.TH curslife 1
.SH NAME
curslife, writecursor \- cursor novelties
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B curslife
[
.B -d
.I msec
]
[
.B -3o
]
[
.B -r
.I rules
]
.I file
.PP
.B writecursor
.SH DESCRIPTION
.I Curslife
turns the mouse cursor into a 16x16 board of Conway's Game
of Life. It reads a starting board description from
.BI /sys/games/lib/life/ file
and performs one iteration every
.I msec
milliseconds (default 1000). The
.I 3
and
.I o
options select common alternate rules for the birth and death
of cells, known as
.I 34-life
and
.IR lineosc .
Custom rules can be specified via the
.I -r
argument. Rules take the form of a string of 9 pairs of two
characters. Each pair represents the rules for the case of a
given cell having 0-9 neighbors. Within each pair, the first
character should be
.I b
to indicate a new cell should be born, or
.I .
otherwise, and the second character should be
.I d
to indicate the cell should die,
.I .
otherwise.
.I Curslife
will exit if the board becomes stable.
.PP
.I Writecursor
sets the cursor to be an outline of Glenda and
exits. The code contains other cursor options.
.SH EXAMPLE
Run the game of life with the
.I glider
starting board, and custom rules indicating that
cells should be born if they have 0 neighbors, be stable if
they have 2, and otherwise die:
.EX
	curslife -r 'b..d...d.d.d.d.d.d' glider
.EE
.SH FILES
.B /n/sources/contrib/anothy/bin/rc/lynx2txt
.B /sys/games/lib/life
.SH SOURCE
.B /n/sources/contrib/anothy/src/cmd
.SH SEE ALSO
.IR games (1)
.SH BUGS
.IR Rio (1)
often resets the cursor, undoing the effects of these programs.
This is less of an issue for
.IR curslife ,
which will redraw on the next iteration.
.PP
.I Curslife
uses a clear background for the board, making the pattern
hard to see in many cases.