SymSketch - for doodling symmetrical shapes

[SFR]

Back in the Windows days I spent some time searching for a simple and free graphic program that would allow drawing symmetrical shapes.
My best find was UltimatePaint, but the symmetry is only a small part of it and I wanted something small and simple; besides, being on Linux now, I also prefer a native solutions.

Of course I haven't found anything what would suit my needs, so having no choice, I decided to take things into my own hands again.
Bash/Gtkdialog are too slow for that and C/BaCon/(and similar) are still out of my reach, so I learned Icon language enough to write a primitive app of this kind.

The result is nothing fancy, it's just for drawing b/w, snowflake/rosette-like shapes.
Left mouse button to draw, right to erase. No lines, rects, circles, only freehand.

Instructions:
1. Download and unpack the attached SymSketch-0.1.tar.gz.
It contains compiled (or actually "tokenized") symsketch executable as well as source code (symsketch.icn).
2. It's also necessary to obtain iconx executor - download Icon for Linux (32bit or 64bit), unpack it, go to ./icon-v951/bin/ and copy iconx into the same directory where symsketch is (or somewhere into $PATH, e.g. /usr/bin/, /usr/local/bin/, etc.).
3. Make sure both files (iconx and symsketch) are executable and click on symsketch.

Keyboard shortcuts:
1-9: pixel size
+/-: increase/decrease the amount of symmetry points (1-100)
m: toggle mirror mode
c: clear drawing area
s: save image (as SymImage_X.xpm, in $HOME directory)
q: quit

Written and tested on Slacko-5.7.0.
___________

Update 2017-06-03: See this post for version 0.2.

Enjoy the doodling &
Greetings!

[zigbert]

cool

[don570]

I sent an email to mtpaint maintainer, Dimitri,
to look at this.

[dejan555]

Nice, this is fun. Also what a coincidence, I didn't see this post before but I talked in mtpaint thread recently how you can simulate this effect - not in realtime like in yours app though.
I actually started doing some symetric images in mtpaint (link to gallery in signature)
Also, I've been wondering if some graphic app has this feature, or at least as a plugin - the only time before that I've seen this is on Amiga's "Deluxe Paint" progam in an emulator.
Good job on this, works on dpup 487!

[SFR]

Hey Dejan, very nice loops you've made there.

Also, I've been wondering if some graphic app has this feature, or at least as a plugin

Well, some kind of such an effect is available in InkScape, but it needs to be enabled at compile-time, as described here.

Btw - interesting, randomly generated, fractal-ish symmetric patterns: http://rfractals.net/hex/index.php

Greetings!

[SFR]

Here's v0.2, which is C/GTK+ port.

I barely know C, this is my first C/GTK+ app and 70% of the code was done using 'web search for some examples -> copy -> paste -> adjust' routine, so it's not state-of-the-art coding, to put it mildly.
BUT, it works, more or less, as intended.

The attached archive contains the source + build script.
It also contains 2 binaries (x86_32 & x86_64), both built in Fatdog64-710 - may or may not work in other Puppies.
To build from sources, make sure devx.sfs is loaded and then just launch ./build script.

Some notes:
- left mouse button = draw, right mouse button = erase, middle mouse button = invert (<- very recommended, adds nice, "artistic" noise; see screenshots),
- images are saved in $HOME directory as "SymSketch_<date>_<time>.png".
___________

Version 0.3:
- 'colon' replaced with 'dot' in output filename, to avoid problems with FAT filesystem (thanks to don570),
- 'Mirror' is now relative to the Y-axis (thanks to don570),
- fixed some minor memory leaks (not all, though).

Have fun &
Greetings!

[don570]

It worked nicely in fatdog64, however there is a bug
When I tried to drag the image file to a USB stick I discovered that
the filename has colon symbol : which is not allowed by fat32

Code: Select all

filename = g_strdup_printf ("%s/%s_%d-%02d-%02d_%02d:%02d:%02d.%s",

__________________________________________________
Also I have a request....

If you can modify the code so that a symmetrical face can be drawn so that it is upright rather than on its side. ( see image)

[SFR]

the filename has colon symbol : which is not allowed by fat32

Yeah, I made it like this, because images go straight to $HOME, which can't be FAT.
But ok, changed it to 'dot'.

upright rather than on its side

Makes sense, corrected.

New version in my previous post.

Thanks for the feedback &
Greetings!