# Life Applet

Copyright © 2000 by Telsa Gwynne and Eric Baudais

# The Life Applet

The GNOME panel `life` is an applet which runs "the game of life" according to Conway's rules in a small grid in your panel, with the organism and background colour constantly changing. It is part of the gnome-applets package.

To add this applet to a Panel, right-click on the Panel and choose Panel->Add to panel->Applet->Amusements->Game of Life. or you can issue this command at a command prompt: life_applet --activate-goad-server=life_applet &

Figure 1. Life Applet

## Usage

Once it is present, you don't need to do anything to the life applet. It will run happily on its own.

Right-clicking on the applet brings up a menu containing the following items:

- Randomize — randomizes the game. This will stop it from getting boring and repeating the same patterns.

- Help — displays this document.

- About… — shows basic information about the `Game of Life Applet`, inluding the applet's version and the author's name.

## Rules

The Game of Life as described by Conway in 1970 has the following rules:

- Start with a grid (usually a plain square) of squares. Fill a proportion of them with cells, randomly placed. This is generation zero.

- Any cell with two or three neighbours survives to the next generation.

- On any square with no cell and three neighbours, a new cell is born. On any other square, no new cells are born.

- Repeat generations.

The game will eventually end in one of a number of ways:

- The death of all cells (theoretical, but uncommon in the life applet).

- A fixed equilibrium with all remaining cells surviving but creating no new cells.

- A dynamic equilibrium where the game cycles continually through a particular sequence of patterns.

For interest value, the current grid in the life applet is 78 by 78 and the proportion of squares filled with cells is 50%.

## Known Bugs and Limitations

None known.

## Authors

The `Life Applet` was written by George Lebl (`<jirka@5z.com>`). Please send all comments, suggestions, and bug reports to the GNOME bug tracking database. (Instructions for submitting bug reports can be found on-line. If you are using GNOME 1.1 or later, you can also use `Bug Report Tool` (bug-buddy), available in the Utilities submenu of Main Menu, for submitting bug reports.

This manual was written by Telsa Gwynne (`<telsa@linuxchix.org>`) and Eric Baudais (`<baudais@okstate.edu>`). Please send all comments and suggestions regarding this manual to the GNOME Documentation Project by sending an email to `<docs@gnome.org>`. You can also submit comments online by using the GNOME Documentation Status Table.

## License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

A copy of the GNU General Public License is included as an appendix to the GNOME Users Guide. You may also obtain a copy of the GNU General Public License from the Free Software Foundation by visiting their Web site or by writing to

Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place - Suite 330
Boston, MA 02111-1307
USA