doc/quicktour.dox
author alpar
Mon, 28 Feb 2005 13:03:36 +0000
changeset 1180 f772c360b466
parent 1170 fb0159aa582d
child 1181 848b6006941d
permissions -rw-r--r--
Better color to bw conversion
     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:
    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 
    25 
    26 -# The following code fragment shows how to fill a graph with data.
    27 
    28  \code
    29 
    30   typedef ListGraph Graph;
    31   typedef Graph::Edge Edge;
    32   typedef Graph::InEdgeIt InEdgeIt;
    33   typedef Graph::OutEdgeIt OutEdgeIt;
    34   typedef Graph::EdgeIt EdgeIt;
    35   typedef Graph::Node Node;
    36   typedef Graph::NodeIt NodeIt;
    37 
    38   Graph g;
    39   
    40   for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
    41     g.addNode();
    42   
    43   for (NodeIt i(g); i!=INVALID; ++i)
    44     for (NodeIt j(g); j!=INVALID; ++j)
    45       if (i != j) g.addEdge(i, j);
    46 
    47  \endcode 
    48 
    49  -#
    50 
    51 - If you want to solve some transportation problems in a network then 
    52 you will want to find shortest paths between nodes of a graph. This is 
    53 usually solved using Dijkstra's algorithm. A utility
    54 that solves this is  the \ref lemon::Dijkstra "LEMON Dijkstra class".
    55 A simple program using the \ref lemon::Dijkstra "LEMON Dijkstra class" is
    56 as follows (we assume that the graph is already given in the memory):
    57 
    58 \code
    59 
    60 \endcode
    61 
    62 - If you want to design a network and want to minimize the total length
    63 of wires then you might be looking for a <b>minimum spanning tree</b> in
    64 an undirected graph. This can be found using the Kruskal algorithm: the 
    65 class \ref lemon::Kruskal "LEMON Kruskal class" does this job for you.
    66 The following code fragment shows an example:
    67 
    68 \code
    69 
    70 \endcode
    71 
    72 
    73 
    74 Some more detailed introduction can be obtained by following the links 
    75 below:
    76 
    77 \ref graphs "Graph structures"
    78 play a central role in LEMON, so if you are new to the library,
    79 you probably should start \ref graphs "here".
    80 (You can also find that page along with others under
    81 <a class="el" href="pages.html"> Related Pages </a>.)
    82 
    83 If you are 
    84 interested in data structures and algorithms in more details, then
    85 you should browse the reference manual part of the documentation.
    86 Section <a class="el" href="modules.html"> Modules </a>
    87  is a good starting point for this.
    88 */