version 5 - Animations in 5.2

I have to do an activity with students in a laboratory where only Mathematica 5.2 is available .

I would to do some animations, but in 5.2, from what I understand, I should select the series of graphics produced by Animation, or by some other means, and type Ctrl-Y.

Is there some way to automate this process to obtain an animation similar to what is available in later versions of Mathematica?

Answer

I don't have version 5.2, and this type of animation no longer works properly in version 9, which is the oldest version I have installed. So what I show below is only an untested starting point for something more robust. I hope it will be helpful.

animate[frames_] := Module[{},

  Scan[Show, frames];
  SelectionMove[EvaluationNotebook[], Previous, CellGroup];
  FrontEndTokenExecute["OpenCloseGroup"];
  FrontEndTokenExecute["SelectionAnimate"]
]

frames must be a list of graphics, e.g.

frames = Table[
   Graphics[{Circle[{0, 0}, 1], Circle[{Cos[x], Sin[x]}, 1]}, 
    PlotRange -> {{-2, 2}, {-2, 2}}, AspectRatio -> 1], {x, 0, 2 Pi, 2 Pi/20}];


animate[frames]

As I remember in v5.2 Show caused the graphics to be rendered into a new cell, but I may be wrong ... in v6 and later this would be Print, which I used to test this (sort of, my notebook display gets corrupted when I try it in v9/v10 ...)