[OS X TeX] Programming literature: "Hilbert Curves"

Tue Jun 25 17:54:53 CEST 2019

Or, instead of an app, platform-independent JavaScript with HTML5.

On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 6:36 AM William Adams <will.adams at frycomm.com>
wrote:

> That's unfortunate.
>
> Hopefully someone will update that as an app so that it's readily
> available.
>
> William
>
> On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 9:32 AM Murray Eisenberg <
> murrayeisenberg at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Alas, that old Java Geometry Applet with this edition of Euclid’s
>> Elements is in Java, and at least with security defaults of the current
>> versions of macOS and Safari, it’s absolute torture to try to get the Java
>> applet to be allowed to run.
>>
>> On 25 Jun2019, at 9:26 AM, William Adams <will.adams at frycomm.com> wrote:
>>
>> At last! A worthy successor to:
>> https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.html
>>
>> Really looking forward to your presentation!
>>
>> William
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 8:47 PM Doug McKenna <doug at mathemaesthetics.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Well, what a long and strange trip (test) it's been!
>>>
>>> After many years of both concentrated and sporadic efforts on a variety
>>> of fronts, my combined application and/or electronic book ("Hilbert Curves"
>>> and/or "Outside-In and Inside-Gone") is now available (for $8) in Apple's
>>> App Store for Apple's iPad (and iPhone, but more screen real estate is
>>> better).
>>>
>>> Of interest to readers of this list, this app/book is, I believe, a
>>> first: it is self-typesetting on the user's device from TeX source code.
>>> See <http://www.mathemaesthetics.com/HilbertCurves.html> for a few
>>> screen shots.  The typeset math of course looks great, though it is not
>>> very complicated (high-school level).
>>>
>>> The app contains its own high-performance TeX-language interpreter,
>>> which I've been calling JSBox.  The TUGboat article I wrote a while back on
>>> how it traces itself is here:
>>>
>>> <https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb35-2/tb110mckenna.pdf>
>>>
>>> (although in this dedicated eBook's case, none of the tracing code is
>>> ever needed, so all the tracing code is conditionally compiled out to save
>>> quite a lot of space).
>>>
>>> JSBox is a from-the-ground-up rewrite of TeX/e-TeX's engine, but
>>> (currently) without any of the back-end primitives for various types of
>>> import/export of PDF data.  JSBox is not open source (maybe some day).  It
>>> is a static library written in C that is designed to be incorporated into
>>> any other piece of software, such as an iOS or Mac or other GUI application
>>> that simulates a document of pages with illustrations.
>>>
>>> Lots of work still to be done on it, but I had to get this
>>> proof-of-concept eBook/app done before continuing.  With respect to this
>>> TeX language interpreter's development, I'm still in what's technically
>>> called the "eating your own dog food" phase.  Sales of my app/eBook will
>>> help support further work on JSBox, especially getting LaTeX and the TDS
>>> working with it.
>>>
>>> Under the hood, each time this iOS application launches, the 160-page
>>> simulated book (pages are logically 8.5" by 18"), with its 135+
>>> non-file-based illustrations, is typeset anew, in under a half-second.  The
>>> book's TeX source code starts by reading and executing a copy of the
>>> "plain.tex" macros, followed by the "opmac.tex" (Olsak's Plain Macros)
>>> lightweight markup library (with some added override hacks), and another
>>> related file of math symbol definitions.  There is no format initialization
>>> relied upon, needed, or desired.  The glyphs and metrics used are from
>>> Computer Modern.  And when the job is done, all the TeX layout data
>>> structures remain in memory for every page, for later use by the app.
>>>
>>> The point of it all, over and above the intellectual exercise, was to do
>>> an end-run around all static illustration files, most of which are
>>> inadequate for my eBook's topic of interest: space-filling curve
>>> illustrations each comprising self-avoiding paths of literally
>>> (numerically?) tens of millions of tiny line segments in each picture.
>>> Every illustration is resolution-independent and zoom-able up to about
>>> 300x.  There are no accompanying EPSF, PDF, SVG, or MOV illustration
>>> files.  The app's code is in charge of drawing (and in some cases,
>>> animating) each illustration into its anointed reserved box space on a page.
>>>
>>> Most illustrations have a set of interactive controls to allow the
>>> user/reader to play with various graphic or other parameters.  One
>>> particular illustration comprises over 77,000 sub-illustrations (a complete
>>> enumeration of all possibilities from which the user/reader chooses).
>>> Another illustration animates an actual backtrack search as the algorithm
>>> runs, to find all solutions to the problem at hand.  The reader/user can
>>> change pruning strategies as it searches.
>>>
>>> All the illustrations are dynamically built by compiled code and drawn
>>> at read-time, not at typesetting time.  The book's TeX source code thinks
>>> it is incorporating PDF files, but the PDF file names are mapped into
>>> objects compiled into the client app.  Each such illustration object
>>> reports back what its bounding box is on any page, and the the JSBox
>>> interpreter reserves the space and continues typesetting away in its usual
>>> TeX way.  The illustrations and all their attendant interactive controls
>>> are built and drawn later in the reserved area when the user first turns to
>>> that page.  Each illustration is zoom-able independently of the simulated
>>> page it is on, which nicety PDF doesn't do.
>>>
>>> This design allows my app to be distributed as a (mere!) 7MB download in
>>> size (and 2MB of that was added by Apple), whereas an equivalent eBook app
>>> with PDF or SVG illustrations and MOV animations (for my particular
>>> purposes), would otherwise be many, many gigabytes of data.
>>>
>>> The idea is to allow a GUI app, coded to draw anything on the device
>>> screen in some view, and having any kind of user interface controls and
>>> gestures with respect to that interface, to simultaneously surround itself
>>> with a set of book (or manual) pages having TeX-quality layout and math.
>>>
>>> I've signed up to give a demo of this self-typesetting app/book, and
>>> talk about some interesting TeX-related issues, at the upcoming 2019 TUG
>>> conference in August.
>>>
>>> Onward, into the fog ...
>>>
>>>
>>> - Doug McKenna
>>> Mathemaesthetics, Inc.
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>>
>> ---
>> Murray Eisenberg murrayeisenberg at gmail.com
>> 503 King Farm Blvd #101 Home (240)-246-7240
>> Rockville, MD 20850-6667 Mobile (413)-427-5334
>>
>>
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>

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