Ptolemy II Tutorial

Friday afternoon, March 23, will be devoted to a tutorial on Ptolemy II, covering the following topics:

  • 1:30 Using and extending the user interface - Steve Neuendorffer
  • 1:50 SDF - Steve Neuendorffer
  • 2:10 DE - Jie Liu
  • 2:30 Overview of the actor libraries - Edward A. Lee
  • 2:50 FSM - Xiaojun Liu
  • 3:10 - 3:25 - Break
  • 3:45 Overview of the domains - Edward A. Lee
  • 4:05 Expressions and Types - Yuhong Xiong
  • 4:25 How to write actors - Paul Whitaker
  • 4:45 How to write applets - Christopher Hylands
  • 5:00 Adjourn
The latter two topics require some background in Java programming.

We strongly recommend that you bring a laptop computer running Windows 2000 or Windows 98 (Windows 2000 is strongly preferred). This will enable you to follow the tutorial on your own machine, developing applications and code as you go.

The laptop should have the following software installed:

  • Ptolemy II 1.0
    Install the Full version so that you can build your own actors.
    The Ptiny version is not sufficient.
    If you installed the beta version, you should upgrade to the final version.
    We will provide a CD with Ptolemy II on it to all conference attendees.
  • JDK1.3.0 from http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/
    Install the full SDK, which includes the compiler javac.
    The JRE is not sufficient, it does not include javac.
  • The Cygwin toolkit:
    Install the Cygwin toolkit from
    the Ptolemy II 1.0 Cygwin page
  • Ideally, the above installations will be completed before arriving at the conference, but we will have staff available to assist in the installation process.

    You must register in advance to attend the tutorial, as space is limited.