ANIMAL: A System for Supporting Multiple Roles in Algorithm Animation

Many algorithm animation tools have been developed over the last years.The users of such tools can be separated into four roles: the original algorithm programmer, developers of the animation tool, visualizers that generate the animation and end users viewing the animation. Most tools focus on providing features for only one or at most two of these roles.The ANIMAL system is designed to present valuable bene¢ts for the last three roles.The principal research contributions of this work lie in dynamic extensibility, internationalization of GUI components and animation content, reversible animation display and £exible import and export facilities.We also present several core features of ANIMAL including dynamic recon¢guration, internationalization in both GUI and animations, display scaling, export facilities and full video player controls.r 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.