Before you run the simulator.
-----------------------------

You need to set up the CLASSPATH environment variable to point to all of the places java will need to get class files. These are:

	rt.jar -- The standard java runtime.
	fit.jar -- The fit testing framework (included).
	bin -- Directory of simulator classes.


Running the simulator.
----------------------

Your install may have added the java virtual machine (java.exe) to your path. If so, you'll be able to use this command without modification. You can also use a fully qualified path to the exe and skip the path modifications.

Launch the simulator with this command.

	java Simulator

In Mac OS X Darwin I use this command to launch the simulator.

	java -cp "bin:fit.jar" Simulator

There are several run scripts in the distribution that may work on your platform.


Interacting with the simulator.
-------------------------------

Try resizing the window. Try real large and real small windows. 

Try moving nodes around by draging them to unused squares.

You can change the configuration of the nodes by editing test.html with an html editor with table support. I used Netscape Composer. This file is read slooowly so that nodes are added into a running system.

The simulator has a TestPoint web server built in. You can retrieve trace information by directing your browser to http://localhost:8080/ The "nodes" page prints the channelStats and valueStats history for each node.


Things to Notice
----------------

Old information bouncing around the network introduces "jitter" into changing signals such as the sine function. This jitter can be delayed four or five samples which may or may not be significant in an application. 

Sources (sine) and sinks (digit) are equally busy transmitting even though sinks are just echoing info from the source. Try multiple sources and see what happens. (I haven't yet.)


Making new kinds of Nodes
-------------------------

Any class that inherits from Node already knows enough to communicate in the network. Any programming editor should be sufficient for writing new node files. I used IntelliJ IDEA 2.6 and include its ipr file.

This code is copyright (c) 2006, Ward Cunningham
Released under the GPL v2 or later. See license.txt.