SimLife

1. SYNOPSIS
2. REQUIREMENTS
3. INSTALLATION
4. COPYRIGHT


1. SYNOPSIS

SimLife is a program for simulating cellular automata and similar, e.g. Life.
You can add your own sets of rules which can have their own sets of
parameters - see life.spr for an example.


SimLife works with X and Win32.

On-line help is provided - start up the program and click the Help menu option
or press F1. (Reading what's there will help!)


2. REQUIREMENTS

MesgBox.pm (available where you picked up simlife)

Optional modules (from CPAN):
(none)

Linux and X-Windows:
Perl 5.004
Tk 400.202

Win32:
Perl 5.005
Tk 800.000

~80K disk space.


3. INSTALLATION

Note that SimLife can be installed pretty well anywhere - the only restriction
is that all the simlife* files must be together in the same directory.

# Create the directory.
mkdir /usr/opt/simlife

# Copy the tar.gz to the lib directory.
cp simlife-VERSION.tar.gz /usr/opt

# Change to the opt directory.
cd /usr/opt

# Unpack the archive using method A or B:
# Method A for those using GNU tar
tar xvfz simlife-VERSION.tar.gz
# Method B for those not using GNU tar
gunzip simlife-VERSION.tar.gz
tar xvf simlife-VERSION.tar

# Change to the simlife directory.
cd simlife

# This is optional. Make sure SimLife is executable.
chmod +x simlife

# If this is an upgrade from a previous version and you're not using Win32
# then keep your options.
mv ~/.simlife-opts ~/.simliferc

# This is optional. For Debian users only: if you want SimLife to appear on
# your X menu do the following:
cp debian-menu /etc/menu/simlife
update-menus
# Note that the name of the file supplied, 'debian-menu', is changed in the
# move to 'simlife'. Note also that if you haven't used the paths given here you
# must change the command path in /etc/menu/simlife. The addition to the menu
# will only appear when the window manager is restarted.

# This is optional. To have the icon appear under X for icewm do this:
cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/icewm/icons/
ln -s /usr/opt/simlife/simlife-icon-16x16.xpm simlife_16x16.xpm
ln -s /usr/opt/simlife/simlife-icon-16x16.xpm simlife_32x32.xpm
# and add the following line to /etc/X11/icewm/winoptions
simlife.icon: simlife

# To run SimLife from the command line:
/usr/opt/simlife/simlife &

# You could always either alias this or use a soft link to a directory on the
# path to save typing the whole path. Note that 'deprecated' error messages
# which appear are harmless and can be ignored.


4. COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) Mark Summerfield 1999. All Rights Reserved.
SimLife may be used/distributed under the GPL.

Contact: <summer@chest.ac.uk> - please include 'simlife' in the
subject line. 

The program was developed under Debian GNU/Linux 2.0.