Eev and (My)Qdraw

My main page on Maxima is here.
This page is about my extensions to Ted Woollett's Qdraw, a drawing package for Maxima.
I'm calling my extensions "MyQdraw". Its examples use eepitch blocks and test blocks.

0. Introduction

The animations below were created with MyQdraw:

Creating animations with MyQdraw is not hard - see this section.
Using MyQdraw interactively is quite easy. Click on the screenshots below:

I also use MyQdraw to LaTeXify Maxima logs with images - but the interface for that is very weird. See here.

1. Maxima by Example

One of the best places for learning Maxima from examples is a (free) book whose name is - ta-daaa! - Maxima by Example. It is divided into chapters, and my script to download a local copy of it is here. Its chapter 13 is about Qdraw, that is a front-end to Maxima's draw2d command (see also the Maxima Workbook).

This page is about my current extensions to Qdraw. I'm calling my extensions "MyQdraw" - a bad name, chosen on purpose to indicate that this is not a mature package.

2. The "load"s

The examples in this page will suppose that you have downloaded myqdraw from its git repository, with something like this:

* (eepitch-shell)
* (eepitch-kill)
* (eepitch-shell)
# (find-fline "/tmp/myqdraw/")
rm -Rv /tmp/myqdraw/
mkdir  /tmp/myqdraw/
cd     /tmp/myqdraw/
git clone https://github.com/edrx/myqdraw .

and that you have two lines like these ones in your init file:

load_qdraw  () := load("/tmp/myqdraw/qdraw.mac");
load_myqdraw() := load("/tmp/myqdraw/myqdraw3.mac");

I use the definitions below - see here:

load_qdraw  () := load("~/myqdraw/qdraw.mac");
load_myqdraw() := load("~/myqdraw/myqdraw3.mac");

3. Emacs

I will also suppose that you have eev installed - see this page - and that you have a `code-c-d' that makes `find-myqdraw' point to the right place, like this:

;; Test: (find-myqdrawfile "")
;;  See: http://anggtwu.net/eev-qdraw.html
(code-c-d "myqdraw" "~/myqdraw/" :anchor)

At this moment all the people who are testing MyQdraw have installed it using this:

(find-windows-beginner-intro)
(find-windows-beginner-intro "12. Install qdraw")

4. The core of MyQdraw

Initially "myqdraw" was just this one-liner:

myqdraw([drargs]) := apply('qdraw, flatten([drargs]));

Here's why. The program below produces these two images:

Its call to `qdraw' produces the image at the left and its call to `myqdraw' produces the image at the right. Here is the code:

* (eepitch-maxima)
* (eepitch-kill)
* (eepitch-maxima)
load_qdraw();

P  : [cos(t), sin(2*t)];
ts : [0, %pi/4, %pi/2];

define(P(t),   P);
define(Pt(t),  diff(P,t));
define(Ptt(t), diff(P,t,2));

qdraw(xr(-4,4),yr(-4,4),
      para(P[1],P[2], t,0,2*%pi, lc(orange)),
      vector(P(0),    Pt(0),      hl(0.1),lc(red)),
      vector(P(%pi/4),Pt(%pi/4),  hl(0.1),lc(red)),
      vector(P(0),    Ptt(0),     hl(0.1),lc(forest_green)),
      vector(P(%pi/4),Ptt(%pi/4), hl(0.1),lc(forest_green))
     );

myqdraw([drargs]) := apply('qdraw, flatten([drargs]));
myqdraw(xr(-4,4),yr(-4,4),
        para(P[1],P[2], t,0,2*%pi, lc(orange)),
        makelist(vector(P(t),Pt (t), hl(0.1),lc(red)), t, ts),
        makelist(vector(P(t),Ptt(t), hl(0.1),lc(forest_green)), t, ts)
     );

The `qdraw' in it is called - and it needs to be called - with all its drawing commands "at the same level", but `myqdraw' flattens its list of drawing commands and then passes the flattened version to qdraw. The qdraw and the myqdraw above are called like this:

qdraw(xr(_),
      yr(_),
      para(_),
      vector(_),
      vector(_),
      vector(_),
      vector(_));

myqdraw(xr(_),
        yr(_),
        para(_),
        [vector(_),
         vector(_),
         vector(_)],
        [vector(_),
         vector(_),
         vector(_)]);

For complex drawings I found `myqdraw' much easier to use.

After a while I saw that it would be good karma to also include some debugging functions. `qdraw' is a kind of preprocessor - first it calls `qdraw1' to transform its drawing commands into a list of drawing commands in the syntax of `draw2d', and then it calls `draw2d'. In this program

* (eepitch-maxima)
* (eepitch-kill)
* (eepitch-maxima)
load_myqdraw();
a_circle : para(cos(t), sin(t), t,0,2*%pi);
qdraw  (a_circle);
qdraw1 (a_circle);
qdraw1v(a_circle);

the `qdraw' just draws a circle, and the `qdraw1' doesn't draw anything, it just returns this list of drawing commands for `draw2d':

