[Repast-developer] 'Report'

[Laszlo G. <gu...@la...>]

Hi Again,

Sending off my previous mail, I realized that I might as well
give you some hints on what I was spending my spare time
over here (w.r.t. Repast, that is). And as I've just recently put
something like this together, below I will be unscrupulously
doctoring that text to keep you all informed.

Gulya

>1) I have completed the 'methodology' of the 'appletization' of
>     Repast models. It is a bit slow, but works -- and if you have
>     a good (and well-configured) browser, it could be expected to
>     cache the files.
>     The bad news, however,  is that it does not seem to work on the Mac,
>     or at least, I could not find out what browser you would need for that.
>     (I.e. it would require some more reading.)
>
>      In general, what is missing is a complete README & HOWTO
>      on this, but that should come soon -- although it has a very low
>      priority now.
>
>2) As the files required for the applet are quite large, I've explored
>     several ways to make them slim. None of them is completed,
>     however.
>
>         a) The use of Sun's WebStart tool (JNLP API), instead of Applets.
>             This is a very promising area: the JNLP API is basically a new
>             approach to the programs-from-the-web idea, a competitor to
>             applets, but supported by Sun, too. The idea is that you install
>             a specific program on your computer (WebStart), which takes
>             over the handling of the program from your browser. WebStart
>             _does_ cache programs and what's more, is capable of 
> automatically
>             updating them, if they've changed on the web.
>
>             Problem: I could not find any reference on WebStart working on
>             the Mac (although, it should as it's written in Java).
>
>             Actually, I don't have a running version of any Repast model for
>             NT or unix either, as I did not have time to explore this 
> path any
>             further.
>
>             It has zero priority now.
>
>         b) Automatic 'repackaging' of the repast jar's, in order to 
> include only
>             the files that are actually used. I've played around with 
> several
>             free tools, and developed some testing code on my own, too.
>             None of these seems to work right away, although they have
>             different problems. The bottom line, however, is that it is not
>             quite as easy to do this as it may seem, as a lot of repast's
>             functionality is activated 'on-demand', i.e. if the user 
> presses a
>             button, etc.
>
>            Moreover, it turns out that Repast itself (i.e., the 
> repast.jar) is NOT
>            overwhelmingly big at all. What makes the downloading time too 
> much
>            is the additional .jar's coming with Repast. And repackaging 
> those is
>            even trickier. The final obstacle that stopped me was that some
>            of them is actually digitally signed -- what is basically to 
> prevent others
>            (thus us) from tampering with the package.
>
>            I haven't worked on this for a couple of weeks now, and it has
>           zero priority.
>
>3) I've been mostly working on the hexagonal space (sub)library.
>I have the following (main) classes implemented:
>
>         - Object2DHexaGrid
>         - Object2DHexaTorus
>         - Object2DHexaDisplay
>         - Value2DHexaDisplay
>         - Diffuse2DHexa
>
>         for testing purposes:
>
>         - Hexabugs -- a hexagonal version of heatbugs
>         - a hexagonal version of Schelling's Segregation model
>         - SpaceTest -- a simple model to test spaces, displays, and more
>           importantly, probes. It is also a good experiment as a framework
>           that includes all possible spaces (except networks) and allows the
>           user to dynamically select the appropriate one.
>
>Remaining tasks:
>
>         - Multi2DHexaGrid
>         - Multi2DHexaTorus
>         - Ordered2DHexaGrid
>         - Ordered2DHexaTorus
>         - Multi2DHexDisplay
>         - NetworkHexaGridDisplay
>
>         for testing purposes:
>
>         - updating SpaceTest to include the multiple occupation spaces.
>         - finalizing and completing the sporadic jUnit tests I have now.