Suggested LifeWiki edits

[Book]

Common objects don't change ranks. They're still accurate.

Sorry, they do change ranks, especially those with very low freqs.

[hotdogPi]

Should "period-28 glider gun" be moved to "p7-assisted period-28 glider gun" to make room for the new tiny one?

[Ian07]

Should "period-28 glider gun" be moved to "p7-assisted period-28 glider gun" to make room for the new tiny one?

I didn't want to break any existing links, so for now I've created the new page at p4-assisted period-28 glider gun.

[Sokwe]

Guns are rare enough that I think it would be reasonable to include all of the known guns of a particular period on a single page. The biggest issue is that the info box only accounts for a single pattern, so it can't show both the smallest and the first when they're different. I haven't been able to think of a satisfying solution to this issue.

[GUYTU6J]

Just a bug report, likely due to caching:

I didn't want to break any existing links, so for now I've created the new page at p4-assisted period-28 glider gun.

This page is not currently in the Category:Guns that you can access on the main page of LifeWiki. Similarly, 32P21 is not in Category:Oscillators (but the slightly older 44P38 is).

EDIT to respond:

Why does the wiki use the Fire theme for outer-totalistic rules with larger ranges?

That was an admittedly arbitrary suggestion of mine when setting up the LifeViewer in the template, so feel free to provide your suggestions.

[muzik]

Why does the wiki use the Fire theme for outer-totalistic rules with larger ranges?

[dvgrn]

Guns are rare enough that I think it would be reasonable to include all of the known guns of a particular period on a single page. The biggest issue is that the info box only accounts for a single pattern, so it can't show both the smallest and the first when they're different. I haven't been able to think of a satisfying solution to this issue.

Recently it was starting to seem to me that we were collectively coming up with a workable solution for this. Guns are rare only if we ignore variable-period guns based on signal loops, but current LifeWiki gun articles are based on ignoring those.

• For glider guns that passed the notability threshold -- usually due to having a compact simple generation mechanism -- the name is always "period-{n} glider gun". David Bell picked out an initial set of these for the last Life Lexicon update four years ago; maybe after hotDogPi's Year of the Oscillator, we should have another look at this, but I think we've more or less been keeping up, without going down the rabbit hole of putting in a separate article for every period.
• The article's infobox should always show the current smallest gun by bounding box size.
• Other notable guns of that period (first, significant simplification, new mechanism, edge shooter, etc.) can be placed in a gallery section with captions giving attribution and any other relevant details.
• If a variant is distinctive enough to have its own name, add a redirect from that name to the combined gun page.

Does that make sense as a plan for dealing with things like the new single-engine p30?

[Sokwe]

• The article's infobox should always show the current smallest gun by bounding box size.
• Other notable guns of that period (first, significant simplification, new mechanism, edge shooter, etc.) can be placed in a gallery section with captions giving attribution and any other relevant details.

Does that make sense as a plan for dealing with things like the new single-engine p30?

The only problem I have with this is that the discovery information in the infobox will necessarily contain the discoverer and discovery year of the smallest gun, while I think the infobox should show the discoverer and discovery year of the first gun.

[hotdogPi]

• The article's infobox should always show the current smallest gun by bounding box size.
• Other notable guns of that period (first, significant simplification, new mechanism, edge shooter, etc.) can be placed in a gallery section with captions giving attribution and any other relevant details.

Does that make sense as a plan for dealing with things like the new single-engine p30?

The only problem I have with this is that the discovery information in the infobox will necessarily contain the discoverer and discovery year of the smallest gun, while I think the infobox should show the discoverer and discovery year of the first gun.

1. The period-30 glider gun page (and 46) is a generic page and does not have an infobox, unlike all other periods.
2. How would p117 be handled, where the first-discovered one isn't notable?

[dvgrn]

1. The period-30 glider gun page (and 46) is a generic page and does not have an infobox, unlike all other periods.
2. How would p117 be handled, where the first-discovered one isn't notable?

