| JohnCartan: |
Howdy!! I was delayed by the season finale of Star Trek!
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| P King Duk: |
Hmmm. Well I was delayed by a hike up a mountain.
So... Where's my smoothing algorithm?
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| JohnCartan: |
Uh... Smoothing algorithm??
I HAVE done a WEE bit of work though.
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| P King Duk: |
Do tell.
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| JohnCartan: |
I just now wrote a five minute stack to convert your ones and zeroes
into a pretty map. It seems to work, but since it takes my SE five minutes to draw it,
I decided to log on instead.
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| P King Duk: |
Good choice! I was about to log off.
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| JohnCartan: |
The northern hemisphere looked quite promising.
I'll send you a copy as soon as I brush away a few cobwebs from the stack.
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| P King Duk: |
About the size problem:
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| JohnCartan: |
Yes?
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| P King Duk: |
The dialog box gives *World* size, not window size.
I thought DA's worked; I'll look at this.
Also, I'll make the default window size smaller.
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| JohnCartan: |
But it still generates the same number of ones and
zeroes (and takes the same amount of time).
It's always 100 by 75 no matter what.
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| P King Duk: |
OK, I'll check that.
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| JohnCartan: |
100 by, uh, 67 is about right for my little screen.
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| P King Duk: |
100 columns?
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| JohnCartan: |
100 columns by 67 rows, yes.
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| P King Duk: |
OK, I'll size it down for the next release (this is easy).
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| JohnCartan: |
Great!
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| P King Duk: |
And 45 seconds seems much faster than the old version, right?
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| JohnCartan: |
I guess so. I forgot how long the old version took.
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| P King Duk: |
What else should I make a priority?
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| JohnCartan: |
Hmmm... Can you think of any other interesting parameters?
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| P King Duk: |
I had a few ideas... I'm not sure if I remember them now...
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| JohnCartan: |
How about cities?
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| P King Duk: |
Need an algorithm for that ;-}
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| JohnCartan: |
True...
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| P King Duk: |
One thing I'd love for you to help on: make the dialog box "pretty".
(This is in a resource fork.)
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| JohnCartan: |
For that matter, we need to figure out how to turn
all those 1s and 0s into continent boundaries.
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| P King Duk: |
? You're talking about smoothing, right?
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| JohnCartan: |
Not just smoothing...
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| P King Duk: |
The actual picture?
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| JohnCartan: |
You and I can glance at a map and imediately divide it into 4 or 5 continents.
But how does the computer know that the land at, say, 40,56 is part of continent 4?
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| P King Duk: |
Oh. You want the computer to see this as well?
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| JohnCartan: |
It would be nice...
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| P King Duk: |
Hmmm. Should be a *simple* algoritm, right?
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| JohnCartan: |
Not really. It's another intersting challenge for
the, ahem, algorithmist :)
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| P King Duk: |
Might even be done at the same time as the smoothing.
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| JohnCartan: |
Maybe. Have you ruled out putting mountains or forests on our continents?
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| P King Duk: |
No, I guess not.
OK. Your priorities: 1) smoothing, 2) cities, 3) boundaries. Agreed?
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| JohnCartan: |
Not that I need extra work, but what about the pretty dialog?
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| P King Duk: |
My priorities: 1) sizing, 2) DA's, 3) misc. bugs.
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| JohnCartan: |
Will your window have a resizing box in the corner?
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| P King Duk: |
It's there now; sometimes it works, too.
I don't understand quite enough about it to guess how
tough it'll be to completely fix.
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| JohnCartan: |
I suppose if you were clever you could sense the size of the monitor
and default the size accordingly.
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| P King Duk: |
Right. This is actually pretty easy, too.
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| JohnCartan: |
Good!
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| P King Duk: |
ScreenBits.bounds.something global. The second monitor is much tougher.
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| JohnCartan: |
No need to worry about second monitor for now.
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| P King Duk: |
Easy for *you* to say.
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| JohnCartan: |
Time to sign off?
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| P King Duk: |
Yup - I have an early morning tomorrow.
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| JohnCartan: |
I'll send you my mapping stack SOON.
And if I get a chance I'll see if I can pretty up the dialog box.
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| P King Duk: |
OK; I may send a new program before next Wed.
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| JohnCartan: |
Excellent! Good night.
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| P King Duk: |
Over and out.
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