2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
|
|
|
munching squares
|
|
|
|
|
|
2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
|
|
|
n. A display hack dating back to the PDP-1 (ca. 1962, reportedly discovered
|
|
|
|
|
by Jackson Wright), which employs a trivial computation (repeatedly plotting
|
|
|
|
|
the graph Y = X XOR T for successive values of T see HAKMEM items 146--148)
|
|
|
|
|
to produce an impressive display of moving and growing squares that devour
|
|
|
|
|
the screen. The initial value of T is treated as a parameter, which, when
|
|
|
|
|
well-chosen, can produce amazing effects. Some of these, later
|
|
|
|
|
(re)discovered on the LISP machine, have been christened munching triangles
|
|
|
|
|
(try AND for XOR and toggling points instead of plotting them), munching w's
|
|
|
|
|
, and munching mazes. More generally, suppose a graphics program produces an
|
|
|
|
|
impressive and ever-changing display of some basic form, foo, on a display
|
|
|
|
|
terminal, and does it using a relatively simple program; then the program
|
|
|
|
|
(or the resulting display) is likely to be referred to as munching foos.
|
|
|
|
|
[This is a good example of the use of the word foo as a metasyntactic
|
|
|
|
|
variable.
|
|
|
|
|
|
