The edit linked to above was the "re-do after undo" stage of the edit war in question. That's the usual point beyond which no more undo operations should happen without some discussion first -- unless a moderator reverts the article to the old status quo temporarily per LW:DR step 3, until that discussion happens.confocaloid wrote: ↑January 17th, 2024, 3:05 amRe: the edit summary -If you are going to use the pattern in a construction, you will likely have to try it in Golly to see whether or not it works. I don't think the animation helps with that.User:Haycat2009 wrote:The envelope is important for visualising when it can be used - will the envelope hit a catalyst near it?
I think "envelope via THEME Book" works best under the following conditions:
- The affected pattern is placed in an embedded viewer outside the infobox, in the main part of the article.
- The affected pattern is shown without any animation (a static pattern), and STARTFROM is used to choose the initial generation.
- A concise explanation of the meaning of additional colours can be placed in the caption for that embedded viewer, and/or in the preceding text.
The original edit was probably made for basically the same reason that was given for the re-do, but there was no edit summary so I'm just guessing there.
Full disclosure first...
I'm a very early proponent of using multiple colors in representations of circuitry patterns. I invented HistoricalLife in MCell and LifeHistory in Golly to make it possible to track envelope information in a way that can be copied and pasted between patterns.
However, it seems to me that just having ephemeral envelope colors showing up in the infobox for this particular pattern ... doesn't really address the visualization issue very well. The information isn't visible at T=0, and it can't be copy/pasted out to see how it fits into a larger circuitry pattern. What's really useful -- at least the way I do circuitry editing -- is to copy out a LifeHistory pattern, something like this:
Code: Select all
x = 30, y = 32, rule = LifeHistory
2.CBC16.2A$2.B2CB15.2A$3.C3B8.2A$4.4B6.A.A2.4A$5.4B5.A.A.A4.A$6.4B5.A
.A.ABABA$7.4B6.A.A.2A4.2A$8.4B4.ABA4B4.A$9.4B.3BA2B4.BA.A$2.A7.8B4.B.
B2A$.A.A7.8B2.4B$A2.A6.15B$2A.2AB3.16B$.A.B.BA19B$A2.4A5B2AB2A5B.4B$.
2A2.7B2AB2A5B2.4B$3.2A17B3.2BDB$3.A.B.15B4.2B2D$4.A4.13B5.2D$.3A9.9B$
.A11.10B$13.10B$14.7B$12.9B$8.2A2.6B$8.A2.AB2A.2B$9.3ABABAB$13.A.A2.A
$11.3A.4A$10.A3.A$10.2A2.A.A$15.2A!
A circuit-with-envelope pattern can be generated fairly easily from any LifeWiki infobox pattern, by anyone who wants one. Click to open the pattern, hit the Reset button immediately to cancel the animation, hit Alt+G, run pattern for a while (100 ticks in this case) and then hit Ctrl+C to copy the result.
Changing an infobox pattern to show colors would be a very big change
Long story short: if we wanted to be at all consistent about this change, there would be significant implications for a lot of other LifeWiki articles.
I've gone ahead and removed the "THEME Book" change for now, as per step 3 of LW:DR. I haven't locked the article -- I'm again optimistically assuming the best of everyone, expecting that the edit war will not continue now that it has been reported and this discussion thread has been created.
There's a lot to be said for keeping at least the infobox displays very simple and consistent, as confocaloid has mentioned. If it made sense to switch to the Book theme for this article, maybe with a STARTFROM command to show the envelope right away, or to a LifeHistory version of the pattern ... then it would make an equal amount of sense to make the same change to dozens (at least) of other circuitry articles.
I remember that this question of the appropriateness of LifeHistory / colored themes in LifeWiki articles has come up before, and there have been quite a few people who found patterns in LifeHistory format to be annoying. Mostly that was when they ended up cleaning out blue state-2 envelope cells by hand, not knowing how to convert to plain-vanilla Life any other way. Hopefully we've improved the tools for doing LifeHistory -> Life conversions quite a bit since then -- but it still seems likely to me that plain black and white will continue to be the LifeWiki standard, for infoboxes at the very least.
Please discuss!
Does anyone have links to previous mentions of infobox standards, or other discussions about adding more color to LifeWiki patterns? What do other people think about the use of Book theme, either in an infobox, or in other embedded LifeViewers in wiki articles?