1. Loading an existing rule

The first example project to examine is called The Game of Life. To load this project, select the File option from the .CA screen and select Get template... In the downloaded version of TREND, there are existing rules that are made available to the user. In the section called Files (shown below) select the game.tmpl. This will be the first example of an existing rule to examine. Disecting this rule will help in understanding how to code in TREND.

Once the game.tmpl has been opened with the Get template... option in the .CA screen, TREND will open the game.rule and game.ca screens as well. This is the case only as long as they all exist in the same directory. This is seen in the path labeled at the top of the screens below. You will see that for this example, the path is /home/nesnahbor/trend/game.ca. In this case, the game.tmpl, game.rule and game.ca all exist in the same directory. For each user the path will vary depending on the user name and where the files are stored. Click and drag the screens to the empty portions of the desktop so all three screens are visible as they are below (click on the figure to see a larger one).