Re: [Repast-developer] 'Report'

[Nick C. <vze...@ve...>]

Wow, this is fantastic. I had forgotten about the whole web start thing,
I'm glad you brought it up. Can we distribute your hex classes either as
part of repast itself, or as part of a contrib type distribution?

thanks,

Nick

On Tue, 2001-11-27 at 19:49, Laszlo Gulyas wrote:
> 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.
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Nick Collier 
Social Science Research Computing
University of Chicago 
http://repast.sourceforge.net