ia0/lafont

---

ia0/lafont.json

{
  "createdAt": "2018-02-08T09:43:35Z",
  "defaultBranch": "master",
  "description": "Animation of Yves Lafont's Interaction Combinators",
  "fullName": "ia0/lafont",
  "homepage": "",
  "language": "Rust",
  "name": "lafont",
  "pushedAt": "2022-01-30T15:08:35Z",
  "stargazersCount": 19,
  "topics": [
    "graphics",
    "rust"
  ],
  "updatedAt": "2025-07-16T08:41:04Z",
  "url": "https://github.com/ia0/lafont"
}

Animation of Yves Lafont’s Interaction Combinators

[Interaction combinators][article] are a universal model of distributed computation devised by Yves Lafont in 1997. They are a particular instance of [Interaction nets][wikipedia]. Interaction nets are a graphical model of computation also devised by Yves Lafont in 1990.

This project renders the computation of interaction combinators in a simplified physical 3D world where agents are spheres and edges are invisible.

![example]!(/img/1.png) ![example]!(/img/2.png) ![example]!(/img/3.png) ![example]!(/img/4.png)

How to run

To run with the slowest speed and without edges:

cargo run --release

To run faster, use -n with an iteration count (every nth step is displayed):

cargo run --release -- -n2

To run with edges, use -v (can be combined with -n):

cargo run --release -- -v

How to install

You can install the latest version released on https://crates.io/crates/lafont with:

cargo install lafont

Or you can install the latest commit from https://github.com/ia0/lafont with:

cargo install --git=https://github.com/ia0/lafont.git lafont

The binary will be installed as ~/.cargo/bin/lafont by default.

If you don’t have cargo (the Rust package manager), install it through https://rustup.rs/ or through your package manager (e.g. apt install cargo on Debian-like machines).

Disclaimer

This is not an official Google product.

[article] !: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=264415 [wikipedia] !: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaction_nets