Playing with matches

if 0 {Richard Suchenwirth 2005-05-07 - Matches (small wooden sticks to light fire) are popular for playing games, too (Martin Gardner devotes chapter 2 in Mathematical Circus to them, for example). Here's matches emulated in Tcl:

At top left you have a matchbox. Left-click on a match to get a duplicate ("clone") which you can drag on the playing field. Right-click on a match to rotate it by 30 degrees. The screenshot shows one of Gardner's simpler challenges (red: move one match to make the equation correct) and the solution (blue).

Matches are obviously made from two canvas items: a longish rectangle and the head (an oval). The "mv" (movable) tag is added to clones of the ur-matches, so movement and rotation have a common bind target. Both of these operations work on item sets, so both the stick and the head are handled. This assumes that the set tag is the second in the list of tags, as it is here. }

 proc main {} {
    set ::tcl_precision 17 ;#-- to prevent rotation artefacts
    pack [canvas .c -background darkgreen] -fill both -expand 1
    .c create rect 5 5 45 65 -fill white ;#-- matchbox
    set red [match .c 15 10 55 red]
    .c bind $red <1>       {clone .c red %x %y}
    set blue [match .c 30 10 55 blue]
    .c bind $blue <1>      {clone .c blue %x %y}
    .c bind mv    <1>      {select .c %x %y}
    .c bind mv <B1-Motion> {move .c %x %y}
    .c bind mv    <3>      [list rotate .c [expr {acos(-1)/6.}]]
 }

#-- Draw a match, returning the common ID of its items

 proc match {w x y y1 color} {
    set id [$w create poly \
            [+ $x 1] [+ $y 1] [+ $x 5] [+ $y 1] \
            [+ $x 5] $y1 [+ $x 1] $y1 -fill bisque -outline black]
    $w itemconfig $id -tag m$id
    set head [$w create oval $x $y [+ $x 6] [+ $y 6] -fill $color -tag m$id]
    return m$id
 }

#-- make a duplicate of the current match

 proc clone {w color x y} {
    lassign [$w bbox [current'set $w]] x0 y0 x1 y1
    set id [match $w $x0 $y0 $y1 $color]
    $w itemconfig $id -tags [list mv$id mv]
 }

#-- retrieve the item set tag from the current item

 proc current'set w {
    lindex [$w gettags [$w find withtag current]] 0
 }

#-- Store the current position in two global variables

 proc select {w x y} {set ::X $x; set ::Y $y}

#-- Move the current item set

 proc move {w x y} {
    $w move [current'set $w] [- $x $::X] [- $y $::Y]
    set ::X $x; set ::Y $y
 }

#-- rotate the current item set

 proc rotate {w angle} {
    set tag [current'set $w]
    lassign [center $w $tag] xm ym
    foreach item [$w find withtag $tag] {
        if {[$w type $item] eq "oval"} {
            rotate'circle $w $item $xm $ym $angle
        } else { #-- good for poly and line items
            set coords {}
            foreach {x y} [$w coords $item] {
                set r [expr {hypot($x-$xm,$y-$ym)}]
                set a [expr {atan2($y-$ym,$x-$xm) + $angle}]
                lappend coords [expr {$xm+$r*cos($a)}] \
                           [expr {$ym+$r*sin($a)}]
            }
            $w coords $item $coords
        }
    }
 }

#-- Determine the center of a bounding box

 proc center {w tag} {
    lassign [$w bbox $tag] x0 y0 x1 y1
    list [expr {($x0+$x1)/2.}] [expr {($y0+$y1)/2.}]
 }

#-- Rotate a circle (rather, rotate its center, and reconstruct its bbox)

 proc rotate'circle {w tag xm ym angle} {
    lassign [$w coords $tag] x0 y0 x1 y1
    set x2 [expr {($x0+$x1)/2.}]
    set y2 [expr {($y0+$y1)/2.}]
    set rad [- $x2 $x0]
    set r [expr {hypot($x2-$xm,$y2-$ym)}]
    set a [expr {atan2($y2-$ym,$x2-$xm) + $angle}]
    set x [expr {$xm+$r*cos($a)}]
    set y [expr {$ym+$r*sin($a)}]
    $w coords $tag [- $x $rad] [- $y $rad] [+ $x $rad] [+ $y $rad]
 }

#-- prefix expr operators make the code shorter...

 foreach op {+ -} {proc $op {a b} "expr {\$a $op \$b}"}

#-- Let's go!

 main

if 0 {

LES: Bug: the heads look awful after rotation. Is that a bug in canvas? - RS: No - a thinko from my side. Heads are initially circles, which I thought should be neutral to rotation. But their coordinates are just two points (x0 y0 x1 y1), which after rotation (if the rotation center is not the circle's center) will describe a non-square bounding box. For this I had to introduce rotate'circle which determines the center and the radius, rotates the center, and reconstructs the bounding box. It uses coords instead of bbox because the latter delivers only integer coordinates.

Bug: if I click the head of a match in the box, only the head is picked instead of the whole match. - RS: fixed - the clone proc should first retrieve the tag of the item set (head and stick), then compute the bbox. Thanks for telling!

Category Toys | Arts and crafts of Tcl-Tk programming }