A major new feature sprang up over the weekend, and it’s actually one of the things that was immediately desirable when this project started over a year ago. 

PolargraphSD can now draw vector sprites.  These are little fragments of vector art saved into their own files, they are executed by a new command (C39) that specifies where on the machine they should be drawn and at what size.  It works as a kind of macro.  The first application is writing:

In this case I’ve made up 26 files, each with a letter form in it.  I specify the active area using the controller and a starting point where to draw the first letter, then feed in a load of text.  Lines wrap until the active area is full.

This uses the rove area as the demarcation for it’s operations.  The rove area is not entirely a new thing, but it’s never really worked before.  It’s really nothing more than a safe, cartesian area to behave in and it’s specified as simply as dragging a box in the controller and sending it to the machine. It’s going to be important for future standalone functions where the machine will be given free rein to draw or scribble or otherwise fill in this rove area.  It’s called a rove area because the machine is free to rove anywhere in it.

I’ve committed the code I’ve done already, but there’s still a little bit of work to do before putting out a full new compiled version, so that’ll happen later in the week.