I'm definitely just making this up as I go along, but it does seem like we're on the track of an understandable standard here.

1. It makes sense that "Gosper glider gun" would keep its own article -- it's the famous one, and there's plenty to say about it.

Then it makes sense that "period-30 glider gun" should get its own infobox, and that it should contain RLE for the new single-engine p30. Ordinarily the article labeled "period-{n} glider gun" would contain the most recent/smallest bounding box gun, attributed to whoever discovered it -- and as new discoveries are made, old attributions and RLEs would just have to shift into the Gallery section.

In this case, the original gun is still the one with the smallest bounding box, so we don't need another copy of the GGG in the infobox. But we do have a new record to document -- a p30 gun with fewer engines than any previous version. Seems like a good use for the infobox in that particular case, right?

2. On the model described above, the p117 gun article is already correct.

To address the case that Sokwe is interested in, where a "classic" gun and a "modern" gun are competing for the same generic name, I still think it makes sense to standardize on putting the current smallest gun in the infobox -- and making whole new articles, with names like like "Karel's pseudo-p14 glider gun", in the rather rare cases where multiple variants of a gun are all so impressively noteworthy that they can't just go into a Gallery section.

[GUYTU6J]

Also, what do you think about the three drafts in my user page? A recent complaint inspired me to make a navbox for glider-accepting devices, and I have since included many sorted links in my sketch.

Now moved to Template:GliderNavbox - let us discuss about it in the talk page!

[Sokwe]

To address the case that Sokwe is interested in, where a "classic" gun and a "modern" gun are competing for the same generic name, I still think it makes sense to standardize on putting the current smallest gun in the infobox

My main issue is that I would prefer the discoverers and discovery year in the infobox to be the discoverers and discovery year of the first known gun, but I would prefer the displayed pattern to be the smallest known gun. Perhaps the infobox could include separate sections for the discovery information of the smallest gun and the first gun.

[dvgrn]

My main issue is that I would prefer the discoverers and discovery year in the infobox to be the discoverers and discovery year of the first known gun, but I would prefer the displayed pattern to be the smallest known gun. Perhaps the infobox could include separate sections for the discovery information of the smallest gun and the first gun.

I can kind of see why that would be nice, but then again, I'd be happy with first-known-gun discoverers and discovery year in the caption for the first known gun pattern, in the Gallery section where (in my mind) it "belongs". I don't even want that information split off into the infobox, since it's irrelevant to the pattern that's on display there, and that seems on balance more confusing than useful.

I'm definitely not too happy with the idea of adding more information-that-might-not-be-there to the infobox. On a regular laptop screen I already have to scroll a page like Period-184_glider_gun to get to the bottom of the Infobox -- it doesn't quite all fit on the screen at once. It's not terribly difficult to hide sections that don't apply to a given pattern, but it does make it a bit more painful to create new pages, at least for occasional half-competent dilettante LifeWiki editors like myself.

[Sokwe]

On a page simply called "period-n glider gun" I would want the primary discoverers and discovery date to be that of the first gun, to the extent that I think I would prefer removing the discovery information from the infobox entirely, rather than use the discovery information for the smallest-but-not-first gun. Discovery information for both the first and the smallest guns could then be included in the body text.

[hotdogPi]

This should correctly update stats for LifeWiki except for the date and the number of soups. What we need, though, is a way to read the textcensus files for various symmetries, and I don't know how to read from a webpage.

