The JDSL Visualizer's window is split
into several different panels. The top-left panel displays the
structure at a specific moment in time; the history panel is at the top-right
(note that user-defined snapshots are colored lighter in the figure).
On the bottom level there is a panel of buttons, where each button
corresponds to a method of the data structure, and a panel that allows
the user to set the parameters of method calls.
In the above figure, the JDSL Visualizer is shown displaying a Red-Black Tree.
Note also that in the history window, some events are colored red (indicating
that these moments in history came after calls to the structure generated by
the visualizer) and some events are colored yellow (indicating that these
moments are at coder-defined "interesting events" -- in this case,
restructurings of the tree)
This shot, displaying a Sequence, shows the manner in which the visualizer
shows the history of events. The user has selected the most recent event before
the present in the history window. The visualizer displays the positions
selected for the swap option, and because the past is immutable, hides the
method buttons from the user.
This shot, displaying a Heap built on top of a Binary Tree, demonstrates the
manner in which exception messages the structure throws are shown to the user.
The user can select whether the message panel should be attatched to the
main visualizer window or in its own window. Also note that the user is pulling
down a menu allowing her to select a different data structure among those in
memory to display, or allowing her to instantiate a new data structure or
dekete the currently active one.
This is another structure the visualizer can display, a Binary Tree. Note that
although many of the previous structures also were built on top of Binary
Trees, the layout here is different: positions are given x-y position by their
inorder position in the tree rather than evenly by their height, as in the
previous examples. It is relatively simple to plug new ways such as this of
displaying structures into the visualizer.
These screen shots were taken with xv, running in UNIX on the Solaris and HP Platforms
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