Wingeom for Windows 95/98/ME/2K/XP/Vista (6 July 2008)
6 July 2008: The user can now edit the colors that Wingeom displays, hence descriptions of the 16777216 available colors (few of which can be defined by a name) must be given in the usual numerical RGB format. For example, “hot pink” will be replaced by “rgb(255,0,127)”.
The array of colors has been enlarged as well, which means that older versions of the program cannot open files that contain the higher palette indices. If this is attempted, the self-explanatory message “incompatible versions” will appear. That should be the end of the story, except that the version preceding the RGB-enhanced version actually knows how to detect the RGB information and may try to read it anyway (programming oversight), which may play havoc with the palette. If this happens, simply close the window and open another window with “use defaults” checked. Better yet, download the current version!
3 July 2008: The label-saving feature was designed to keep transformations from unnecessarily relabeling points. In other words, there are situations in which it is known in advance that a specific transformation will produce image points that should coincide with existing points. By checking the “save labels” item before applying the transformation, the user instructs the program to match any point produced by this transformation with an existing point whose coordinates are nearly the same.
This feature should not be used indiscriminately, however, especially in a diagram that will be animated. The next two paragraphs give a reason.
Every transformation adds new objects (points, lines, circles) to a diagram, and the program remembers how many of each. It may happen during animation (perhaps because of label-saving) that fewer points are produced than expected, in which case the program invisibly creates the missing vertices, so that every point maintains its correct position in the inventory.
Suppose that a transformation is applied for the first time, and that the label-saving feature prevents the creation of a new point. Later, during animation, an unexpected new point might occur, in which case the program (detecting a surplus of points) removes the extra point; this is likely to cause a crash.
14 June 2003: You can now add password protection to your files.
Details of other changes can be found in the updated Help files.
There will of course be occasional bugs. If you find things that I have missed, please tell me about them. Also send along any suggestions.
If you use Windows XP and want Wingeom controls (buttons, scroll bars, etc) to have the Windows XP “look”, download this file (right-click and Save Target As). From this zipfile, extract the file whose name matches the program version you are using (there is one for each language), sending it to the same folder where the program itself is found.
It occasionally happens that initialization files (*.ini) become defective (in the event of a crash, for example). Opening a bad ini file can cause the program to act strangely, or not work at all (this is the source of many problems). For example, if the Btns menu does not display a check mark that indicates the current mouse function, this is a sure sign that the ini file has been corrupted. To tell the program not to use a suspicious ini file when it opens a window, check the menu item called “Use defaults”. (This is easier than finding the ini files and deleting them.) When windows close normally, their ini files are restored to health.
Wingeom normally places its initialization files in the “Windows” directory, and looks for them there. If this is not desirable, there are two other “network” versions of the program: The first one places its initialization files in the directory where the program is found, and the second one places its initialization files in the current directory (where the program happens to be operating at the time). If you would like one of these special versions in one of the available foreign languages, just let me know — my e-mail address can be found in the Help|About dialog box.
Some of the things that are not in the Windows 3.1 version: long filenames, background colors, and enhanced metafile support. Menus and shortcuts have more of the standard Windows look. The 2D part has several new constructions in the Point and Circle menus, and the mouse has acquired a rotation function. Bouncing-ball animations can be added to polygons and to conics. The 3D part of the program has been redesigned to make it more like the 2D part. (There is a construction History, for example, and macros as well.) The “Voronoi” module from Winlab has been added to the main menu of this program, as well as a new “tesselation” module. A “guess” module (analogous to the function-guessing program from Winlab) has also been created for this version of Wingeom.
