From: Harold Hausman <hhausman@...>
Date: 2006-12-02T17:56:15+09:00
Subject: Re: [QUIZ] Turtle Graphics (#104)

On 12/2/06, Morton Goldberg <m_goldberg@ameritech.net> wrote:
> On Dec 1, 2006, at 10:42 AM, Harold Hausman wrote:
>
> > Ironically, I very recently implemented a turtle graphics system using
> > GTK and Ruby.
>
> Why ironic? I's say you have a head start on solving the quiz. I look
> forward to seeing your submission.
>

I guess 'coincidentally' would have been a better word. :P

Unfortunately, I have scant time for Ruby Quiz. The one (possibly
two?) submission I made was a total fluke. :((

> > Here are some images that came from it to whet your appetite:
> > http://www.danceliquid.com/images/LS/
> >
> > It used cairo for the anti-aliased line drawing.
>
> Nice images. The design you call Penrose, I call Hilbert. That and
> several other classic turtle designs (both the turtle code and the
> graphic output) are included with the quiz for participants to test
> against their Turtle class. The turtle code is in the samples folder
> and the graphics (.tiff files) are in the designs folder. Also,
> compare tree.tiff to your tree.png -- fairly similar.
>

My implementation includes an L-system exploration library which can
feed instructions directly to the pen. (which is abstracted from the
turtle in my code)

The turtle (which is implemented using eval in a very straight forward
manner), and the L-system library, can both produce strings of
instructions for the pen. (the pen is capable of both cairo and
gtk::drawingarea drawing)

I pulled most of the L-systems I was drawing from fractint, actually,
because the my L-system library is nearly interface compatible with
it. So credit goes out to the crazy wizards who contributed L-systems
to fractint.

There's even the option of having the turtle generate a string of
instructions, which can then be further iterated on by the L-systems,
an option that has yet to be properly exploited.

With that said, the code is a dirty, voracious, sub-optimal, tightly
coupled, borderline embarrassing, pile of hack. (As most of my one
weekend personal projects are.) But maybe it would be interesting to
you or others.

I've put it online, feel free to grab it:
http://www.danceliquid.com/docs/turtlegraphics.zip

But no cheating on the quiz with it... ;)

Regards,
-Harold