Question

I have a school assignment, visualization of sorting algorithms (mergesort, bubblesort). I looked at libraries like Processing, JsAnim, cake and couple of others but not sure whether they will be useful for my application (visualizing sort algorithms).

I am familiar with C# and little javascript. any libraries that would be appropriate for my need?

Thanks a lot

Answer 1

I had such task when was writing parallel sorting. I used C# ZedGraph library:

ZedGraph tutorial

The main idea was to represent the value of sort element like a vertical line with appropriate height( like a histogram).

This how it looks before sotring:

And after:

So we see that all elements is sorted.

To visualize every step of process I changed values of zedgraph control and refresh it. In my code it looked like:

private static void CreateGraph3(ZedGraphControl zgc)
    {
        // get a reference to the GraphPane
        GraphPane pane = zgc.GraphPane;

        // Set the Titles
        pane.Title.Text = "Sorting";
        //Clear current values
        pane.CurveList.Clear();

        // histogram high
        double[] values = new double[n];

        //fill values
        for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
        {
            values[i] = A1[i]; //A1 is an array that is currently sort
        }

        //create histogram
        BarItem curve = pane.AddBar("Elements", null, values, Color.Blue);

        pane.BarSettings.MinClusterGap = 0.0F; //set columns references

        // update axis
        zgc.AxisChange();

        // update graph
        zgc.Invalidate();
    }

I call this function every time some values has been sorted, so we see a video of whole process of sorting.
To include current library to your project you need to:

1) Right click on your toolbox

2) Choose (or add) items

3) Browse, Select ZedGraph.DLL and press OK

4) ZedGraphControl will be added to your toolbox and you can use it like another controls.

So this is it, good luck