Documentation for AniS - the AnimationS applet

August 3, 1999

To run the applet, you need an applet tag. The skeleton for this is:

<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE> Example of the AniS applet </TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> <P> <APPLET code="AniS.class" width=640 height=540> <PARAM name="parametername" value="value(s) for parameter"> </APPLET> </BODY> </HTML> The rest of this document describes the PARAMeter names and values needed to drive the AniS applet. We begin with the controls and then describe the specification of the filenames of the images.

One word about blanks (spaces). Within each PARAMeter clause, leading and training blanks are ignored for each parameter. You should use spaces to provide for easier readability.

Parameters for controls (if the control is named, it will appear; otherwise, its default value will be used):

startstop is a button for starting and stopping the looping. If it is not specified, the loop will run forever. You may use the "rate" parameter to set the initial looping speed.
looprock is a button that is used to control whether a movie loop or a rock back-and-forth mode is used. The default is loop, but may be specified as rocking using the "rocking" parameter.
step creates two little buttons useful for single stepping, forward and backward.
speed is a slider that determines the animation rate. If not used, a default rate of 3 frames per second is used (unless overridden by the 'rate' parameter).
refresh is a button that will attempt to force a reload of the image files, ignoring any cached images. This is useful for realtime data applications, where the contents of the image files may be changing. NOTE: If you are using the "file_of_filenames" method of naming the image files, it is very important not to change the total number of images if you change the contents of the "file_of_filenames".
toggle provides a way for the user to toggle images on and off. If you specify this control, a series of little colored boxed will be displayed on a separate line. As each frame is looped through, the box corresponding to the image will change color. If the user clicks on a box, she will disable it (clicking again will re-enable it).
zoom will provide a pixel-duplication zooming ability. When the 'zoom' button is clicked, the cursor will change shape. When the user clicks that on the image, it will be zoomed one factor (x2, x3, x4...) at the cursor location. After the first zoom, the button will be relabelled "un-zoom". Each clicking of "un-zoom" will back out one zoom level.
fader will provide a slider for setting the "fade" level. You should NOT use this in combination with any of the first 4 controls (which allow for animating faded images when the "fade" parameter is set to 'true' and the 'fader' control is not specified).
overlay provides one or more checkboxes that allows for images to be overlaid on the base image. Each box will be labelled according to the 'overlay_labels' parameter.

Other parameters that may be used: <PARAM name="rate" value="frames/second"> specifies the initial loop rate as a number corresponding to frames per second times 10 (thus, 120 means 12 frames per second). <PARAM name="rocking" value="true"> make "rocking" the startup mode for displaying the sequence; otherwise, "movie loop" is the startup mode. <PARAM name="pause" value="2000"> pause on the last frame of a loop the additional number of milliseconds given (2 seconds in this example). The default is zero. <PARAM name="pause_percent" value="250"> pause on the last frame of a loop the additional percentage of the current dwell time specified (250% in this example). In addition, if the current dwell is > 1 second, a fixed value of 100% will be used whenever this pause_percent option is specified. The default value is zero. <PARAM name="transparency" value="#FFFFFF"> use the color "white" as the transparency value. This is only needed for overlays, and is optional for fading. The value is a hex value of red/green/blue (template: #rrggbb). "black" (#000000) is also commonly used. <PARAM name="fade" value="true"> instead of just showing the images, generate 'faded' images between them and use the result as the sequence.

Image file names
All the image files can be in GIF or JPEG formats. The files identified using the parameter names described in this section should fill the desired window. If used, overlays and portals should be the same size and have the same geometry as these "background" images.

For the background images, the GIF/JPEG files may be specified in one of three, mutually exclusive, ways.

Using a "root" name, to which successive numbers are appended to create the actual filenames:
In this case, the root name is file and since there are 4 images specified, the actual filenames must be: file0, file1, file2, and file3
Using the filenames themselvels:
Using a file which contains a list of the image filenames (one per record)
where the file "file-containing-filenames" contains lines of text that are in the form:
lines beginning with # are ignored, so you may put comments into your file_of_filenames.

NOTE: For the first form (specifying a "basename"), you may also use a wildcard format. For example, if you say: <PARAM name="basename" value="file*.gif"> the actual filenames must be: file0.gif, file1.gif, file2.gif, and file3.gif

Portals
Portals are viewports into other images, which are shown in windows superimposed onto the background image. The user "roams" around in a portal by dragging the mouse pointer around on the background image. For each portal, you must specify its location and size, and then the filename(s). If you are animating the background images, you'll need to specify a corresponding number of portal filenames for each frame of the animation.

First, however, the parameter for specifying the location:

<PARAM name="portal_location" value="x & y & width & height, x2 & y2 & width2 & height2, ..."> Each list item separated by a comma defines the location (x,y) of the upper left corner of the portal and the portal's width and height values. All values are given in pixels; the upper left corner is (0,0).

You may have any number of portal windows that you like, but they should all fit inside the dimensions of the background image and should not overlap.

To specify the portal image filenames, you may use one of the following forms (note in each example, 3 portals are being defined with the names associated with each separated by a comma; in the second method, the files for each of 4 frames are explicitly named separated by &).

In the first case, you are specifying a "basename" for each portal (see file name conventions, above). Each name you specify is for an individual portal, and the software will load as many images for each portal as there are background image frames. (You may also use the wildcard format mentioned above.)
In the second case, you are naming each file explicitly. The grouping of names is the same as above -- commas separate portals. Ampersands separate filenames for each frame of a loop.
Finally, you may also use a text file (the "file-containing-filenames" form) to specify all the filenames. To use portals with this form, the filenames for all the portals for one frame appear on one line. NOTE: You MUST supply all portals names for each frame, even if the filename is repeated!!

Overlays
You may also use overlays -- one or more images that are (optionally) displayed on top of the base image, usually in such a way that part of the base image shows through. For example, a map or plotted data may be an overlay. In order to let some of the base (background) image show through, you must designate one color level in the overlay images as "transparent" and then specify that value using the transparency parameter (above).

In addition, you need to specify the overlay control, and provide a few more parameters:

<PARAM name="overlay_labels" value="label1, label2, label3..."> This speifies the labels that will be used on the controls for each overlay. The ordering of the values should be the same as the filenames (below). You'll want to keep these labels brief!

To specify the names of the files for the overlays, you may use one of these forms (note in each example, 3 overlays (A,B,c) are being defined with the names associated with each separated by a comma; in the second method, the files for each of 4 frames are explicitly named separated by &).

In the first case, you are specifying a "basename" for each overlay (see file name conventions, above). Each name you specify is for an individual overlay, and the software will load as many images for each overlay as there are background image frames. (Again, you may use the wildcard format -- see above.)
In the second case, you are naming each file explicitly. The grouping of names is the same as above -- commas separate portals. Ampersands separate filenames for each frame of a loop.
Finally, you may also use a text file (the "file-containing-filenames" form) to specify all the filenames. To use overlays with this form, the filenames for all the overlays for one frame appear on one line. NOTE: You MUST supply all overlay file names for each frame, even if the filename is repeated!!