre> nor <code></nowiki> seem to allow this. And is there a way to have inline monospaced text (ie. without line breaks) like the Python docs? [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 17:51, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

* What about <nowiki><blockquote><pre>...</pre></blockquote></nowiki>? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 17:58, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

<blockquote><pre>
class Thingy:
pass

def example():
print("Hello World!")
</pre></blockquote>

==Regarding "known" information==
For instance, [[List of period-2 oscillators with 17 cells]] says there are 199 known such oscillators, implying that the explicit examples provide only a lower boun, however [https://oeis.org/A056614 A056614](17)=199 and Mark Niemiec had a section of a page, entitled [https://conwaylife.com/ref/mniemiec/p2.htm#p2-17 The 199 seventeen-bit period 2 oscillators], do these count as sufficient sources in and of themselves or should a program be provided to act as proof of the nonexistence of any more? As mentioned above, I cited my program for the confirmation of the disputed number of 3D INT transitions in [[Isotropic non-totalistic cellular automaton#Table_of_isotropic_non-totalistic_rulespaces|the table]], should this be the convention for proofs of other such values that are given in pages but currently imply that they're only accurate to as far as is known and not objective?

I don't think the OEIS would add values not known to be correct (assuming no bugs in implementations), being that they say "Thousands of people use the sequence database every day. Please take great care that the terms you send are absolutely correct. The standards are those of a mathematics reference work." as you edit a sequence, but [https://oeis.org/A231427 A231427] was amended with the discovery of the rattlesnake, so perhaps not too rigorous when it comes to Life matters. {{unsigned|DroneBetter|21:55, 3 January 2023‎}}

* Added the two references to pages [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=List_of_period-2_oscillators_with_17_cells&diff=126123&oldid=121447 for 17 cells] and [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=List_of_period-2_oscillators_with_18_cells&diff=126124&oldid=121464 for 18 cells] -- these links seem to be useful as ways of helping the curious reader to find more information. I think it is safe to leave "known" in -- a computer program may have bugs, a mathematical proof may have gaps, and so on. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 05:18, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

== Single column vs Two columns of EmbedViewer ==

What is the reason to restrict layout to stacking all {{tl|EmbedViewer}} in a single column like [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Jason%27s_p33&curid=2480&diff=126035&oldid=126034 in this edit]? That could made the page overly long with much whitespace around. Well, I am not suggesting possibilities for three or more columns — which would made the page too wide — I am just curious about the case of two columns. [[User:GUYTU6J|GUYTU6J]] ([[User talk:GUYTU6J|talk]]) 14:42, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
:Actually, I prefer three, which is what I use on my userpages. [[User:HotdogPi|HotdogPi]] ([[User talk:HotdogPi|talk]]) 15:04, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

* The question in the first sentence appears to be about the specific edit. As explained in the edit summary, it is a revert to a single column. The reverted edit is a previous edit made by someone else ([https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff=126024&oldid=111614 diff=126024&oldid=111614]), changing the layout from single column to double column, with false edit summary stating "The last version still looks too wide for me". The edit summary is false, because the edit made the gallery more wide, not less. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 15:13, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
: More generally for the main/OCA namespaces, single-column galleries are preferable, because a two-column gallery already does not fit to the left of the infobox. For galleries in later sections of the page that can be reasonably assumed to appear strictly below the infobox on all devices, two columns could be used. Three columns are already too wide, even without the infobox. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 15:13, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

:: By "looks too wide for me" I meant individual viewers, not the sum of two. Is there a demonstration for a two-column gallery failed to fit to the left of infobox? [[User:GUYTU6J|GUYTU6J]] ([[User talk:GUYTU6J|talk]]) 15:23, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

::* https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=158624#p158624 [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 15:44, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Is there a potential way to make it change based on screen width? On my screen, 5 columns easily fit to the left of the infobox, and 1 column leaves a ridiculous amount of white space. --[[User:Galoomba|Galoomba]] ([[User talk:Galoomba|talk]]) 07:33, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

* For static images only, the <tt><gallery>...</gallery></tt> tag should work ([https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Snake&oldid=127486#Extensibility example]). For embedded viewers, I'm not aware of any existing solution.<br/>See also a forum thread for all infobox-related issues/discussions: [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5981 link]. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:29, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

== Adding kinetic symmetry to infoboxes ==

Currently, pattern symmetries are tracked by an invisible template at the bottom of the pattern page which does nothing other than add a category. I don't like this, since it's in stark contrast to every other pattern statistic which is tracked in the pattern infobox. However, the current system is in place for basically every oscillator and spaceship with time symmetry, so moving things to the infobox would take a long time and require a lot of changes. I think it'd be worth it, however, since kinetic symmetry is currently only described in the currently rather obscure [[kinetic symmetry]] page. Having this in the infobox would direct more traffic to that page, increase the understanding of kinetic symmetry in the Life community, and also make the symmetries of patterns far more obvious and clear since people wouldn't have to sift through the twenty categories each pattern is in to find out what each pattern is classified as.

