Some Accidental Designs
Every programmer knows that errors can lead to surprising results.
Usually, such surprises are unpleasant. On rare occasions, an error can
result in output that is not what was intended, but which is nonetheless
interesting.
Errors in PostScript, the language I use to generate
curve-stitch designs, often result in no output at all. (PostScript interpreters
aren’t big on displaying error messages.) The output can be goofy,
perplexing, and useless. On rare occasions, a programming mistake generates
an interesting design. Such was the case with the program that yielded the
output shown here:
It is not particularly obvious that the figure is based
on an octagon. The lines that were intended to be inside the polygon were drawn
outside it instead. Here is the same figure with the octagon basis of the figure
shown in red:
This next figure is generated from a 14-sided polygon.
While trying to make the program that produced the
above designs more elegant, I made another interesting mistake. That error
produced the design below. The parts of this design that seem curved were
features I thought I should get rid of. When I did that, however, the figure
became very much less interesting. I therefore left the program alone.
Of course, these designs can be generalized. Here is
the equivalent design based on a pentagon.
Designs using other polygons are possible.
— LED, 3/15/2024 rev. 3/18/2024 |