[ip_grid_in = [10, 10], grid = true, nticks = 100, key = "", 
line_width = 3, transparent = true, point_size = 3, point_type = 7, 
label_alignment = left, head_type = nofilled, head_angle = 30, 
head_length = 0.5, parametric(cos(t), sin(t), t, 0, 2 %pi), xaxis = true, 
xaxis_width = 2, yaxis = true, yaxis_width = 2]

and the `qdraw1v' - a function that I defined - returns that list of drawing commands for `draw2d' "formatted vertically", like this:

ip_grid_in = [10,10]
grid = true
nticks = 100
key = ""
line_width = 3
transparent = true
point_size = 3
point_type = 7
label_alignment = left
head_type = nofilled
head_angle = 30
head_length = 0.5
parametric(cos(t),sin(t),t,0,2*%pi)
xaxis = true
xaxis_width = 2
yaxis = true
yaxis_width = 2

4.1. Eight functions

So, qdraw.mac defines these two main functions:

• `qdraw1', that just translates the qdraw commands to draw2d commands, and
• `qdraw', that does that translation and calls draw2d to draw the result.

Let me invent some new verbs:

• `qdraw1' "qtranslates"
• `qdraw' qtranslates and draws the result - or, in short: "qdraws".

This part of myqdraw-core.mac complement those two functions with six new ones to build this cube,

qdraw ------ myqdraw
   | \         |   \
   | qdraw1    |  myqdraw1
   |   |       |      |
qdrawv |---- myqdrawv |
     \ |          \   |
     qdraw1v ---- myqdraw1v

where:

• `qdraw' qdraws,
• `qdraw1' qtranslates,
• `qdrawv' formats vertically,
• `qdraw1v' qtranslates and formats vertically,
• `myqdraw' flattens and then qdraws,
• `myqdraw1' flattens and qtranslates,
• `myqdrawv' flattens and formats vertically,
• `myqdraw1v' flattens, qtranslates and formats vertically.

4.2. The rest of the core

5. Generating PDFs

This module

(find-myqdraw "topdf1.mac")

defines a variant of `myqdraw' called `myqdrawp', that can be configured to work in three modes. The command

myqdrawp_to_screen();

makes `myqdrawp' be equivalent to `myqdraw'; the command

myqdrawp_to_single_pdf();

is not very interesting, so I won't explain it now, and

myqdrawp_to_new_pdf();

makes each call to `myqdrawp' draw into a new PDF instead of drawing on the screen. This mode is to generate animations, as explained in the next section, and by my variant of emaxima.sty - see here.

5.1. Animations

In all the (few!) cases in which I wanted to produce animations with Maxima my animations were always just teasers for something else... for example, this animation

is a teaser for this flipbook. I needed a way to make all frames of my animations accessible in high resolution, and I needed to let people move back and forth easily between the frames with an adjustable speed - and the easiest way to do that was by generating flipbooks in PDF. The animation loads immediately, and jumps in your face; accessing the PDF takes some clicks, some seconds, and some patience.

Maxima comes with several ways to create animated gifs. We can use:

• draw with "terminal=animated_gif" to produce animated gifs directly, or
• draw or with "terminal=multipage_pdf", and then convert the multipage PDF to an animated gif,
• or we can use WxMaxima, that comes with with_slider_draw and friends...

...but it was easy to adapt MyQdraw to make it produce a series of frames and then glue them into a flipbook, so I did that.

One of the files that myqdraw3.mac loads is topdf1.mac, and topdf1.mac ends with a test block called "quick-demo", that has a part that starts with

* (eepitch-maxima)
* (eepitch-kill)
* (eepitch-maxima)

that produces the frames, and a part that starts with

* (eepitch-shell)
* (eepitch-kill)
* (eepitch-shell)

that produces the flipbook and the animated gif. Here's what we see after running the first part:

Note this part of the log:

(%i3) myqdrawp_to_screen ();
(%o3)                      Will draw to the screen.
(%i4) myqdrawp_to_new_pdf();    "Skip this line to draw to the screen"$
(%o4)                   Will always draw to a new PDF.
(%i6) 

If we just press a series of <f8>s the "myqdrawp_to_new_pdf()" overrides the "myqdrawp_to_screen()", and each one of these `myqdrawp's

myqdrawp(drawing(0));
myqdrawp(drawing(0.5));
myqdrawp(drawing(1.0));
myqdrawp(drawing(1.5));

saves a new PDF to disk; but if we had skipped the "myqdrawp_to_new_pdf()" by typing a <down> on its line instead of an <f8>, then each one of the `myqdrawp's above would draw to the screen - instead of creating a PDF.

The second part, whose core is:

* (eepitch-shell)
* (eepitch-kill)
* (eepitch-shell)
./mkanim1.sh ECHO=and_run makeboth /tmp/frames.gif /tmp/frames.pdf /tmp/frame_*
**
** Inspect frames.pdf and frames.git with:
** (find-fline "/tmp/" "frames.pdf")
** (find-pdf-page "/tmp/frames.pdf")
**          file:///tmp/frames.gif
**           (brg "/tmp/frames.gif")

is explained here. Lines that start with "**" are treated by <f8> as comments; some of them contain ways to inspect the flipbook or the animated git, but to execute them we need `M-e' or `M-x brg'.