Any thoughts? - [[User:AwesoMan3000|AwesoMan3000]] ([[User talk:AwesoMan3000|talk]]) 10:54, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
: It's doable. However, a script that does it automatically would also need to look at the bounding box, as the templates don't distinguish between odd and even symmetry. [[User:HotdogPi|HotdogPi]] ([[User talk:HotdogPi|talk]]) 14:03, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
:: Would a script even be able to distinguish between a D2_+1 pattern that flips across the edges and vertices of cells (-f+e) and a D2_+2 pattern that flips through the faces and edges of cells (-e+e)? Both are orthogonally flipping oscillators which would have odd by even bounding boxes. - [[User:AwesoMan3000|AwesoMan3000]] ([[User talk:AwesoMan3000|talk]]) 14:24, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

* I like the idea to add specific kinetic symmetry to the infobox (and perhaps create corresponding categories for every possible value, so that objects with a given symmetry can be viewed).<br/>However, on the other hand the infoboxes are already quite tall, and significantly reduce the available width for the main content that is located in the beginning of the page.<br/>Given that there are several related-but-distinct issues with infoboxes (as evidenced by the Tiki bar), would it be possible to discuss infobox-related questions as part of a broader discussion of infoboxes (perhaps preferably on the forum rather than on the wiki, so that forum members without LifeWiki accounts could reply as well)? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 06:55, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

* A forum thread for infobox-related issues: [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5981 link]. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 06:19, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

=="Oscillators made of still lifes"==
I was perusing Catagolue (by means of my program), and found a D4_+1 oscillator comprised of still lifes, already named the {{LinkCatagolue|xp5_y025a404a52z6a40653x35604a6z65206acxca60256zy04a52025a4|patternname=half-tub harbour|style=raw}}, that also has rarer (single-occurrence) {{LinkCatagolue|xp5_y125a404a6z06a40653x35604a52z4a5206acxca60256zy2652025a4|patternname=C4_1|style=raw}} and {{LinkCatagolue|xp5_y125a404a6z25a40653x35604a6z065206acxca6025a4zy2652025a4|patternname=D4_x1|style=raw}} variants. There wasn't any result for "oscillator made of oscillators," only [[Constellation]] (which seems vaguely fitting but not very), should a page be created dedicated to oscillators that are separable into still lifes (that hassle each other) in at least one phase? Are there any other such cases to document? [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 22:50, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
: Amendment: I didn't notice the much more common {{LinkCatagolue|xp5_y135a404a53z35a40653x35604a53zca5206acxca6025aczy1ca52025|patternname=D8_1 occurrence|style=raw}} (due ot it having lower volatility and not appearing in my sortings) <small><span class="autosigned">— Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/DroneBetter|contribs]]) 23:40, 28 March 2023</span></small>

Apologies if the following is a bit off-topic; one interesting kind of oscillators is those where several consecutive phases consist of nothing but [[Spaceship|gliders]] and stationary objects, in such a way that the oscillator permanently becomes a strictly-lower-period pattern if all the gliders are instantly removed from one of such phases. These oscillators look quite cool and may well deserve a dedicated collection. Here's a recently posted alien example: [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=159731#p159731 post159731] ({{cata|object/xp33_033eky3g8oe6zzgoc84y3koz11y7133/b2ek3eikq4acejrw5ay6i7cs2-ek3acjry4ajrty5acjq6cn8|Catagolue}}). In Life, several examples are the [[p143 Bandersnatch loop]] (and its period-doubling stabilisation), {{cata|object/xp253_y52egoy233yk33y2oge2zy133y7488oy033y633y0o884y733zccyd111yi111ydcczyn6d9e6w6e9d6zzzzyn6b976w679b6z33yd88oyio88yd33zy1ccy0ggy12111y0ccy6ccy01112y1ggy0cczy54701y2ccykccy21074/b3s23|this p253}}, {{cata|object/xp160_y42egoy533z0oggzx23ye8sky3cczz66y3572yeo8zyr113zy8ooy531e8/b3s23|this p160}}, the (capped) [[period-563 glider gun]]. There should be more examples, even not counting adjustable glider shuttles. (And even more, if the requirements are relaxed to allow any oscillators with temporary internal well-separated gliders.) [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 06:36, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

== Pauses in glider syntheses ==

Why do most glider synthesis LifeViewer embeds have pauses in them? I get it's to see important intermediates (although sometimes it pauses before the gliders even collide) but it's really awkward to watch.
<br>On a related note, why do they all have a copy of the final object on the right side? Seems redundant. --[[User:Galoomba|Galoomba]] ([[User talk:Galoomba|talk]]) 09:02, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

* Some (not all) glider syntheses have pauses in them, because I decided to add pauses in them. I'm not aware of any previous conventions regarding of how exactly to represent glider syntheses on LifeWiki. The relatively long pause {{eq|T|20}} (before the gliders collide) in particular is so that it is visible where each glider comes from, and it is easier to see that the synthesis is [[rewind]]able.<br />The reason behind adding a copy of the (stationary) final object is because [[Mark Niemiec's database|Mark Niemiec's glider synthesis database]] does this, and I did not really want to invent something entirely new from scratch, when there are existing tested ideas that can be reused in this context. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:22, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

* If this can be useful for setting future guidelines, I think I could write a more detailed explaination for my particular choices when formatting syntheses. Earlier [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=LifeWiki:Tiki_bar&diff=125750&oldid=125749 I already asked] about that on Tiki bar, but got no response there so far. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:21, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

== Volatility rounding ==

Seems like volatility is rounded to two decimal places, and there are categories for each of those. But is it rounded up, down, or to nearest? This also applies to heat. --[[User:Galoomba|Galoomba]] ([[User talk:Galoomba|talk]]) 16:54, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

OCA:LeapLife

2023-04-25T02:10:59Z

Ultimium: /* Patterns */

LifeWiki:Tiki bar

2023-04-25T01:35:25Z

LifeWiki:Tiki bar

2023-04-24T02:08:24Z

Ultimium: /* Creating pages in the OCA namespace */

[[File:Taka Tiki Break 250.jpg|right|thumb|250px|Taka Tiki Break]]
<div style="clear: both; float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em">__TOC__</div>
'''Welcome, one and all, to the Tiki bar!''' This page is used to discuss the technical issues, policies, and operations of the LifeWiki. Or just sit down, relax, and enjoy a cocktail.

