life in vi

Does your vi lack life?

Well there is no need to worry any more. With this neat
toy macro set you can play Conway's Game of Life right
in your edit buffer!

Okay, I will conceed this is not strictly ascii art, but
it could be used to create some ascii-art-ish things.
For those who do not know, vi is an editor that is
standard on Unix boxes.  vim and other clones are
availible for all sorts of other machines ranging from
Macs to Psions.  (Note that I have not tried these
macros  in all of the clones, so I cannot vouch that
they will work on all machines.)

Just uudecode the attached file and source it in your
vi -- ":source life1.mac<return>". Hit 'I' to create
the initial blank board, then fill in the spaces with
'X's to suit your pleasure. Use 'g' to run for one
generation. Use '+' to run for one generation while
timing it. Insert a number above the box, hit <esc>,
and hit 'z' to run for that number of generations
while timing it.

(Timing assumes a Unix-like environment.)

Mnemonics:
        I       'I'nitialize
        g       'g'o
        +       looks like a 't' for time
        z       go to sleep while it runs

These macros make for a great way to test the speed of
your vi implementation. Both running on a sun4c machine,
the Solaris 2.5 vi took 11 1/2 minutes to calculate one
generatation, while vim 4.2 (compiled "gcc -g") did the
same thing in only 2 1/2 minutes.

New in version 1.0 (previous versions unreleased):
        life window wraps around
        no longer have macros bound to '~' and 'R'
           (which are useful for filling in the box)
        '+' and 'z' macros

It is probably a good idea to not let your own exrc
be source'd automatically when using these.

Also availible on the web:
	http://www.netusa.net/~eli/src/life.uu

Elijah
------

begin 644 life1.mac
<uuencoded_portion_removed>
'86-R;W,N"B8L
 
end