Code: Select all

f = open('apgcodesymmetry.txt', 'rt', encoding='utf-8')
f1 = f.read()
f1 = f1.replace('\n',',')
f1 = '[' + f1 + ']'
#print(f1[-200:])
f1 = eval(f1)
f2 = f1[1::2]
f1 = f1[::2]
f3 = list(set(f1))
types = {}
for i in f3:
    try:
        underscore = i.find('_')
    except IndexError:
        continue
    before_underscore = i[:underscore]
    if before_underscore not in types:
        types[before_underscore] = 1
    else:
        types[before_underscore] += 1
#print(types)
nums = {}
for i in range(len(f1)):
    if 'x' in f1[i] or 'y' in f1[i]:
        continue
    if '_' not in f1[i]:
        continue
    if f1[i] not in nums:
        nums[f1[i]] = int(f2[i])
    else:
        nums[f1[i]] += int(f2[i])

def sep(number):
    number_str = str(number)
    modulo = len(number_str) % 3
    if modulo == 0:
        modulo = 3
    to_return = number_str[:modulo]
    for i in range(modulo,len(number_str)-1,3):
        to_return += '{{{sep|,}}}' + number_str[i:i+3]
    return to_return
#print(nums)
to_print = '| higher = {{#switch: {{{1|}}}\n'
to_print += '    | date            = [fill in]\n'
to_print += '    | numsoups        = 6{{{sep|,}}}566{{{sep|,}}}371{{{sep|,}}}313{{{sep|,}}}706\n'
to_print += '    | numobjects      = %s\n' % sep(sum((int(i) if i[0] in '123456789' else 0) for i in f2))
to_print += '    | distinctobjects = %s\n' % sep(sum(types.values()))
for i in range(1000):
    if 'xs' + str(i) in types:
        to_print += '    | xs%s = %s\n' % (str(i), sep(types['xs'+str(i)]))
for i in range(1000):
    if 'xp' + str(i) in types:
        to_print += '    | xp%s = %s\n' % (str(i), sep(types['xp'+str(i)]))
for i in range(1000):
    if 'xq' + str(i) in types:
        to_print += '    | xq%s = %s\n' % (str(i), sep(types['xq'+str(i)]))
for i in range(1000):
    if 'methuselah_' + str(i) + 'k' in nums:
        to_print += '    | methuselah_%sk = %s\n' % (str(i), sep(nums['methuselah_'+str(i)+'k']))
for i in range(1000):
    if 'messless_' + str(i) + 'h' in nums:
        to_print += '    | messless_%sh = %s\n' % (str(i), sep(nums['messless_'+str(i)+'h']))
for i in range(1000):
    if 'megasized_' + str(i) + 'h' in nums:
        to_print += '    | megasized_%sh = %s\n' % (str(i), sep(nums['megasized_'+str(i)+'h']))
to_print += '    | yl = %s\n' % sum((types[i] if i[0] == 'y' else 0) for i in types)
to_print += '    | \'\'\'Unknown query: {{{1|}}}\'\'\'\n}} '                            
print(to_print)

(edit 1: fixed commas appearing at the beginning of numbers)

[dvgrn]

What we need, though, is a way to read the textcensus files for various symmetries, and I don't know how to read from a webpage.

Web page access in Python is very easy. Here's some sample code -- Python 3, runs in Golly -- to find the current 6700-6799 methuselah count in C1.

Code: Select all

import golly as g
import urllib.request

g.show("Retrieving C1 textcensus -- please wait a moment...")
url = "https://catagolue.hatsya.com/textcensus/b3s23/C1"
response = urllib.request.urlopen(url)
html = response.read().decode()
g.show("Done.")
data = html.split("\n")
for item in data:
  if item.find("megasized_67h")!=-1:
    g.note(item)

[hotdogPi]

I just modified it to retrieve it from the web. Here is the code. I changed a few things after I ran it since I realized I had an undefined variable, but the error occurred before that. [FIXED: dvgrn told me how to fix it in Discord. It was an issue with my computer, not the code.]

