Ico - Manual

Name

ico - animate an icosahedron or other polyhedron

ico [ -display display ] [ -geometry geometry ] [ -r ] [ -d pattern ] [ -i ] [ -dbl ] [ -faces ] [ -noedges ] [ -sleep n ] [ -obj object ] [ -threads n ] [ -colors colour-list ]

ico -objhelp

ico -version

Description

Ico displays a wire-frame rotating polyhedron, with hidden lines removed, or a solid-fill polyhedron with hidden faces removed. There are a number of different polyhedra available; adding a new polyhedron to the program is quite simple.

Options

-r: Display on the root window instead of creating a new window.
-d pattern: Specify a bit pattern for drawing dashed lines for wire frames.
-i: Use inverted colours for wire frames.
-dbl: Use double buffering on the display. This works for either wire frame or solid fill drawings. For solid fill drawings, using this switch results in substantially smoother movement. Note that this requires twice as many bit planes as without double buffering. Since some colours are typically allocated by other programs, most eight-bit-plane displays will probably be limited to eight colours when using double buffering.
-faces: Draw filled faces instead of wire frames.
-noedges: Don’t draw the wire frames. Typically used only when -faces is used.
-sleep n: Sleep n seconds between each move of the object.
-obj object: Specify what object to draw. If no object is specified, an icosahedron is drawn.
-objhelp: Print out a list of the available objects, along with information about each object.
-threads n: Number of windows, each its own thread.
-colors colour colour ...: Specify what colours should be used to draw the filled faces of the object. If less colours than faces are given, the colours are reused.
-version: Print program version information and exit.

Program termination

Pressing "q" will close a window. If compiled with threads support, the program will stop only when all threads terminate. You can also close an animation window using the ICCCM delete message (depending on your window manager, you will have a decoration button or menu to send such message).

Adding polyhedra

If you have the source to ico, it is very easy to add more polyhedra. Each polyhedron is defined in an include file by the name of objXXX.h, where XXX is something related to the name of the polyhedron. The format of the include file is defined in the file polyinfo.h. Look at the file objcube.h to see what the exact format of an objXXX.h file should be, then create your objXXX.h file in that format.

After making the new objXXX.h file (or copying in a new one from elsewhere), simply do a ’make depend’. This will recreate the file allobjs.h, which lists all of the objXXX.h files. Doing a ’make’ after this will rebuild ico with the new object information.

Bugs

Pyramids and tetrahedrons with filled faces do not display correctly.

A separate colour cell is allocated for each name in the -colors list, even when the same name may be specified twice. Colour allocation fails in TrueColor displays and option -faces does not work well.

This manual does not describe all the options listed by -help.

Table of contents

Name
Synopsis
Description
Options
Program termination
Adding polyhedra
Bugs

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