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Tipsy Turtle

Artists welcome! This is a turtle graphics program that can load and save image files in the usual formats. It can make banners and such, or draw decorative patterns on top of existing pictures. While I made it for fun, it's capable enough to generate the official cover art and logo for itself.

=> Tipsy Turtle screenshot (75K)

Tipsy Turtle uses familiar turtle graphics commands, though some of them work in unusual ways. However the programming language is a Forth dialect.

Download

The current version as of 2023-07-26 is 1.1 beta. Beware, it might eat your homework!

Tipsy Turtle is available as native executables for 32-bit and 64-bit Linux, and also as source code. On Linux, it requires the Gtk3 library to run.

=> 64-bit Linux edition (180K) | 32-bit Linux edition (190K) | source code (82K)

This program is written in the Nim programming language, with the NiGui library. You need a Nim compiler to build it, which in turn requires a C compiler. A copy of NiGui 0.2.7 is included with the source code.

It should be possible to make a native Windows build. You're on your own there.

How to use

In a turtle graphics system, you draw not with the mouse, but by directing a virtual "turtle", that traces its path while moving, with an equally virtual pen. Directions are usually of the form: "walk forward this many steps, turn right this many degrees, repeat n times". But since our turtle is kinda tipsy, it only understands directions given backwards:

        50 forward
        50 forward 90 right
        [ 100 fd 90 rt ] 3 times
        { [ 100 fd 90 rt ] 4 times 36 rt } 10 times

You can enter the above one by one on the command line, or all at once in the Forth console.

=> Ripen Forth

Speaking of which: Tipsy Turtle understands a Forth dialect named Ripen. More details about the language proper are available on its own homepage. For a few examples, load the files with an .rpn extension included with the program. A little documentation is also available:

=> Documentation directory

Keyboard shortcuts

• Ctrl-N: create new image
• Ctrl-O: open image file
• Ctrl-S: save image file
• Ctrl-L: focus the command line
• Ctrl-Q: quit program

(and at the Forth console)

• Ctrl-R: run code from the editor

License and support

Tipsy Turtle is open source (and so is NiGui). See the included file for details.

=> MIT License

I'd love to hear from you. Here's where you can reach me more easily:

=> #ctrl-c IRC channel on Tilde.chat | @notimetoplay@elekk.xyz

Last updated: 26 July 2023.

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