Code: Select all

import urllib.request
symmetries = ['C2_1','C2_2','C2_4','C4_1','C4_4','D2_+1','D2_+2','D2_x','D4_+1',
              'D4_+2','D4_+4','D4_x1','D4_x4','D8_1','D8_4','D2_+1_gO1s0',
              'D2_+1_gO1s1','D2_+1_gO1s2','H2_+1','H2_+2','H4_+1','H4_+2','H4_+4']
mode = 0 #0 asymmetric, 1 symmetric
if mode == 0:
    symmetries = ['C1','G1']
f1 = []
for symmetry in symmetries:
    url = "https://catagolue.hatsya.com/textcensus/b3s23/%s" % symmetry
    response = urllib.request.urlopen(url)
    html = response.read().decode()
    html = html.replace('\n',',')
    html = '[' + html + ']'
    #print(html[-200:])
    html = eval(html)
    f1 += html
f2 = f1[1::2]
f1 = f1[::2]
f3 = list(set(f1))
types = {}
for i in f3:
    try:
        underscore = i.find('_')
    except IndexError:
        continue
    before_underscore = i[:underscore]
    if before_underscore not in types:
        types[before_underscore] = 1
    else:
        types[before_underscore] += 1
#print(types)
nums = {}
for i in range(len(f1)):
    if 'x' in f1[i] or 'y' in f1[i]:
        continue
    if '_' not in f1[i]:
        continue
    if f1[i] not in nums:
        nums[f1[i]] = int(f2[i])
    else:
        nums[f1[i]] += int(f2[i])

def sep(number):
    number_str = str(number)
    modulo = len(number_str) % 3
    if modulo == 0:
        modulo = 3
    to_return = number_str[:modulo]
    for i in range(modulo,len(number_str)-1,3):
        to_return += '{{{sep|,}}}' + number_str[i:i+3]
    return to_return
#print(nums)
to_print = '| higher = {{#switch: {{{1|}}}\n'
to_print += '    | date            = [fill in]\n'
to_print += '    | numsoups        = 6{{{sep|,}}}566{{{sep|,}}}371{{{sep|,}}}313{{{sep|,}}}706\n'
to_print += '    | numobjects      = %s\n' % sep(sum((int(i) if i[0] in '123456789' else 0) for i in f2))
to_print += '    | distinctobjects = %s\n' % sep(sum(types.values()))
for i in range(1000):
    if 'xs' + str(i) in types:
        to_print += '    | xs%s = %s\n' % (str(i), sep(types['xs'+str(i)]))
for i in range(1000):
    if 'xp' + str(i) in types:
        to_print += '    | xp%s = %s\n' % (str(i), sep(types['xp'+str(i)]))
for i in range(1000):
    if 'xq' + str(i) in types:
        to_print += '    | xq%s = %s\n' % (str(i), sep(types['xq'+str(i)]))
for i in range(1000):
    if 'methuselah_' + str(i) + 'k' in nums:
        to_print += '    | methuselah_%sk = %s\n' % (str(i), sep(nums['methuselah_'+str(i)+'k']))
for i in range(1000):
    if 'messless_' + str(i) + 'h' in nums:
        to_print += '    | messless_%sh = %s\n' % (str(i), sep(nums['messless_'+str(i)+'h']))
for i in range(1000):
    if 'megasized_' + str(i) + 'h' in nums:
        to_print += '    | megasized_%sh = %s\n' % (str(i), sep(nums['megasized_'+str(i)+'h']))
to_print += '    | yl = %s\n' % sum((types[i] if i[0] == 'y' else 0) for i in types)
to_print += '    | \'\'\'Unknown query: {{{1|}}}\'\'\'\n}} '                            
print(to_print)

This was the error message.

