Re: Supershapes for dia?

[Ian Redfern <redferni logica com>]

OK, I've bitten.

I've made a Dia document with the samples given on the web page. The document and its generating Perl script are at http://www.redferni.uklinux.net/dia - feel free to play to see if you can get any more interesting shapes.

The starfish shapes are really quite cute. However, I have to say that I don't think vector graphics programs are appropriate for highly detailed shapes like these - you end up with hundreds of polygon segments and really need some sort of adaptive stepping algorithm to do justice to them. Better to use a plotting program such as Ploticus to experiment with them, then generate SVG output if needed.

Ian Redfern.

On Sun, 2004-03-21 at 23:03, Alan Horkan wrote:
> On Sun, 21 Mar 2004, W. Borgert wrote:
>
> > Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2004 22:27:41 +0000
> > From: W. Borgert <debacle@debian.org>
> > Reply-To: dia-list@gnome.org
> > To: dia-list@gnome.org
> > Subject: Supershapes for dia?
> >
> > This would make a nice addition to dia:
> http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/curves/supershape/
> > (with C code example).  Any takers?
>
> "The supershape equation is an extension of the both the equation of the
> sphere and ellipse"
>
> Very cool.
> Curved stars and polygons, a weird droplet shape.
> Ooh pretty!
>
> It is like Spirograph* all over again.
>
> I think for a complicated sphere/ellipse like this to be really practical
> it would require something like handles to allow interactive adjustment a
> feature that Dia doesn't have.  I think it would be difficult to make this
> into a simple to use feature and I'm not even sure the markup would be all
> that easy generate either (a complex SVG path I'd guess)
>
> I'm not sure this is ideal for Dia.  In my humble opinion, the ideal would
> be if other applications would provide the drawing tools Dia needs and Dia
> would focus on fast production of technical diagrams from premade shapes.
> A more generic way to plot equations as paths in Dia might be
> appropriate to Dia.
>
> I have forwarded a copy of this mail to the Inkscape developers who I hope
> might be interested to implement an advanced Ellipse tool like this.
>
> Despite my reservations on how best to implement this it it would
> certainly be great if someone was interested enough to implement it.
>
> Sincerely
>
> Alan Horkan
> http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
>
> * Obligatory Simpsons quote:
> "Dr. S: Wait: did you know that there's a direct correlation between the
> decline of Spirograph and the rise in gang activity?  Think about it."
>
> PS Please don't crosspost in reply to this message.  I have deliberately
> set the Reply-To to go to me.  The Dia list will overwrite this and set
> the Reply-To as the Dia list and the Inkscape list will leave it alone, so
> please respond only to the relevant list.
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