munching squares
:munching squares: n. A display hack
dating back to the PDP-1 (ca.
1962, reportedly discovered by Jackson Wright), which employs a trivial
computation (repeatedly plotting the graph Y = X XOR T for successive
values of T -- see HAKMEM
items 146-148) to produce an impressive
display of moving and growing squares that devour the screen. The
initial value of T is treated as a parameter, which, when well-chosen,
can produce amazing effects. Some of these, later (re)discovered on the
LISP machine, have been christened `munching triangles' (try AND for XOR
and toggling points instead of plotting them), `munching w's', and
`munching mazes'. More generally, suppose a graphics program produces an
impressive and ever-changing display of some basic form, foo, on a
display terminal, and does it using a relatively simple program; then
the program (or the resulting display) is likely to be referred to as
`munching foos'. [This is a good example of the use of the word foo
as
a metasyntactic variable
]
Jargon File Version 4.3.1, 29 JUN 2001 =
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