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Date Posted: |
June 19th, 2003
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Last Updated: |
October 13th, 2003
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License: |
See Below |
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Downloads: |
2,535 total; 1 recently |
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Page Views: |
20,097 total |
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User Rating: |
awaiting 10 votes |
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About Spirograph:
An emulator of a gear with hole (not necessary in the center) rotating inside another gear. A drawing element (a pen) is put through the hole. Great spiral curves is the result.
"Spirograph" is a plastic toy which allows to create a nice-looking spiral curves. It consists of a ring and a disk with hole in it. You are required to put a pen through the hole and to apply some pressure. Pen (guided by the hole) will leave very interesting spiral curved drawing. I decided to create an emulator for this toy, despite that BeOS already has one, though not that feature-rich :-) (see links below).
Originally "Spirograph" was invented in 1962 by British engineer Denys Fisher (1918 - 2002), during his research on a new design for bomb detonators for NATO. These days he worked in family business King Fisher Engineering (Leeds, Yorkshire).
Fisher's problem was to apply his invention to industrial world, but the family was so excited by Spirograph that Denys Fisher decided to sell it as a toy. In 1965 the new toy was shipped to first customers. It was voted the best educational toy for 4 years in a raw (1966 - 1969).
Denys Fisher, the inventor of this perfect toy, died 17 September, 2002.
Thanks to Dave Osbourne for supplying me big part of this info!
The application lets you control the main radius (internal radius of the ring), the internal radius (radius of the disk) and the hole position (distance of the hole from the center of the disk). You may add a third ring, as well. Besides, you can control the color of the curve and its width.
The drawing will take some time and is very CPU-concuming. Sometimes you may think the application is stuck, but it is not! Drawing is guaranteed to be finite, though sometimes it may take up to minute to be completed.
Thanks a lot to Brian for performing the PPC build!
Note: there will be 4 variations for this application: Binary Only, Binary with Readme, Source only and Readme (without source and without application). They are fully updated now. Remember that Binary with Readme and Readme will be updated with some delay after I publish new Binary only and Source only versions!
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Binary only |
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v1.5 - Freeware |
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Variation description:
This is the binary of the Spirograph.
Stripped from everything else - no Readme, no Sources.
Distrubuted as Freeware, with no warranty of any kind. :-)
Details about this version:
The new version of Spirograph is delivered!
New features include:
"Random" color works now. ("Rainbow" and "Custom" still don't).
Menu bar extended and updated with new menus.
Added option to use a predefined color for the background. Use menu "Background" to color the background in one of predefined colors.
Added option to use an external image for the background. Loading image is possible with "Alt+O" keyborad shortcut, with "File > Open as background" menu, with the "Layers > Background" menu, with "Background > Load Image" menu. Drag'n'drop from the Tracker is supported as well.
Added layers. Now each curve exists in separate layer, and you may reordrer curves as you wish, placing previous curves on top of more recently added ones. A great design addition! Currently number of layers is limited to 20, though you will rarely achieve this number of curves in one drawing.
Known problems:
"Cyan" color for the background doesn't look cyan. :-)
If you don't alter parameters, after 4 - 8 attempts to add a new curve (which will be the same curve added over and over again) you'll receive debugging alerts like "This bitmap is already taken" et cetera. Just don't mind these messages.
In planned releases:
Custom color support for the drawing and for the background.
Allowing the customer to decide what is the maximal number of layers. Therefore - implementing a kind of "Preferences".
Allowing to save curves as "Favourites".
Allowing the user to define a center for the curve.
Creating an "About" information box.
Updating the "Readme" with information about the inventor of the "Spirograph".
Enjoy the new release!!!
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Intel Version - requires R5 (326 KB) |
1,063 downloads |
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| Add Additional Location |
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| Source Included and Available Separately |
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Binary with Readme |
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v1.5 - Freeware |
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Variation description:
This is intended to be the latest binary of "Spirograph" with included Readme.
Due to lack of time, I prefer to code then to write Readmes, therefore latest version of Readme will be published with a delay after latest version of program is published. Thus latest version of "Binary with Readme" will be published some time after the "Binary only" is published.
Details about this version:
This is "Spirograph v1.5" with included Readme, which was also updated to v1.5.
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Intel Version - requires R5 (865 KB) |
496 downloads |
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| Add Additional Location |
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| Source Included and Available Separately |
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Readme |
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v1.5 - Freeware |
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Variation description:
This is the latest Readme file. Neither application nor its source code included!
Details about this version:
Readme (user manual) for the "Spirograph" application, adapted to v1.5. It's only "readme" file! No application and no source code included!!!
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Any Processor (538 KB) |
143 downloads |
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| Add Additional Location |
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| Source Included |
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Source code only |
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v1.5 - GPL |
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Variation description:
This is only the source code for the "Spirograph", for the most current version.
No application and no readme included!
The source code is released under the GPL license.
Details about this version:
These are the sources for the "Spirograph", version v1.5.
Neither the application nor the readme file included, though, you can download the readme from this page - and you can easily build the application by yourself.
WANTED - someone who will build this program for PPC.
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Intel Version - requires R5 (25 KB) |
177 downloads |
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| Add Additional Location |
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| Source Included |
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Like this app? Have questions or comments?
Why not tell the author? Use the "e-mail publisher" link to get in touch with the publisher; they usually love getting feedback.
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