madness

Calculate and display an aggregating particle

Authored and Contributed by: Ronald Joe Record
History: Written 4/22 1988 by Ron Record (sco!rr). Based in part on the Computer Recreations article in the 5/88 Scientific American.
Description: The heart drawing mode was added right after the Loma Prieta earthquake. The idea was to convey the sense of a seismograph gone berserk but forming the shape of a heart. Some sample shell scripts are provided in /usr/local/lib/madness (or /usr/skunk/lib/madness if you're using the SkunkWare CD-ROM mounted on /usr/skunk). It's amazing what you can do with sines and cosines.
Build: To build the madness binary, use the Imakefile. After modifying the Imakefile appropriately, either use "xmkmf" or "imake" to create a Makefile. Then just type "make" to compile madness. The manual page can be formatted by typing "nroff -man madness.man > madness.6X".
Install: To install madness, copy the madness binary to the desired location (the sample makefile puts it in /usr/local/bin). Also copy the resource file Madness.ad to /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Madness or append it to you local $HOME/.Xdefaults. Copy the formatted man page to wherever you keep your local doc (i use /usr/man/cat.LOCAL for imaging software), then add that location to your MANPATH.
Productivity: None
Safety: I have used this for years without harm.
Work Planned: None
Documentation: manual page.
Verification: You can test madness by just invoking it with no arguments. Some "interesting" ways to run madness are provided as shell scripts in the params subdirectory of the source and in /usr/skunk/lib/madness.
Feedback: Ideas, comments, additions, deletions, suggestions, bug reports, code review,... e-mail Ronald Record at rr@ronrecord.com or ...uunet!sco!rr.