Matrix Playground

Interactively play with/visualize matrices, vectors, transformations, points, polygons, circles, etc. Can run a function periodically to animate things.

If you just wanna use it, go to the releases and download the installer. Once installed/launched, read the quick-reference/examples pane on the right of the application's window to learn how to use it.

You don't need to read the rest of this document unless you want to develop/build the application itself.

Dependencies

• python 3
• numpy
• jedi (used for autocomplete)

Architecture

The functionality is split into a bunch of classes. Generally 1 class per file (file has same name as class).

• CodeEditor represents basically the left side of the gui (where you type code and press shift + enter to run it)
• CommandInterpretter represents the thing that executes code typed in the CodeEditor (and also draws visual representations on a tkinter canvas). Basically the right side of the screen.
• Completions is an autocomplete widget (a widget is a tkinter GUI element)
• Help is a widget that displays a quick reference and examples (toggled by pressing f1)
• QuickReference is a widget that displays the quick reference
• Examples is a widget that displays example code
• config.py doesn't have a class, but contains program-wide (not just module-wide) globals
• utilities.py doesn't have a class, but contains utility functions that the end-user can use (e.g. random_color())
• Gui represents the GUI as a whole (the code editor and the command interpretter)
• MathObject is the base class of all things you can create (Vectors, Points, Polygons, matrices, etc)
• Vector - a 2d vector
• Point - a 2d point
• Polyline - a sequence of connected points
• Polygon - like Polyline, but closed (i.e. last point is connected to first)
• LinearT - represents a 2d linear transformation (i.e. does not have a translation component)
• AffineT - represents a 2d affine transformation (i.e. does have a translation component)

Building an Installer

• need the dependencies noted above as well as pyinstaller and NSIS installed
• run create_installer.py to create a standalone installer that you can distribute
  • This script uses pyinstaller first to create a standalone folder, then makes an installer from that folder using NSIS. The installer is called install_matrix_playground.exe and is place at the root of the project folder.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to python, jedi (python smart autocomplete library), and NSIS for making creating this easy(ish).