User talk:RolandH

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Hello, RolandH, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the Wikipedia Boot Camp, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}} on your user page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions.

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Contents

[edit] Quicksort diagram

Nice work on the quicksort diagram, really helps to illustrate the algorithm! Lan3y 16:52, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sort animations

Hey, I like your sort animations, but I just have one problem: they go way too fast! It would be nice if you could slow it down to about 3 seconds per frame or so. They are almost useless when they go at 4-5 FPS. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.173.133.74 (talk)

I agree, it's next to impossible to follow the animations step by step, but they weren't made for that purpose. Originally, I wanted them to provide a rough understanding of the algorithms (partitioning, recursion, and so on). But you have a point.
If they were slowed down to 3 seconds per frame however, they'd take several minutes to play through. I think that's too long for web stuff (and my attention span). It might be better to only slow down the beginning and some key parts. I'll try. Anyhow, I'll take some time off to rewrite the code (and release it, so at least anybody can improve the animations more easily). RolandH 09:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
I like the current speed, and I am not the only one. Excellent image, great contribution. May I ask what software you used to make it? (H) 23:36, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Sorry for the slow update. Just some scripts written in Ruby, using the Cairo and ImageMagick libraries (nothing proprietary). RolandH 14:13, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] sort animations

Hello RolandH - thanks for the great sort animations. One of them (quicksort) has been nominated as a featured picture, and looks like to succeed. I had the idea that a collection of such animations for all the sort algorithms would make a great featured image set. Would you mind entering the conversation there, perhaps by starting with a list of the other sort animations you've done? Thanks again! Debivort 01:27, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for helping edit the animations per the FPC discussion. Would it be easy for you to generate other sorting animations, such as bubble or merge? Debivort 20:28, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
For Bubblesort: The code is there, but I tried, and felt I failed (last year). With an array size used in the heapsort and quicksort animations, there were too many swaps. With a disappointingly small array, the frame count was okay. But since bubblesort is one of the most trivial sorting methods, I left it out. As for Mergesort, I've got no idea how to visualize that in the same fashion (i.e. with an array displayed as a bar chart). An implementation of Mergesort that uses arrays is probably more difficult to understand than one that uses linked lists. Concerning other sorting algorithms that work in-place (shellsort, combsort, ...), I'd love to that (there's some javascript code lying around here which I could reuse). RolandH 14:06, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of which...
An image uploaded by you has been promoted to featured picture status
Your image, Image:Sorting quicksort anim.gif, was nominated on Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate an image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. Thank you for your contribution! MER-C 03:25, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
POTD
POTD

Hi Roland,

Just to let you know that the Featured Picture Image:Sorting quicksort anim.gif is due to make an appearance as Picture of the Day on October 27, 2007. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2007-10-27. howcheng {chat} 21:48, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi Roland, the quick-sort animation is amazing. It reminded me of my young days, when I was studying programming in Pascal at a secondary school. Regards from Prague, JanSuchy 08:17, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] POTY Competition

Hi, I'm writing to let you know that an image of yours that become a Commons Featured Picture during 2007 is now part of the 2007 Picture of the Year competition. If you have > 200 edits you are welcome to vote too. Thanks for contributing your valuable work and good luck. Herby talk thyme 17:04, 13 January 2008 (UTC)