Golly Help: Hints and Tips

Some useful hints and tips

- Avoid the temptation to put your own patterns, scripts or rules inside Golly's supplied folders — it will make it difficult to upgrade to a future version. A much better idea is to create separate folders for your own files and put those folders alongside the supplied folders, so your Golly folder looks something like this:

  Golly |  |
  Golly.exe |  | (Golly.app on Mac, golly on Linux)
  Help |  |
  Patterns |  |
  Rules |  |
  Scripts |  |
  My-downloads |  | (contains all your downloaded files; set in Preferences > File)
  My-patterns |  | (contains all your pattern files)
  My-rules |  | (contains all your .rule files; set in Preferences > Control)
  My-scripts |  | (contains all your .lua/.py files)

  If necessary, use File > Set File Folder and select the Golly folder. Now all your folders (and the supplied folders) are visible in the file panel, so with just a few clicks you can load any pattern, run any script, or switch to any .rule file. You can also right-click (or control-click) on any of those files to open them in your preferred text editor.

  When upgrading to a new version of Golly, Mac users can simply drag all the distributed files and folders into their Golly folder and the old versions will be replaced. On Windows and Linux you'll need to delete the old Help, Patterns, Rules and Scripts folders before dragging in the new folders to avoid ending up with merged versions.

- For better performance you should consider opening Preferences > Control and increasing the maximum memory size used by the various hash-based algorithms. The maximum size depends on the amount of physical memory in your machine and the typical usage of that machine while Golly is running. A good place to start is 50% of your physical memory. If your machine has less RAM or is used for internet browsing or other memory-hungry applications, you might lower this to 25% of physical memory; if your machine is a server and Golly will usually be running by itself, then 80% of physical memory may be appropriate. More memory is better, but your machine should never go into swap or start using automatic memory compression.
- To view a pattern file you can drop it onto the Golly app or onto the Golly window if the app is already running.
- When Golly starts up it looks for scripts called golly-start.lua or golly-start.py in the same directory as the Golly application and then in a user-specific data directory (see the Preferences item for the likely path on your system). If either script is found then it is automatically executed.
- Displaying the population count can cause a significant slow-down when generating large patterns, especially when using HashLife. You can disable the population count by unticking the Show Population option in the Control menu, or you can toggle it by clicking in the "Population=..." text. Another alternative is to hit ";" to hide the status bar. You can toggle the status bar at any time, even in full screen mode.
- Editing operations are fastest in QuickLife.
- Pasting large, sparse patterns is much faster if using Or mode, or if the current pattern is empty, or if the paste rectangle is completely outside the current pattern edges.
- The hand cursor can be used to scroll the view by clicking and dragging. If you drag the cursor outside any view edge then scrolling will occur continuously; ie. you don't have to move the cursor. If the cursor is outside any corner (ie. outside two edges) then the scrolling direction will be diagonal. Actually, continuous scrolling also occurs if the hand cursor is dragged onto any view edge or corner. This allows such scrolling to occur in full screen mode.
- While dragging the mouse to make (or modify) a selection, the escape key can be used to cancel the operation and restore the original selection.