[MWForum]truchet

[Wendy Petti]

Mike, your truchet project is quite amazing.  What a great "playground" for
exploring patterns.  I think it's very cool that you've provided a
mathematical interface as well as a design interface for the user to create
base designs.  There is much I still don't understand about it, even though
I think you've done a fine job of providing explanations... but I think it
will take me some time to really study it and experiment with it.

For my first visit I've merely loaded the sample designs you've included (in
the form of the ".tru" files) - wow!  They are wonderful!  (When I saw the
".tru" files in the zip file, I couldn't believe the project was really
going to work, and it took me a few days to get up the courage to try.  I
didn't know it was possible to make up extension names, and I certainly
didn't know it was possible to load files with made-up extensions.  I'm
curious to know why you made up the extension instead of just saving them as
text files - would that have worked too?)

By the way, I'm guessing there is probably another way to save the patterns
as image files in addition to the methods you've described... using a large
rectangular grid-sized turtle with the snapshape command, or else snaparea
(which doesn't require a turtle for that purpose), and then using the
saveshape command to save as an external file.

Thanks for sharing this very stimulating project.  I think we can all learn
a lot from it both mathematically and in terms of programming.

Wendy

> This program is intended for those fascinated
> by patterns.
> When the topic of Truchet tiles
> (http://www.counton.org/explorer/
> the section on morphing tiles)
> came up on the Forum some time ago,
> I wrote a program to generate a tiling,
> starting from some combination of
> tiles. Wendy suggested I make it more
> user-friendly, so after much prodding
> here is the result...