<div style="font-size:1.4em;text-align:center" class="plainlinks">[{{fullurl:LifeWiki:Tiki bar|action=edit&section=new}} Click here to start a new Tiki bar discussion.]</div>

==Welcome to the Tiki bar==
Wikipedia has the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump Village pump], Wiktionary has the [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Beer_parlour Beer parlour], but the LifeWiki's lacked a central page for discussion so far other than [[User talk:Nathaniel]]. So I took the liberty to create the Tiki bar to facilitate discussion in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere. Welcome! [[User:Apple Bottom|Apple Bottom]] ([[User talk:Apple Bottom|talk]]) 11:09, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

==Archived discussions==
:''Note: active discussions are never archived while still active.''

* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2016]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2016.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2017]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2017.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2018]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2018.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2019]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2019.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2020]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2020.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2021]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2021.
* See [[LifeWiki:Tiki bar/Archive/2022]] for Tiki bar discussions started in 2022.

== Redirects from misspelling ==

I fail to see why redirects from misspellings are prohibited. [[User:Atavoidirc|Atavoidirc]] ([[User talk:Atavoidirc|talk]]) 21:40, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

* I think there are too many possible ways to misspell something (just multiply the number of letters in the title by (number of letters in the alphabet - 1) and on top of that add misspellings that add/remove/exchange letters), so that it becomes unreasonable to make redirects for them. For another example, should [[jrake]] be redirected to [[rake]], or to [[krake]] (note that letters j and k are adjacent on a common keyboard layout), or maybe to a disambiguation page created specifically for the purpose of distinguishing possible misspellings? ''Some'' redirects for really common misspellings may be acceptable - but I think it is necessary to show explicitly that these misspellings are indeed common, and there are few such cases.
: In any case, I do not think it is helpful to quickly make dozens of redirects for misspellings - it clutters the logs of recent changes for editors, and it does not seem a noticeable improvement for readers. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 07:06, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
: (Added later) Although the following does not necessarily imply anything specific (I think the wiki should not promote an incorrect spelling, even if it becomes common), here are results of a quick forum search: "candelfobra" - 0 matches, "candlefobra" - 0 matches, "candelfrobra" - 16 matches, "[[candlefrobra]]" - 36 matches. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 12:06, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

** Personally i think redirects from misspellings that are not just typos (e.g. Candelfobra) should be allowed. I've made this specific misspelling several times before, so i know at least one person who would benefit from it. [[User:Atavoidirc|Atavoidirc]] ([[User talk:Atavoidirc|talk]]) 11:25, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

::: My vote would definitely be to not add misspelling-redirects, and to remove any that have been added. We've already got lots of spelling and punctuation ''variants'' showing up in the [https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Special:AllPages?from=Strict+still-life&to=&namespace=0 All Pages lists], and those lists will get extremely cluttered if we also add every possible misspelling of every article name -- or even every reasonable misspelling.

::: Of course there's a checkbox to hide redirects, but the problem I see is that current policy is fairly consistent about having redirects be valid variant spellings -- terms that people have actually used or might actually use.

::: So if we add things like "Suprise", we're kind of implying that "suprise" is a valid name that someone has used for something. People might click on it thinking, "what's that, a pun on 'sup' so it's some kind of eater?" and then mysteriously find no explanation of why "suprise" is listed. I'd much rather avoid that unlikely potential confusion, than avoid the unlikely potential confusion that someone can't find the [[Surprise]] article because they typed "suprise".

::: In other words, given that the lexicon of Life terms includes all kinds of things like "Catagolue" that '''look''' like misspellings but are actually completely purposeful and have meaning... there's useful information in the current collection of redirects, and it's not an improvement to add a random scattering of misspellings that are really just misspellings. People can perfectly well figure out how to spell "surprise" right, in the incredibly rare cases when they accidentally mistype it and don't get a LifeWiki article match. [[User:Dvgrn|Dvgrn]] ([[User talk:Dvgrn|talk]]) 14:59, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

* (Replying here to a message left at [[Talk:T-tetsons]], since it is possible that that talk page will be deleted later:) I do not see why "T-tetsons" or "T-tetson" should mean something specific. There is a page [[Tumbling T-tetson]] on this wiki, and there is an entry "tumbling T-tetson" in Life Lexicon. There is a page [[Twirling T-tetsons 2]] on this wiki, and there is an entry "twirling T-tetsons II" in Life Lexicon. However, I cannot find "T-tetson" or "T-tetsons" ''by itself'' in Life Lexicon. On the forums, the only example I found which might be related is in the thread "Help with names" ([https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2333 link]) where there was an attempt to translate a set of words/terms into another language. I think that "T-tetsons" does not by itself mean anything at all, so I proposed the redirect for deletion. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 00:16, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

