Bellman (alpha release)                                    Mike Playle
=======                                                  Cambridge, UK
                                                            April 2013


This is my Life search program, in the state it was in when it found
the snark reflector. Here's a very quick look at how to make it do
something:

I run it on a 64 bit Linux machine. Compiling it follows the
conventional process of typing "make" and then fixing any errors you
might encounter. You'll need the "gd" library for writing GIF files
(try "libgd2-xpm-dev" on Ubuntu).

Once built, this search takes a minute or two and produces 47 results:

$ time ./bellman inputs/test.in 

The catalysts it finds are written to files ending in ".out". It also
writes a pair of GIF files for each result which can be used to build
a HTML page classifying and summarising its results:

$ python ./mkhtml.py .

The results produced by this stage are partial - they only contain
active catalytic regions, not entire still lives. The program
"mkstill" will assign values to the remaining unassigned cells to
produce a finished pattern that can be viewed in Golly or other Life
program:

$ ./mkstill result000001-4.out 
Best answer: 7
Best answer: 5
Best answer: 4
Best answer: 2
#P 5 2
.*......
..*.....
***.....
........
....**..
....*.*.
......*.
......**

As a more interesting example I've also included the input file which
found the snark reflector, as "inputs/snark.in".

Happy hunting!