Code: Select all

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.9/lib/python3.9/urllib/request.py", line 1342, in do_open
    h.request(req.get_method(), req.selector, req.data, headers,
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.9/lib/python3.9/http/client.py", line 1255, in request
    self._send_request(method, url, body, headers, encode_chunked)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.9/lib/python3.9/http/client.py", line 1301, in _send_request
    self.endheaders(body, encode_chunked=encode_chunked)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.9/lib/python3.9/http/client.py", line 1250, in endheaders
    self._send_output(message_body, encode_chunked=encode_chunked)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.9/lib/python3.9/http/client.py", line 1010, in _send_output
    self.send(msg)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.9/lib/python3.9/http/client.py", line 950, in send
    self.connect()
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.9/lib/python3.9/http/client.py", line 1424, in connect
    self.sock = self._context.wrap_socket(self.sock,
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.9/lib/python3.9/ssl.py", line 500, in wrap_socket
    return self.sslsocket_class._create(
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.9/lib/python3.9/ssl.py", line 1040, in _create
    self.do_handshake()
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.9/lib/python3.9/ssl.py", line 1309, in do_handshake
    self._sslobj.do_handshake()
ssl.SSLCertVerificationError: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: unable to get local issuer certificate (_ssl.c:1122)

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/davidraucci/apgcodesymmetry.py", line 11, in <module>
    response = urllib.request.urlopen(url)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.9/lib/python3.9/urllib/request.py", line 214, in urlopen
    return opener.open(url, data, timeout)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.9/lib/python3.9/urllib/request.py", line 517, in open
    response = self._open(req, data)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.9/lib/python3.9/urllib/request.py", line 534, in _open
    result = self._call_chain(self.handle_open, protocol, protocol +
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.9/lib/python3.9/urllib/request.py", line 494, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.9/lib/python3.9/urllib/request.py", line 1385, in https_open
    return self.do_open(http.client.HTTPSConnection, req,
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.9/lib/python3.9/urllib/request.py", line 1345, in do_open
    raise URLError(err)
urllib.error.URLError: <urlopen error [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: unable to get local issuer certificate (_ssl.c:1122)>

[hotdogPi]

The wiki has been updated. The program is successful, with one exception: I have to add up the soup counts myself.

[yujh]

The smallest higher period ship list needs some updates

[Book]

Bear with me, there is a suggested edit at the end of this message.

The "List of common still lifes" page has been updated. Data from Catagolue was loaded into an Excel spreadsheet, sorted by occurrences, FCs calculated. Also, FCs were audited for objects in the list with wiki pages. That audit revealed a few FC corrections needed (and made) on pattern pages which may have been typos. Also, row 73, was incorrectly a duplicate of row 188 (isomer confusion); that's been corrected. Three rows were added to make the list inclusive through FC 24.7.

The order of the list from 2019 was quite stable. Except for the last few rows, only two rows needed to be slightly reordered. No way to tell if something actually changed or these were just mistakes.

This demonstrates the value of frequency class. It is remarkably stable over time (except, of course, for very rare objects).

Now, the suggestion. I want to remove the "approx relative freq" column. That data was not audited but spot checking showed, as expected, it has changed. I believe FC is a far better metric.

[yujh]

Now, the suggestion. I want to remove the "approx relative freq" column. That data was not audited but spot checking showed, as expected, it has changed. I believe FC is a far better metric.

I don’t really agree

[hotdogPi]

I think numbers like "1 in 6174" work the best.

[Chris857]

https://conwaylife.com/wiki/77P6H1V1 says "77P6H1V1 is a c/6 diagonal spaceship discovered by Josh Ball on March 25, 2011,[1] being the only known spaceship of this speed not based on seal."

However, viewtopic.php?t=&p=130622#p130622 shows some c/6 diagonal ships which are neither Seal nor 77P6H1V1. Should it maybe be "being the first spaceship of this speed not based on seal."?

[Ian07]

https://conwaylife.com/wiki/77P6H1V1 says "77P6H1V1 is a c/6 diagonal spaceship discovered by Josh Ball on March 25, 2011,[1] being the only known spaceship of this speed not based on seal."

However, viewtopic.php?t=&p=130622#p130622 shows some c/6 diagonal ships which are neither Seal nor 77P6H1V1. Should it maybe be "being the first spaceship of this speed not based on seal."?

Done by yujh.

[Book]

I think numbers like "1 in 6174" work the best.

I made a different change to that column along those lines.