===2023===
This tiki bar discussion did not finish in 2022. I think it is incomplete (for one thing, it implicitly assumes that everyone knows what this is about). Before this discussion started, several redirects-from-misspellings [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?target=Atavoidirc&namespace=all&tagfilter=mw-new-redirect&start=&end=&limit=50&title=Special%3AContributions were created] in a short timespan, without any edit summaries or other explanation. Overall, this looks like trying to anticipate misspellings before these misspellings actually happen. I do not support making lots of redirects "just in case". But one added or removed redirect does not globally change anything.<br />I think drawing the attention of everyone to redirects is unfortunate, because the wiki is about writing pages that describe or explain something -- redirects are a relatively minor feature, and ideally should "just work" without becoming the focus of a tiki bar discussion. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 11:15, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

== Proposed deletion of redirects from personal names to pages about a different subject ==

There is a number of redirects from names of people to pages that are not about the person ([[Alain Noels]], [[Christiaan Hartman]], [[Kees Kwekkeboom]], [[Roger Banks]], [[Steven Eker]], and likely more). I propose that such redirects be deleted.

I believe it is unacceptable to have an imprecise redirect from a personal name. That may incorrectly suggest that the person is known only for one specific contribution (the one mentioned on the target page of the redirect), and also does not provide any context before directing the reader to another subject.

I think either there should be a separate non-redirect page for a person, or (less preferable) a redirect to a category for discoveries made by the person, or there should be no page at all (i.e. no redirect to anything). [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 23:19, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

:Good issue to raise. It would be good to have an explicit "policy" about such things. I think we also need a similar agreement about whether and when a person should be linked at all even if there is little likelihood of the link ever having a landing (I'm thinking mainly of well-aged red links). [[User:Book|Book]] ([[User talk:Book|talk]]) 23:37, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

:: In general, I like red links; they are a very simple lightweight way to tell other editors "This page is missing", and they interact nicely with other available tools.<br />Speaking of pages '''about people''' specifically (and excluding all other LifeWiki topics), I'm inclined to agree that it's probably better to unlink long-missing pages about people. My reason is that such pages are harder to write, and the usual simple "process" of starting a short stub to be expanded later does not really work when writing about a person. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 05:46, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

== Usage of a non-default viewer theme ==

I added to several pages patterns that use <tt><nowiki>#C [[ THEME Book ]]</nowiki></tt> (this viewer theme is related to [[Conway's Game of Life: Mathematics and Construction|the book]]), as an attempt to understand how to improve presentation of patterns in pages. (For my edits adding this theme, see current versions of pages [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Lightweight_spaceship&oldid=116360 LWSS], [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Middleweight_spaceship&oldid=116358 MWSS], [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Heavyweight_spaceship&oldid=116373 HWSS], [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Blockic&oldid=116372 Blockic].) I chose this theme because I like how it displays "off" cells that were "on" differently from cells that were always "off", in the same way as in the patterns printed in the book.

The first (more specific) question here is: '''does <tt><nowiki>#C [[ THEME Book ]]</nowiki></tt> look fine in the LifeWiki?''' Is it a good idea to optionally use this LifeViewer theme, in those cases when it seems preferable to display history trail? Or it is better to stick with the default theme everywhere without exceptions?

I note that there was already [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Heavyweight_spaceship&diff=116368&oldid=116362 an objection] to one of my edits, on the grounds of consistency with the rest of the wiki. However, I think presentation of patterns across the wiki is currently already inconsistent in several distinct ways. For instance, sometimes static images are used - and that may be preferable in some cases but not others. Another example is that {{tl|EmbedViewer}} is used often but not everywhere - again, there may be good valid reasons for that. Hence a second, less specific question: '''how to improve presentation of patterns in the wiki?'''

Any feedback to the above? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:02, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

: Yes to theme Book (no pun intended). Good choice for the reasons and usage you state. [[User:Book|Book]] ([[User talk:Book|talk]]) 17:45, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

: I personally think that themes with history cells should be avoided on the wiki except in cases where the history cells provide a substantial benefit in understanding the pattern. With regard to the consistency issues mentioned above, many pages have static images because they were created before LifeViewer existed. Sometimes [[LV:viewer]] is used because {{tl|EmbedViewer}} adds an additional frame and caption that is not always desired. Neither of these represents inconsistency in how the wiki is currently updated.<br/>
:~[[User:Sokwe|Sokwe]] 01:31, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

One of "use cases" where I was changing the theme is when history cells make it easier to see how ''a certain pattern is composed of smaller parts''. For oscillating patterns, currently available features of LifeViewer make it possible to show the reaction envelope, by auto-running the pattern for one complete cycle (with history cells enabled) and then auto-stopping. In [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?oldid=125635 p8 glider reflector], it seems to help to see how a p128 oscillator is made out of two 180° reflectors. I used the same technique in [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?oldid=125316 p143 Bandersnatch loop] to show how catalysts are arranged relative to the reaction. There are other pages where I used "THEME Book + AUTOSTART + STOP" combination to show reaction envelopes. Would this be considered a valid use case? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 02:46, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Another common "use case" is when showing ''a complete glider synthesis of a pattern''. I think it becomes significantly easier to understand an animated synthesis (i.e. to see "how it works") if gliders leave traces behind them, and pauses are inserted in appropriate points. An example of this usage can be seen in [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Amphisbaena&oldid=124776 Amphisbaena]. If anyone is interested, I think I can write a more detailed explaination for how I was formatting glider syntheses with the "Book" theme -- I'm trying to be reasonably consistent with syntheses. Thanks for any feedback. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 02:46, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

== Creating pages in the OCA namespace ==

<s>As we all know,</s> well maybe not, but that's not important, I have an incomplete OCA:LeapLife page, currently under my user namespace. I'm considering completing it and moving it to the OCA namespace soon, and I would like to 1. know if there's any objection to it. 2. Know what makes an OCA rule notable enough to have an entry in LifeWiki.

