Difference between Animator and Trigger?
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From: asdf qwerty on 9 Feb 2010 02:47 I'm trying to decide whether to use an Animator or a Trigger to drive an animation, but it looks like they're pretty much identical, just with different default settings. Is there a difference? If not, why are there two commands? Thanks, Brad
From: asdf qwerty on 10 Feb 2010 03:37 An Animator can be set to be running when it's created. It doesn't look like this is an option with a Trigger, so you always have to manually click the play button to start a Trigger running.
From: John Fultz on 12 Feb 2010 04:41
On Tue, 9 Feb 2010 02:46:13 -0500 (EST), asdf qwerty wrote: > I'm trying to decide whether to use an Animator or a Trigger to drive > an animation, but it looks like they're pretty much identical, just > with different default settings. Is there a difference? If not, why > are there two commands? > > Thanks, > Brad Yes, that's correct...they are basically the same but with different settings. Internally, Trigger is implemented as a special form of Animator. The principal conceptual difference boils down to the setting for AnimationRepetitions, and to whether they're paused or running when you create them. Trigger's default mode runs an animation for a limited time, only when requested by the user. Animator is running by default when you create it, and just keeps looping forever. The choice of names for the two functions stems primarily from these differences. It's not uncommon in the design of Mathematica to have functions which replicate functionality that could have been easily recreated with very simple programs by advanced Mathematica users. I think the motivation is partly to make the resulting programs appear even simpler, and to lower the bar so that you don't have to understand as much to get certain things working. For example, I was doing Plus@@list for years before we added Total[list]. It made perfect sense to me, but was fairly obscure to somebody just starting out. Sincerely, John Fultz jfultz(a)wolfram.com User Interface Group Wolfram Research, Inc. |