doc/quicktour.dox
author athos
Thu, 03 Mar 2005 17:18:27 +0000
changeset 1182 a1abe9452199
parent 1175 6205eebd62fc
child 1183 8f623d1833a7
permissions -rw-r--r--
Added two demo programs: of course they are not considered to be complete or finished in any sense.
     1 /**
     2 
     3 \page quicktour Quick Tour to LEMON
     4 
     5 Let us first answer the question <b>"What do I want to use LEMON for?"
     6 </b>. 
     7 LEMON is a C++ library, so you can use it if you want to write C++ 
     8 programs. What kind of tasks does the library LEMON help to solve? 
     9 It helps to write programs that solve optimization problems that arise
    10 frequently when <b>designing and testing certain networks</b>, for example
    11 in telecommunication, computer networks, and other areas that I cannot
    12 think of now. A very natural way of modelling these networks is by means
    13 of a <b> graph</b> (we will always mean a directed graph by that). 
    14 So if you want to write a program that works with 
    15 graphs then you might find it useful to use our library LEMON.
    16 
    17 
    18 
    19 Some examples are the following (you will find links next to the code fragments that help to download full demo programs):
    20 
    21 - First we give two examples that show how to instantiate a graph. The
    22 first one shows the methods that add nodes and edges, but one will
    23 usually use the second way which reads a graph from a stream (file).
    24 -# The following code fragment shows how to fill a graph with data. It creates a complete graph on 4 nodes. The type Listgraph is one of the LEMON graph types: the typedefs in the beginning are for convenience and we will supppose them later as well.
    25  \code
    26   typedef ListGraph Graph;
    27   typedef Graph::Edge Edge;
    28   typedef Graph::InEdgeIt InEdgeIt;
    29   typedef Graph::OutEdgeIt OutEdgeIt;
    30   typedef Graph::EdgeIt EdgeIt;
    31   typedef Graph::Node Node;
    32   typedef Graph::NodeIt NodeIt;
    33 
    34   Graph g;
    35   
    36   for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
    37     g.addNode();
    38   
    39   for (NodeIt i(g); i!=INVALID; ++i)
    40     for (NodeIt j(g); j!=INVALID; ++j)
    41       if (i != j) g.addEdge(i, j);
    42  \endcode 
    43 
    44 If you want to read more on the LEMON graph structures and concepts, read the page about \ref graphs "graphs". 
    45 
    46 -# The following code shows how to read a graph from a stream (e.g. a file). LEMON supports the DIMACS file format: it can read a graph instance from a file 
    47 in that format (find the documentation of the format on the web). 
    48 \code
    49 Graph g;
    50 std::ifstream f("graph.dim");
    51 readDimacs(f, g);
    52 \endcode
    53 One can also store network (graph+capacity on the edges) instances and other things in DIMACS format: to see the details read the documentation of the \ref dimacs.h "Dimacs file format reader".
    54 
    55 
    56 - If you want to solve some transportation problems in a network then 
    57 you will want to find shortest paths between nodes of a graph. This is 
    58 usually solved using Dijkstra's algorithm. A utility
    59 that solves this is  the \ref lemon::Dijkstra "LEMON Dijkstra class".
    60 A simple program using the \ref lemon::Dijkstra "LEMON Dijkstra class" is
    61 as follows (we do not include the part that instantiates the graph and the length function):
    62 
    63 \code
    64   typedef Graph::EdgeMap<int> LengthMap;
    65   Graph G;
    66   Node s, t;
    67   LengthMap cap(G);
    68 	...
    69   Dijkstra<Graph, LengthMap> 
    70 	dijkstra_test(G, cap);
    71   dijkstra_test.run(s);
    72 \endcode
    73 
    74 - If you want to design a network and want to minimize the total length
    75 of wires then you might be looking for a <b>minimum spanning tree</b> in
    76 an undirected graph. This can be found using the Kruskal algorithm: the 
    77 class \ref lemon::Kruskal "LEMON Kruskal class" does this job for you.
    78 The following code fragment shows an example:
    79 
    80 \code
    81 
    82 \endcode
    83 
    84 
    85 
    86 Some more detailed introduction can be obtained by following the links 
    87 below:
    88 
    89 \ref graphs "Graph structures"
    90 play a central role in LEMON, so if you are new to the library,
    91 you probably should start \ref graphs "here".
    92 (You can also find that page along with others under
    93 <a class="el" href="pages.html"> Related Pages </a>.)
    94 
    95 If you are 
    96 interested in data structures and algorithms in more details, then
    97 you should browse the reference manual part of the documentation.
    98 Section <a class="el" href="modules.html"> Modules </a>
    99  is a good starting point for this.
   100 */