Additionally, it was once planned to create some subpages under OCA:LeapLife, to document the many patterns of LeapLife. 3. Is this acceptable, and will this cause any trouble to the LifeWiki? [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 08:16, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

: I support the idea. If in doubt about whether the page is well-written / well-formatted / up-to-date / etc., the template {{tl|stub}} can always be added on the top of the page, as a lightweight way to indicate that it may need expansion. Subpages are already used - see for example [[OCA:HighLife/Bomber]], [[OCA:Pedestrian Life/List of common objects]]. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:49, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

::I am fine with the proposal in the description, but not with the proposal in the title — the OCA namespace is there for a reason, and if pages on specific OCA pages are moved to mainspace, it will cause confusion over what exists in CGOL itself and what doesn't. [[User:HotdogPi|HotdogPi]] ([[User talk:HotdogPi|talk]]) 11:22, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

:::Apologies - fixed now. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 11:59, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

[[User:Ultimium/OCA:LeapLife]] is halfway now. Do anyone have suggestions? Especially what to say in the Oscillators section.

* Is the current version considered ready to be moved to the OCA namespace? I do not want to move it without making sure that main contributor(s) are okay with that. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 03:05, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

: If anyone thinks the page is good enough to be moved in its current state, move it. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 09:50, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

:: I just did a round of editing. I'm not yet moving the page right now -- will wait for others a few days. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 11:32, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

::: I see that you added a note about [[trans-very long fuse with two tails]] appearing naturally. I think in this case I would rather correct the inaccurate information in the article outright, instead of making the page self-contradictory; I've already done the appropriate edit now. <br /> Unrelatedly, I noticed that hotdogPi keep adding trivias (like the block corner catalysis) to the page. I don't think reverting someone else' contribution is polite, but I can think of quite a few things that are as noteworthy as the block catalysis, so maybe they shouldn't appear on an overview article of LeapLife. [[User:Ultimium|Ultimium]] ([[User talk:Ultimium|talk]]) 03:28, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

:::: Is it possible to expand that part into a section on catalyses and other reactions in LeapLife, based on what is currently known? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 07:04, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

::::: If someone is interested in doing so (without going into too much details), go for it. (And indeed there are a non-zero amount of catalysts in LeapLife, if not much.) I would hestitate to mention reactions that are essentially due to the B2n or S3-q, though.

==Regarding the censuses==
Many object pages, for instance [[Octagon 2]], state their commonness with their rank among all objects in Achim Flammenkamp's census, then their rank among only oscillators in Catagolue. Is the reason that infinite-growth patterns are excluded in Achim's census, or that it's meant to be more representative of the dynamics of ash in an infinite non-sparse universe? Is this truly worth it having (at present) (159214128553422*16**2)/(1829196*2048**2)>5312 times fewer initial random cells simulated and (159214128553422*16**2)/(1829196*2048**2*(-(1-0.375)*lg_2(1-0.375)-0.375*lg_2(0.375)))>5566 times fewer bits of entropy?

Should this information, when only given in the form of a commonness rank (and sometimes also expected number of soups per occurrence), have an infobox section instead?

Also, speaking of which, what should be done with the pages for strict still lifes with the sections stating that all with sufficiently few cells (including them) are known to be constructible within a maximum number of gliders? These aren't useful, surely, to duplicate information so much, can we assume that people looking for this information (that is numerical and conducive to being presented in tabular form) will go to Catagolue instead? Especially those with apgcode-only titles, pages here aren't necessary for lookup by conventional name if they have none. [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 13:51, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

: Re: infobox -- my preference would be to leave the commonness/occurrence information in plain text. The infoboxes are already long enough, so that they often conflict with sufficiently wide viewers not fitting to the left of the infobox, and it is sometimes necessary to reorder sections to avoid that conflict. As a consequence, I'd prefer not to make infoboxes even taller than they are. Stating what is known in the text also gives more flexibility. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 14:13, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
: Re: synthesis -- the glider synthesis sections of pages could contain information not only about the current cheapest synthesis cost, but also historical information about when the synthesis was found, and also about previously known / alternate syntheses. Here is an example: [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Krake&oldid=118147 Krake]. I'm slowly adding this kind of information to pages. I think this is useful and interesting to readers - instead of just the cheapest glider cost, show the syntheses themselves and tell when/how these were found. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 14:13, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

==Should LifeWiki be more like the chessprogramming wiki?==
It contains things like [https://www.chessprogramming.org/Algorithms an article on general algorithms] and others on things like bitwise operators (that don't pertain inherently to the nature of the problem it documents (playing chess as well as possible with finite resources), but are useful to human endeavours to solve it), should we have some (covering things that arise frequently enough in the study or implementation of cellular automata to be worth detailing with more specifics than Wikipedia) also?

