In any case, I presume you want to output to some file format (e.g. PDF), rather than interactive display? Though one could always screen grab, in small quantities anyway ...

PDF would be fine. (If I wanted an animation, I'd probably take the trouble of learning Java or Pytthon, which I may actually do, one of these days.)

...

OS X puts all the files and directories in one's Desktop into RAM at startup. Aside from the fact that it's undocumented, it's just not the sort of thing a UNIX system would do.

That's gross! How did you find out about it?

I took my Mac to the nearest Apple Genius Bar because I was having power issues (I couldn't figure out why my battery had lasted only a year), and the guy who worked there said "Well, one problem is the you've got so many files on your desktop."

The Mac Desktop has other problems as well. There's an associated reference file which apparently goes on getting larger, more convoluted, and slower indefinitely; and can't be deleted without super-user / root privilege [tricky if, like mine, your SU password mysteriously fails to work].

Can someone provide the name of the reference file, or better yet, information on how to unclutter it? I still remember my root password so I'm in a position to do something about the problem. Jim