What's in the Georgia Tech ftp directory: xtango.tar.Z - a compressed tar file of the XTango algorithm animation system. This is the newest version (1.54) of the system, put on the ftp on 12/15/95. This is the version you want if you'll be running on a Sun, IBM, or SGI. xtangovararg.tar.Z - a compressed tar file of the XTango algorithm animation system that uses the vararg macro package rather than just overloading a bunch of integer parameters. If you're going to be using an HP or DEC workstation, this is the version for you. This is equivalent to the new (1.54) version of the system. This varargs version was put on the ftp on 12/15/95. xtango.old.tar.Z, xtangovararg.old.tar.Z - the old versions (1.53) of xtango. pt-paper.ps.Z - a compressed postscript version of a paper that appeared in the Journal_of_Visual_Languages_and_Computing about the path-transition animation paradigm used by XTango. This will be useful for people developing their own animations. polka.tar.Z - a compressed tar file of the new Polka computation animation system. This is the (1.22) release of the system put on the ftp on 12/20/95. Polka is the follow-up system to Tango, and I encourage you to give it a try. Polka is implemented in C++ and X11. You need to have either the Motif widget set. Polka is particularly well-suited for animating parallel programs. Polka's animation methodology is a bit nicer than XTango's and it has lots of neat new features. Polka is quite polished at this point, and it is the package that will keep being improved in the future. polka.old.tar.Z - the old (1.21) version of Polka. pvanimOL.tar.Z - a compressed tar file of the on-line visualization system for viewing PVM applications (the on-line component of PVaniM). It requires a C++ compiler and the X Window System with Motif. This is the 2.00 version of PVaniM, put on the ftp 11/13/95. pvanimviz.tar.Z pvanimtrace.tar.Z - these are two compressed tar files needed for visualizing the execution of PVM programs (PVaniM). The first file contains the actual graphics libraries and views (it uses the Polka system). It requires a C++ compiler and the X Window System with Motif. The second file is the tracing library for PVM. It should be installed on the machines on which you'll be running PVM. This is the 1.00 version (post-mortem system) of PVaniM, put on the ftp 2/21/95. gthread.KSRtracing.tar.Z gthread.Animations.tar.Z - these are two compressed tar files needed for the gthreads library for visualizing PThreads programs on a KSR machine. The first file above should be installed on your KSR machine. It produces the appropriate tracing information to drive the visualizations. The second file should be installed on a UNIX workstation having Motif and a C++ compiler that handles templates. It generates the animations. This is the 1.02 version of the tracing library put on the ftp 8/15/94 and the 1.11 version of the animations, put on the ftp 3/8/94. gthread.Anim.Sun.tar.Z - this is a version of the second file above that has a static binary for Sun SPARCstations running SUN OS 4.1.x. Some people have had trouble compiling the animation program in the gthread.Animations.tar, so we include a binary in this version. lens.tar.Z - a compressed tar file of the Lens visual debugger system. Lens integrates simple algorithm animation style graphical operations into the dbx debugger so that a programmer can drop "animation points" into program source in the same way they would drop breakpoints. The system requires that you have the X Window System, the Motif widget set and the debugger dbx. This is the 1.00 version of the system put on the ftp 6/6/94. There's also a comprehensive article about the original Tango algorithm animation system in the September 1990 issue of IEEE_Computer. Much of what's in XTango is just like in Tango. There's an article about Polka in the June 1993 issue of The_Journal_of_Parallel_and_Distributed_Programming too. --John Stasko Associate Professor College of Computing Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0280 (404) 894-5617 stasko@cc.gatech.edu http://www.gatech.edu/gvu/softviz/SoftViz.html