Specifically, should there be pages here with contents of at least some of the sections of [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators]], in the instructive style of the other tutorial pages on how to set up and use various other software? Perhaps also one on writing simple row-based search programs that find oscillators and spaceships in equivalent multistate Wolfram rules for given widths in 2D ones. If we had one explaining the idea of [https://gist.github.com/DavidBuchanan314/acae2aab38953759aacc114b417ed0b9 David Buchanan's simulator] (not the specifics of the conversion to YUV4MPEG but the simulation, using it as a basis for teaching (being that Python is a simple language to read, though it has doubtless been thought of before)), and perhaps even some of the ideas in [https://gist.github.com/DroneBetter/4f5d775e7c37f062ce750d4a8fefc84a my fork], perhaps such a page could link to [https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html the Stanford bit-twiddling hacks] page (which may be of a great deal of interest to the kinds of people who'd be interested in such articles), or even an intermediate page here? I could create such an explanation of Buchanan's and my programs in my user area, then see whether it's deemed sufficiently useful to be moved to the mainspace, if anyone would like. [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 01:16, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

* There are some forum discussions that seem relevant to the idea of documenting various interesting technical details of algorithms e.g. [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1792 Searching algorithms], [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=22858#p22858 Re: 3c/7 othogonal and 2c/9 diagonal spaceships], [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=136037#p136037 Re: Beta Reader Thread for Game of Life Textbook] and others. I personally like the idea -- if someone understands something and can explain it in words, why not do that? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 04:39, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

** I don't know enough about those to do so (though I hope to one day), however I have made [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators/bitwise SWAR Life]] (covering my program up to the three different simulation modes and implementation of manifolds), being that I have some more time on my hands now I think I will make another regarding the application of the Pólya enumeration theorem to implementing efficient indexing methods for binary matrices under symmetry eventually (after finishing and optimising and cleaning my program for that), if it's okay

** Since the user Magma from the ConwayLife lounge taught me about the Pólya enumeration theorem, I made my "[https://github.com/DroneBetter/ChessPieceVision/blob/main/eightfold%20reducer.py eightfold reducer]" its own program (much was made when I was relatively new to Python and the rest only as a proof-of-concept, I will eventually get around to cleaning it up (optimising and reducing some things) and adding the rest of the class methods), it was originally only an implementation of my idea for exhaustively generating single canonical representations of nonequivalent states under symmetry in square boards (more efficiently than iterating over all states and discarding those that are not their own lexicographically-minimal orientation), but that I realised could have efficient indexing methods using the theorem, and I more recently made a "[https://gist.github.com/DroneBetter/90318584a0ad6a0f4d1c418d3da132cd dimensional INT enumerator]," originally for confirming the number of 3D Moore transitions in [[Isotropic_non-totalistic_cellular_automaton#Table_of_isotropic_non-totalistic_rulespaces|the INT rulespace table]] and supporting arbitrarily many dimensions but then today modified for returning closed forms for numbers of nonequivalent binary hypercubes in terms of width using the theorem, given a number of dimensions (see the comment on the gist for a brief explanation). Being that the first one only pertains to cellular automata slightly (ie. the indexing methods are useful for parallelisation, initialising the threads at the beginnings of different slices of the search space (that would be able to proceed through with the even more efficient next() method)) and the second only extremely tenuously (and to a more theoretical area of the study of cellular automata), would it be okay for me to make articles about their ideas (and explaining their implementations' specifics (such that the pages contains within them both a set of instructions to implement the idea and documentation of a functionally complete demonstration), like I did in the bitwise SWAR Life page)? [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 03:56, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

*** I have made [[Pólya enumeration theorem]] and [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators/eightfold reducer]] now :-) [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 17:51, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

== Attempting to show huge patterns in infoboxes ==

What is the current consensus on attempting to show huge patterns in infoboxes (with the alternative being to display the pattern in a viewer inside the text)? I am not sure whether changes like [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Traffic_lights_extruder&diff=121113&oldid=103147 this] or [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Spiral_growth&diff=121106&oldid=100868 this] are improvements. It seems like infoboxes work better for small patterns. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 00:00, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
: And some bigger patterns end up looking like smudged fingerprints in the infobox. But I think we need the categorization that follows from infobox, as well as the standard presentation. Maybe do both presentations? And while we're at it, maybe agree on a max width for whatever is shown to the left of an infobox? [[User:Book|Book]] ([[User talk:Book|talk]]) 17:55, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

:* I think it would be much better to have some reasonable '''upper limit on the width of the infobox itself''', to leave enough space for the main part of the page. The automatic categorization could in principle be done in a completely invisible way without enforcing any particular layout/presentation (e.g. see {{tl|Glossary}}). I'm not convinced that all pages need to be indiscriminately converted to infobox-based layout - being able to explain/describe/show the pattern in some reasonably good way is more important than any "standard presentation". Sufficiently large patterns simply do not fit well in the infobox. Some patterns may be better shown as images or schemes, and/or by explaining/describing/showing smaller components. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 19:00, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

::OK, I see the issue and the benefit. Hiding the infobox in these cases would be good, if 1)the data in the hidden infobox still functioned as usual in terms of all the things it triggers; 2) the article displayed important infobox data in its text. How does one do #1? [[User:Book|Book]] ([[User talk:Book|talk]]) 23:57, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

* No significant updates so far, just adding links back to related forum posts for future reference: [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=158434#p158434 p158434] [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=158438#p158438 p158438]. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 05:43, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

==Regarding programming language syntax colouring support in code blocks==
It would greatly benefit [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators/bitwise SWAR Life]] and [[Tutorials/Coding Life simulators/eightfold reducer]] if we were to have this. Also, how do I prevent linebreaks followed by indentation (which appear often in my programming, as you may expect) causing code blocks to generate others nested inside them? Neither <nowiki><pre> nor <code></nowiki> seem to allow this. And is there a way to have inline monospaced text (ie. without line breaks) like the Python docs? [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 17:51, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

