Vector graphics editor with BASIC code generation
Hello everyone,
I like to appeal to the collective memory in this forum about a piece of software I played with. Back in the mid 80's I got a copy of a japanese program that allowed you to draw on the screen with a simple point and click interface. So you can draw lines, circles, arcs, etc. Then you can also change color and paint the figures. Once your drawing was completed, you could either save the drawing in a custom format or... GENERATE the code of all the needed BASIC instructions to show your drawing! So you get a .BAS file that can be easily merged to your own program.
Does any of you know about this program? Or, does a similar program exists nowadays let's say in Python?
I appreciate your comments.
Thanks!
I like to appeal to the collective memory in this forum about a piece of software I played with. Back in the mid 80's I got a copy of a japanese program that allowed you to draw on the screen with a simple point and click interface. So you can draw lines, circles, arcs, etc. Then you can also change color and paint the figures. Once your drawing was completed, you could either save the drawing in a custom format or... GENERATE the code of all the needed BASIC instructions to show your drawing! So you get a .BAS file that can be easily merged to your own program.
Does any of you know about this program? Or, does a similar program exists nowadays let's say in Python?
I appreciate your comments.
Thanks!
Comments
what exactly do you mean, when you say "simple point and click interface"? Are we talking light pen, a pen-like stick, attached to some card, that you touched the monitor screen with and that had a push button near the tip?
Not that it matters, but I never worked with a light pen, I just know of them. And with the advent of Windows and Linux/X (meaning X11 or similar with full screen graphics capabilities) and OpenVMS and such, all those (insular) solutions have in all probability vanished.
No-one would develop such a solution today. The trick (in the sence of a smart solution and the knowledge to bring it about) is to use what is available and fill any gaps, maybe with your own program(s).
The idea is to use a graphical environment and use it to create your drawing, for instance DOS/AutoCAD. AutoCAD offers a function to export a drawing in textual form, which is quite well documented.
You write a filter, a program that reads from standard input and writes to standard output. This filter reads the .DXF (if I remeber correctly) and writes only the actual line drawing commands (or more complicated commands, if they are available in your BASIC Version (turtle graphics?!). This output you can then paste into your BASIC program.
Any other choice will do. Look for textual form of (line)drawing output, pixel won't do, at least not easyly - you would have to program your own picture recognition program as well, that recognizes, for instance, a line in a mass of pixels.
I personally prefer filters. With filters I can construct a pipe (output of one program goes as input to a following program), or, this is what make was designed for, dependencies; an altered drawing is newer(younger) as an exported drawing file as a BASIC file. And dependencies not only help automate files, it records which files depend how on other files. As programming language I recommend "C": most available on most systems.
Ahoi (sailor's greetings),
Joachim