Function for the animation of epidemic data, i.e. objects inheriting from 
  class "epidata".  This only works with 1- or 2-dimensional coordinates 
  and is not useful if some individuals share the same coordinates 
  (overlapping).  There are two types of animation, see argument 
  time.spacing.  Besides the direct plotting in the R session, it is 
  also possible to generate a sequence of graphics files to create animations 
  outside R.
# S3 method for summary.epidata
animate(object, main = "An animation of the epidemic",
        pch = 19, col = c(3, 2, gray(0.6)), time.spacing = NULL,
        sleep = quote(5/.nTimes), legend.opts = list(), timer.opts = list(),
        end = NULL, generate.snapshots = NULL, ...)# S3 method for epidata
animate(object, ...)
an object inheriting from class "epidata" or
    "summary.epidata".  In the former case, its summary is calculated
    and the function continues as in the latter case, passing all ...
    arguments to the summary.epidata method.
a main title for the plot, see also title.
vectors of length 3 specifying the point symbols and colors for
    susceptible, infectious and removed individuals (in this order).
    The vectors are recycled if necessary.
    By default, susceptible individuals are marked as filled green circles,
    infectious individuals as filled red circles and removed individuals as
    filled gray circles.  Note that the symbols are iteratively drawn
    (overlaid) in the same plotting region as time proceeds.
    For information about the possible values of pch and col, see
    the help pages of points and par, respectively.
time interval for the animation steps.  If NULL (the default), the
    events are plotted one by one with pauses of sleep seconds.  Thus, 
    it is just the ordering of the events, which is shown.  To plot
    the appearance of events proportionally to the exact time line,
    time.spacing can be set to a numeric value indicating the period of
    time between consecutive plots.  Then, for each time point in
    seq(0, end, by = time.spacing) the current state of the epidemic can
    be seen and an additional timer indicates the current time
    (see timer.opts below).  The argument sleep will be the
    artificial pause in seconds between two of those time points.
time in seconds to Sys.sleep before the next plotting
    event.  By default, each artificial pause is of length 5/.nTimes
    seconds, where .nTimes is the number of events (infections and
    removals) of the epidemic, which is evaluated in the function body.
    Thus, for time.spacing = NULL the animation has a duration of
    approximately 5 seconds. In the other case, sleep is the duration of
    the artificial pause between two time points.
    Note that sleep is ignored on non-interactive devices
    (see dev.interactive)
either a list of arguments passed to the legend function or
    NULL (or NA), in which case no legend will be plotted.  All 
    necessary arguments have sensible defaults and need not be specified, i.e.
x:"topright"
legend:c("susceptible", "infectious", "removed")
pch:same as argument pch of the main function
col:same as argument col of the main function
either a list of arguments passed to the legend function or
    NULL (or NA), in which case no timer will be plotted.  All 
    necessary arguments have sensible defaults and need not be specified, i.e.
x:"bottomright"
title:"time"
box.lty:0
adj:c(0.5,0.5)
inset:0.01
bg:"white"
Note that the argument legend, which is the current time of the
    animation, can not be modified.
ending time of the animation in case of time.spacing not being
    NULL.  By default (NULL), time stops after the last event.
By default (NULL), the animation is not saved to image files
    but only shown on the on-screen device. In order to print to files,
    time.spacing must not be NULL, a screen device must be
    available, and there are two options:
    If the framework of the animation package
    should be used, i.e. the animate-call is passed as the
    expr argument to one of the save* functions of the
    animation package, then set
    generate.snapshots = img.name, where img.name is the
    base name for the generated images (the same as passed to the
    save* function). The path and format (type, width, height)
    for the generated images is derived from
    ani.options. See the last example below.
    Alternatively, generate.snapshots may be a list of arguments
    passed to the function dev.print, which then is
    executed at each time point of the grid defined by
    time.spacing.  Essentially, this is used for 
    saving the produced snapshots to files, e.g.
generate.snapshots = 
    list(device=pdf, file=quote(paste("epidemic_",sprintf(form,tp),".pdf",
    sep="")))
will store the animation steps in pdf-files in the current
    working directory, where the file names each end with the time point
    represented by the corresponding plot.  Because the variables tp
    and form should only be evaluated inside the function the
    file argument is quoted. Alternatively, the file name
    could also make use of the internal plot index i, e.g., use
    file=quote(paste("epidemic",i,".pdf",sep="")).
further graphical parameters passed to the basic call of plot, e.g.
    las, cex.axis (etc.) and mgp.
Sebastian Meyer
summary.epidata for the data, on which the plot is based.
plot.epidata for plotting the evolution of an epidemic by
the numbers of susceptible, infectious and removed individuals.
The contributed R package animation.
data("hagelloch")
(s <- summary(hagelloch))
# plot the ordering of the events only
animate(s)   # or: animate(hagelloch)
# with timer (animate only up to t=10)
animate(s, time.spacing=0.1, end=10, sleep=0.01,
        legend.opts=list(x="topleft"))
# Such an animation can be saved in various ways using tools of
# the animation package, e.g., saveHTML()
if (interactive() && require("animation")) {
  oldwd <- setwd(tempdir())  # to not clutter up the current working dir
  saveHTML({
    par(bg="white")  # default "transparent" is grey in some browsers
    animate(s, time.spacing=1, sleep=0, legend.opts=list(x="topleft"),
            generate.snapshots="epiani")
  }, use.dev=FALSE, img.name="epiani", ani.width=600, interval=0.5)
  setwd(oldwd)
}
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