Abstract
Perhaps the most popular approach to animating algorithms consists of identifying interesting events in the implementation code, corresponding to relevant actions in the underlying algorithm, and turning them into graphical events by inserting calls to suitable visualization routines. Another natural approach conceives algorithm animation as a graphical interpretation of the state of the computation of a program, letting graphical objects in a visualization depend on a program’s variables. In this paper we provide the first direct comparison of these two approaches, identifying scenarios where one might be preferable to the other. The discussion is based on examples realized with the systems Polka and Leonardo.
Work supported in part by the project “Algorithms for Large Data Sets: Science and Engineering” of the Italian Ministry of University and of Scientific and Technological Research (ex MURST 40%) and by the IST Programme of the EU under contract n. IST-1999-14.186 (ALCOM-FT).
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Demetrescu, C., Finocchi, I., Stasko, J.T. (2002). Specifying Algorithm Visualizations: Interesting Events or State Mapping?. In: Diehl, S. (eds) Software Visualization. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2269. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45875-1_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45875-1_2
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