CSCI 1321 (Principles of Algorithm Design II):
Useful Links and Other Resources

(This page is not being actively maintained, so some links may no longer be valid.)

Class material

• Project Description. This is an overall description of the project for the course and gives requirements that apply to all assignments.

• API for Project Framework. This describes the framework classes you will be using for your project.

• Screen Editor Help. This describes how to use Dr. Lewis's screen editor program (which you will probably find helpful in doing your project). To start the editor from Together, bring up the Run dialog and specify ScreenEditor as the main class and command-line arguments of MyScreen.class and SavedFile.bin, where MyScreen is the name of your screen class and SavedFile.bin is the filename the screen editor should use to save its result.

• Image Editor Help. This describes how to use Dr. Lewis's image editor program (which you will probably find helpful in doing your project). If you want to use images from other sources, he has also written an additional program that will help with that. It uses Java features not present in the version of Java installed with Together, so it must be run from the command line. If you're interested, look at the comments in the source file and download the class file.

Java

• Java 1.4 API Documentation. Everything you wanted to know about all the library classes, arranged in a very usable way.

• javadoc Documentation. Information on how to write comments for and use javadoc, Sun's tool for automatically generating documentation (such as the above API) from comments within Java code. In particular you might want to look at this page on Documentation Comments.

Tools

• TogetherSoft (now Borland). The IDE that we will be using for this class is Together ControlCenter, the main product of TogetherSoft (recently acquired by Borland). You can run this program under Linux on the lab computers with the command

  /users/TogetherSoft/Together6.0/bin/Together.sh

  Since this is tedious to type, even with tab completion of filenames, you may want to set up an alias for this command or add it to your toolbar.

  You can also download and install the program on your own computer. The license we have does not work with the current version of Together, so you will need release 6.0, available here. When you have the product installed, you will need a license key; send me mail (at bmassing@cs.trinity.edu) and I will send the key and instructions.

  Note that Together needs about 256M of memory to run with acceptable performance.

• Eclipse. Eclipse is another IDE you can use to write, compile, and run Java programs. If you're having serious problems with Together, you may want to give this a try. It doesn't have integrated UML support but otherwise provides similar functionality. (There is a UML plugin, but it is reported to be somewhat unstable.) You can run it under Linux on the lab computers with the command

  /users/eclipse/eclipse

  You should also be able to install it on your own computer.

• Java Without an IDE. Instructions for writing, compiling, and running Java programs without an IDE such as Together. Also see Sun's Tools and Utilities documentation.

Miscellaneous links

• Dr. Lewis's CS 1321 Links Page. Links to additional course-related information, including more useful Java Web sites.

• Remote access to the CS Linux machines.

• Other useful links for the not-yet-expert (tips about compilers, text editors, Unix, etc.).