* What about <nowiki><blockquote><pre>...</pre></blockquote></nowiki>? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 17:58, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

<blockquote><pre>
class Thingy:
pass

def example():
print("Hello World!")
</pre></blockquote>

==Regarding "known" information==
For instance, [[List of period-2 oscillators with 17 cells]] says there are 199 known such oscillators, implying that the explicit examples provide only a lower boun, however [https://oeis.org/A056614 A056614](17)=199 and Mark Niemiec had a section of a page, entitled [https://conwaylife.com/ref/mniemiec/p2.htm#p2-17 The 199 seventeen-bit period 2 oscillators], do these count as sufficient sources in and of themselves or should a program be provided to act as proof of the nonexistence of any more? As mentioned above, I cited my program for the confirmation of the disputed number of 3D INT transitions in [[Isotropic non-totalistic cellular automaton#Table_of_isotropic_non-totalistic_rulespaces|the table]], should this be the convention for proofs of other such values that are given in pages but currently imply that they're only accurate to as far as is known and not objective?

I don't think the OEIS would add values not known to be correct (assuming no bugs in implementations), being that they say "Thousands of people use the sequence database every day. Please take great care that the terms you send are absolutely correct. The standards are those of a mathematics reference work." as you edit a sequence, but [https://oeis.org/A231427 A231427] was amended with the discovery of the rattlesnake, so perhaps not too rigorous when it comes to Life matters. {{unsigned|DroneBetter|21:55, 3 January 2023‎}}

* Added the two references to pages [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=List_of_period-2_oscillators_with_17_cells&diff=126123&oldid=121447 for 17 cells] and [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=List_of_period-2_oscillators_with_18_cells&diff=126124&oldid=121464 for 18 cells] -- these links seem to be useful as ways of helping the curious reader to find more information. I think it is safe to leave "known" in -- a computer program may have bugs, a mathematical proof may have gaps, and so on. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 05:18, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

== Single column vs Two columns of EmbedViewer ==

What is the reason to restrict layout to stacking all {{tl|EmbedViewer}} in a single column like [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Jason%27s_p33&curid=2480&diff=126035&oldid=126034 in this edit]? That could made the page overly long with much whitespace around. Well, I am not suggesting possibilities for three or more columns — which would made the page too wide — I am just curious about the case of two columns. [[User:GUYTU6J|GUYTU6J]] ([[User talk:GUYTU6J|talk]]) 14:42, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
:Actually, I prefer three, which is what I use on my userpages. [[User:HotdogPi|HotdogPi]] ([[User talk:HotdogPi|talk]]) 15:04, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

* The question in the first sentence appears to be about the specific edit. As explained in the edit summary, it is a revert to a single column. The reverted edit is a previous edit made by someone else ([https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?diff=126024&oldid=111614 diff=126024&oldid=111614]), changing the layout from single column to double column, with false edit summary stating "The last version still looks too wide for me". The edit summary is false, because the edit made the gallery more wide, not less. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 15:13, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
: More generally for the main/OCA namespaces, single-column galleries are preferable, because a two-column gallery already does not fit to the left of the infobox. For galleries in later sections of the page that can be reasonably assumed to appear strictly below the infobox on all devices, two columns could be used. Three columns are already too wide, even without the infobox. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 15:13, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

:: By "looks too wide for me" I meant individual viewers, not the sum of two. Is there a demonstration for a two-column gallery failed to fit to the left of infobox? [[User:GUYTU6J|GUYTU6J]] ([[User talk:GUYTU6J|talk]]) 15:23, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

::* https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=158624#p158624 [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 15:44, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Is there a potential way to make it change based on screen width? On my screen, 5 columns easily fit to the left of the infobox, and 1 column leaves a ridiculous amount of white space. --[[User:Galoomba|Galoomba]] ([[User talk:Galoomba|talk]]) 07:33, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

* For static images only, the <tt><gallery>...</gallery></tt> tag should work ([https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=Snake&oldid=127486#Extensibility example]). For embedded viewers, I'm not aware of any existing solution.<br/>See also a forum thread for all infobox-related issues/discussions: [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5981 link]. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:29, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

== Adding kinetic symmetry to infoboxes ==

Currently, pattern symmetries are tracked by an invisible template at the bottom of the pattern page which does nothing other than add a category. I don't like this, since it's in stark contrast to every other pattern statistic which is tracked in the pattern infobox. However, the current system is in place for basically every oscillator and spaceship with time symmetry, so moving things to the infobox would take a long time and require a lot of changes. I think it'd be worth it, however, since kinetic symmetry is currently only described in the currently rather obscure [[kinetic symmetry]] page. Having this in the infobox would direct more traffic to that page, increase the understanding of kinetic symmetry in the Life community, and also make the symmetries of patterns far more obvious and clear since people wouldn't have to sift through the twenty categories each pattern is in to find out what each pattern is classified as.

