munching squares: n. A display hack dating back to the PDP-1
(ca. 1962, reportedly discovered by Jackson Wright), which employs a
trivial computation (repeatedly plotting the graph Y = X XOR T for
successive values of T -- see HAKMEM items 146-148) to produce an
impressive display of moving and growing squares that devour the
screen. The initial value of T is treated as a parameter, which,
when well-chosen, can produce amazing effects. Some of these, later
(re)discovered on the LISP machine, have been christened `munching
triangles' (try AND for XOR and toggling points instead of plotting
them), `munching w's', and `munching mazes'. More generally,
suppose a graphics program produces an impressive and ever-changing
display of some basic form, foo, on a display terminal, and does it
using a relatively simple program; then the program (or the
resulting display) is likely to be referred to as `munching foos'.
[This is a good example of the use of the word foo as a
metasyntactic variable.]
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