Information on running the Xtango Animator

(for Duke Students)

Info

Note: We now use Samba instead of Xtango. Xtango commands work in Samba, plus you can do much more. JAWAA is another alternative.

There are two methods for programming in Xtango, writing C programs and an easier way of interpreted programs called the Animator. This page describes the animator.

Xtango, and the newer tools Polka and Samba (the animator for Polka) were developed by John Stasko at Georgia Tech. To obtain these tools or receive more information CLICK HERE .

Running an animation

For any program (C++, pascal, etc), write output statements that are animator commands, and pipe the animator commands to a program called the animator.

For example, if you have a C++ program named traffic.cc and its executable is named traffic, then to run the program traffic and pipe the output to the animator, type:

 traffic | animator 

(where animator may need to be the long pathname below).

Documents for Animator

• Animator commands - This describes commands for using the animator. It has lots of examples of commands.
• Animator Exercise - This is a description of an activity day that used the animator to generate a traffic light and moving cars through an intersection. NOTE: The pathnames probably won't work. The file myanim.in that the handout mentions is just the first several commands in the handout.

Animator Location

 xrdb -merge xtango.res 

 xrdb -merge ~rodger/bin/xtango.res 

• On acpub, the animator command is

  ~rodger/bin/animator

  and there are several xtango animations in

  ~rodger/bin/anims

• On the cs machines, the animator command is

  /usr/project/misc/etools/bin/animator