Sorting Demonstrator
--------------------

See COPYING for details on distributing this program.

1. Installing sortdemo

   See the INSTALL file for installation instructions.

2. Running sortdemo
   
   sortdemo takes three arguments.

   (a) Sort type

     sortdemo 0.2 supports the following sort types

     s, selection : selection sort
     i, insertion : insertion sort
     b1, bubble1  : bubble sort
     b2, bubble2  : bubble sort with a flag
     b3, bubble3  : two way bubble sort (shaker sort) with a flag
     b4, bubble4  : enhanced two way bubble sort with a flag
     q, quick     : quick sort

   (b) Initial data

     This describes the nature of the initial list

       s, sorted          : sorted
       re, reverse        : sorted in the reverse order
       ra, random         : random
       as, almost-sorted  : almost sorted
       ar, almost-reverse : almost reverse

   (c) Initial list size

   For example, to do a bubble sort with a flag (b2) for a random data
   set of 20 items, type

     sortdemo b2 random 20

3. Text output

   Two files (by default unsorted.d and sorted.d - see sortdemo.h), will be
   written that contain the sorted and unsorted data.

4. Graphic output

   Each step of the sorting will be written to a file starting from
   sort00000.gif and go on with the names sort00001.gif, sort00002.gif etc.
   The currently active item(s) will be shown in one color
   and swappings in another. Also, in some cases, only a part of the list
   is highlighted (e.g. - in quick sort, the items not belonging to the
   current list is de-highlighted).

   If you are impatient to see the result, type 

     animate -delay 100 sort*.gif

   to see how the sorting routine is going. If you want to produce an
   animated gif (say, to publish on the web), use convert utility

     convert -delay 500 sort*.gif quicksortanimation.gif

   Notice that you should have ImageMagic to run animate and convert
   commands.

   Since animate and convert are taking too much memory, it would
   be a good idea to convert the series of image files to an mpeg.
   One simple way to do this is to use the MPEG video decoder and
   encoder. It also comes with RedHat Powertools.

                          !!! W A R N I N G !!!

   Don't make the list size too large. The convert and animate program
   may glob a large amount of memory and may disturb the other processes
   going on. Generally 20-30 seems to be okey with 64 MB.

5. Common Pitfalls

   Always remove the old gif files before running sortdemo.

6. sortdemo Home Page

   Visit http://www.lklug.pdn.ac.lk/software/sortdemo/ for more details
   and examples.

7. Work in progress

   a. To add lists with gaussian random variables
   b. To demonstate the use of tempory variables 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anuradha Ratnaweera

Dept. of Computer Sciences
Faculty of Engineering
University of Peradeniya
Peradeniya 20400
Sri Lanka

Send your comments to anuradha@cs.pdn.ac.lk