Written by Ronald Joe Record (rr@ronrecord.com) 05 Apr 1993

INTRO
-----

The idea here is to calculate and display aggregating particles.
In order to accomplish this, a modified random walk algorithm is used.
Initial particles are "seeded" at the "bottom" or the "sea". Particles
are then "dropped" randomly from above. When a particle comes within a
pixel of an already existent particle, it "sticks". After N particles 
have "stuck", the color is incremented. Thus, color indicates "age".

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
----------------

The algorithm was derived from lectures given by Dietmar Saupe at the 
University of California at Santa Cruz. Assistance with colormaps and 
spinning color wheels and X was gleaned from Hiram Clawson and Stacey Campbell.

BUILD
-----

To build the coral binary, either use the Imakefile or the sample makefile,
Makefile.std. If your system doesn't support prototypes, uncomment the 
PROTODEFINE line of the Imakefile.

After modifying the Imakefile appropriately, either use "xmkmf" or "imake"
to create a Makefile. Then just type "make" to compile coral.

The manual page can be formatted by typing "nroff -man coral.man > coral.6X".

INSTALL
-------

To install coral, copy the coral binary to the desired location (the sample
makefile puts it in /usr/games/X11)
Copy the formatted man page to wherever you keep your local doc (i use
/usr/games/X11/doc for games and imaging software), then add that location
to your MANPATH.

TEST
----

You can test coral by just invoking it with no arguments. It should display
a 512x480 image. Some workstations may be slow to calculate and display the
coral growth as there are many calculations involved.

Some "interesting" ways to run coral are as follows :
% coral -F -n 10 -d
(use the full screen, calculate 10 maps in demo mode)
% coral -R
(display on the root window)
% coral -o coralgrowth.ppm
(calculate and display with default parameters and save the resulting image
 as a PPM file called coralgrowth.ppm. this can be viewed later using xv or 
 any PPM viewing utility)

Ideas, comments, additions, deletions, suggestions, bug reports, code review,...
e-mail Ronald Record at rr@ronrecord.com or ...uunet!sco!rr.