Any thoughts? - [[User:AwesoMan3000|AwesoMan3000]] ([[User talk:AwesoMan3000|talk]]) 10:54, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
: It's doable. However, a script that does it automatically would also need to look at the bounding box, as the templates don't distinguish between odd and even symmetry. [[User:HotdogPi|HotdogPi]] ([[User talk:HotdogPi|talk]]) 14:03, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
:: Would a script even be able to distinguish between a D2_+1 pattern that flips across the edges and vertices of cells (-f+e) and a D2_+2 pattern that flips through the faces and edges of cells (-e+e)? Both are orthogonally flipping oscillators which would have odd by even bounding boxes. - [[User:AwesoMan3000|AwesoMan3000]] ([[User talk:AwesoMan3000|talk]]) 14:24, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

* I like the idea to add specific kinetic symmetry to the infobox (and perhaps create corresponding categories for every possible value, so that objects with a given symmetry can be viewed).<br/>However, on the other hand the infoboxes are already quite tall, and significantly reduce the available width for the main content that is located in the beginning of the page.<br/>Given that there are several related-but-distinct issues with infoboxes (as evidenced by the Tiki bar), would it be possible to discuss infobox-related questions as part of a broader discussion of infoboxes (perhaps preferably on the forum rather than on the wiki, so that forum members without LifeWiki accounts could reply as well)? [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 06:55, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

* A forum thread for infobox-related issues: [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5981 link]. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 06:19, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

=="Oscillators made of still lifes"==
I was perusing Catagolue (by means of my program), and found a D4_+1 oscillator comprised of still lifes, already named the {{LinkCatagolue|xp5_y025a404a52z6a40653x35604a6z65206acxca60256zy04a52025a4|patternname=half-tub harbour|style=raw}}, that also has rarer (single-occurrence) {{LinkCatagolue|xp5_y125a404a6z06a40653x35604a52z4a5206acxca60256zy2652025a4|patternname=C4_1|style=raw}} and {{LinkCatagolue|xp5_y125a404a6z25a40653x35604a6z065206acxca6025a4zy2652025a4|patternname=D4_x1|style=raw}} variants. There wasn't any result for "oscillator made of oscillators," only [[Constellation]] (which seems vaguely fitting but not very), should a page be created dedicated to oscillators that are separable into still lifes (that hassle each other) in at least one phase? Are there any other such cases to document? [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]]) 22:50, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
: Amendment: I didn't notice the much more common {{LinkCatagolue|xp5_y135a404a53z35a40653x35604a53zca5206acxca6025aczy1ca52025|patternname=D8_1 occurrence|style=raw}} (due ot it having lower volatility and not appearing in my sortings) <small><span class="autosigned">— Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:DroneBetter|DroneBetter]] ([[User talk:DroneBetter|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/DroneBetter|contribs]]) 23:40, 28 March 2023</span></small>

Apologies if the following is a bit off-topic; one interesting kind of oscillators is those where several consecutive phases consist of nothing but [[Spaceship|gliders]] and stationary objects, in such a way that the oscillator permanently becomes a strictly-lower-period pattern if all the gliders are instantly removed from one of such phases. These oscillators look quite cool and may well deserve a dedicated collection. Here's a recently posted alien example: [https://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=159731#p159731 post159731] ({{cata|object/xp33_033eky3g8oe6zzgoc84y3koz11y7133/b2ek3eikq4acejrw5ay6i7cs2-ek3acjry4ajrty5acjq6cn8|Catagolue}}). In Life, several examples are the [[p143 Bandersnatch loop]] (and its period-doubling stabilisation), {{cata|object/xp253_y52egoy233yk33y2oge2zy133y7488oy033y633y0o884y733zccyd111yi111ydcczyn6d9e6w6e9d6zzzzyn6b976w679b6z33yd88oyio88yd33zy1ccy0ggy12111y0ccy6ccy01112y1ggy0cczy54701y2ccykccy21074/b3s23|this p253}}, {{cata|object/xp160_y42egoy533z0oggzx23ye8sky3cczz66y3572yeo8zyr113zy8ooy531e8/b3s23|this p160}}, the (capped) [[period-563 glider gun]]. There should be more examples, even not counting adjustable glider shuttles. (And even more, if the requirements are relaxed to allow any oscillators with temporary internal well-separated gliders.) [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 06:36, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

== Pauses in glider syntheses ==

Why do most glider synthesis LifeViewer embeds have pauses in them? I get it's to see important intermediates (although sometimes it pauses before the gliders even collide) but it's really awkward to watch.
<br>On a related note, why do they all have a copy of the final object on the right side? Seems redundant. --[[User:Galoomba|Galoomba]] ([[User talk:Galoomba|talk]]) 09:02, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

* Some (not all) glider syntheses have pauses in them, because I decided to add pauses in them. I'm not aware of any previous conventions regarding of how exactly to represent glider syntheses on LifeWiki. The relatively long pause {{eq|T|20}} (before the gliders collide) in particular is so that it is visible where each glider comes from, and it is easier to see that the synthesis is [[rewind]]able.<br />The reason behind adding a copy of the (stationary) final object is because [[Mark Niemiec's database|Mark Niemiec's glider synthesis database]] does this, and I did not really want to invent something entirely new from scratch, when there are existing tested ideas that can be reused in this context. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:22, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

* If this can be useful for setting future guidelines, I think I could write a more detailed explaination for my particular choices when formatting syntheses. Earlier [https://conwaylife.com/w/index.php?title=LifeWiki:Tiki_bar&diff=125750&oldid=125749 I already asked] about that on Tiki bar, but got no response there so far. [[User:Confocal|Confocal]] ([[User talk:Confocal|talk]]) 09:21, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

== Volatility rounding ==

Seems like volatility is rounded to two decimal places, and there are categories for each of those. But is it rounded up, down, or to nearest? This also applies to heat. --[[User:Galoomba|Galoomba]] ([[User talk:Galoomba|talk]]) 16:54, 21 April 2023 (UTC)