xa-1.2beta

Last updated Dec '96...

NOTE: Chris Rennie (rennie@Physics.usyd.edu.au) discovered that gif.c is corrupted in the Linux distribution of xa-1.2beta. For now, if you want to compile the Linux version from source, please use the corrected version on my local server (see links below).

Update: Because of my recent move to Seattle I haven't had much time to work on xa. Please be patient! I think you will like the newest improvements (including a File Chooser!).

I am pleased to announce the availability of version 1.2beta of my X11 animation tool xa. The code is still in beta release to encourage more testing and comment before the official stable release. I would appreciate any suggestions or bug fixes you may have.

You can download the source code here. This directory also includes static-linked binaries for:

A sample movie showing a simulation of the tidal disruption of an asteroid by the Earth is also available.

NEW! Vincent S. Cojot has generously provided a Linux version of xa-1.2beta. This archive contains the modified source (only the Makefiles have changed), binaries for a.out and ELF systems, and the sample movie all bundled in.

If ftp.x.org is busy, you can also try our local ftp server. My stuff is located here and the xa sources and binaries are here. Please use our server only if absolutely necessary.

Note to compile from the source code you will need the XView 3.x libraries and include files. XView is available from the X11R5/X11R6 distribution, the OpenWindows distribution on Suns (typically in /usr/openwin), or from here. DEC Alpha and SGI ports of the XView sources are available here.

Description

xa is an animation package with an XView Graphical User Interface (GUI) for use on workstations and terminals running the X11 window system. The following image formats are supported:

Sun rasterfile (8-bit RGB only)

portable gray map

portable pixel map

raw gray bytes

graphics interchange format (GIF, including animations)

JPEG

MPEG

Many other formats can be converted to one of the supported formats using such utilities as the Netpbm library, xv, and ImageMagick (see below for links). The .Z (compress) and .gz (gzip) compression formats are also recognized.

xa provides the user with an XView panel interface for convenient access to animation, display, and colormap functions. There are a number of options to help maximize the display rate. On a typical high-end workstation a display rate of 50 frames/sec or better can be achieved with 400x400 8-bit images. These speeds are obtained by first loading the images into client-resident Ximages then transferring them to server-resident Pixmaps. Consequently, the maximum number of frames displayable (and hence the duration of the animation for a given frame rate) is limited only by the core memory available to the server. Here are some sample screen shots!

History

xa replaces its Sunview predecessor rastool (which was never officially released) and the subsequent X11 version xrastool. These tools were designed to aid in visualization of gravitational N-body problems carried out at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge in partial fulfillment of the author's Ph.D. thesis.