Platitude

Created 16 July 2005

Platitude is an application for creating simple lattices. Lattice drawings describes my interest in them.

Download

Platitude is available two ways:

As a Windows installer: Platitude_100_setup.exe. Simply install it as you would any Windows program. There are no prerequisites.
As Python source: Platitude-1.0.zip. To run it, you’ll need wxPython 2.5.3 and Jason Orendorff’s path module.

Using Platitude

The File - New menu brings up a dialog asking for the dimensions of the lattice to create:

The New Lattice dialog, asking for dimensions

Entering (for example) 5 by 3 produces a lattice with 5 little loops across the top, and three little loops going down, with four large loops at the corners:

Modifying the lattice is done by clicking in the spaces between the traces. Each click changes the four sides around it. If the side has a trace on it, the trace is removed. If the side has no trace, a trace is added. This ensures that the traces are always unbroken, and form complete circuits.

For example, clicking on the spots indicated in red:

produces these changes:

Lattices can be saved to .lat files with File - Save, and re-opened with File - Open.

Transformation

There’s one other way to modify the lattice in Platitude. Edit - Triplicate will convert every trace into three parallel traces. This makes the lattice three times larger, and can be an interesting way to explore larger lattices:

Output

Platitude cannot produce graphic output now except on the screen. Use a screen capture to produce graphics files of your lattices.

Future

This is a very bare-bones application right now. I’d love to add more to it. Some ideas:

Other modification options, such as dragging out rectangles to invert.
Other transformation options, including customizable operations like triplicate.
Standard application features, such as undo/redo, printing, multiple documents, cut and paste.
Graphic files output.
Coloring options.
Analysis features such as counting loops, extracting loops shapes.
Custom drawing styles, perhaps provided as tile images.

Feedback

I’d love to hear about your experiences with Platitude. Comment here, or send me a note.

Comments

Max 11:21 AM on 16 Jul 2005

This is an awesome program.

Mike 11:38 AM on 16 Jul 2005

Nice toy!

Just wondering what you used to create windows installer with all required modules included.

Ned Batchelder 2:12 PM on 16 Jul 2005

I used py2exe to convert the Python into a Windows executable with supporting files, then used InnoSetup to create an installer from those files.

mmg 6:50 PM on 16 Jul 2005

re Windows: may need to run Python 2.4 Windows installer to get MSVCR71.dll

Microsoft's licensing regime... bah!

Mike 8:09 AM on 17 Jul 2005

Thanks Ned

Ned Batchelder 8:34 PM on 17 Jul 2005

mmg: I've added msvcr71.dll to the kit, so it will be installed with the application. Thanks for pointing it out.

André 6:03 PM on 20 Jul 2005

Although quite a bit different, you may want to have a look at
http://www.pims.math.ca/knotplot/celtic/

Knotplot is a *neat* program, written by a good friend of mine (but I don't think I am biased here :-)

mitchell 10:30 AM on 9 Nov 2005

Ned, I am a teacher at the highschool level. I have been searching for drawings my students could do plotting ordered pairs and connecting the dots (I teach Pre-Algebra) I ran across your site and wondered if you know where I could find any. I love this Platitude.

Ned Batchelder 10:37 PM on 14 Nov 2005

Mitchell, I don't know where to find something like that, sorry.

gonaners16 1:30 AM on 18 Jun 2006

COOLIO!!!!!!!! you rock man!!!!! luv da site!!!!!!!!

Poet 1:41 PM on 4 Jan 2007

Very nice, have been playing with it for an hour or two with my beamer!

keep up this work!

christina 4:22 PM on 6 Jun 2007

I installed the program but when I open it I get a 'Fatal Error' message: Error while loding DLL 'unicows.dll'! The application will terminate now.
Do you know what I should do?

nelix 6:43 PM on 29 Jul 2007

Are you using windows 95, christina?