Interdependence of submenus

Given that each LCAU program can calculate many quantities related to the performance of an automaton, the general programs have been organized into submenus, each of which is described in detail in its own section.

Figure 1 shows the interrelationship of all these submenus, most of which are adjuncts of the main menu.

The initial screen in all programs bears a copyright notice and a very short description of the program. While the inexperienced user is busy reading the screen, a random number generator is wasting time, so that there will usually be a different display every time the program is run; likewise a different sequence of random rules and initial lines. No effort has been made to see how much this initial idling degenerates the performance of the random number generator.

As a general practice, return from all submenus, at every level but the highest, results from typing a carriage return. The top level is treated as an exception to prevent the overenthusiastic use of CARRIAGE RETURN . An unintended exit to DOS would result in the loss of several option settings; to avoid this inconvenience, the program must be terminated via the option q. It is also possible to quit by typing n in response to the query in the evolution panel.

Although considerable effort has been expended to keep the notation uniform throughout all the LCAU programs, and throughout all the submenus within an individual program, there are exceptions. This is almost unavoidable if a large number of options exist, all of them designated by single letters.

 
Figure: Interdependence of LCAU submenus. All unlabeled returns are generated by typing CARRIAGE RETURN .  

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Harold V. McIntosh
E-mail:mcintosh@servidor.unam.mx