Geometry¶
To run any of these examples, you’ll want to save a bit of code in a python file, with any name, e.g. geometry.py
, and then run that file by navigating to it on the command line and constructing a call like, coldtype geometry.py
Dividing Rect(angles)¶
One of the core concepts of Coldtype is the use of the coldtype.geometry.Rect
class to encapsulate rectangles and methods for slicing & dicing them.
The most basic rectangle is the one passed to a renderable, i.e. the r
variable you get when you define a renderable function, like def rect(r)
below. So to fill the entire canvas with a single random color, you can do something like this:
from coldtype import *
@renderable((700, 300))
def rect(r):
return DATPen().rect(r).f(hsl(random()))

All @renderables
have a rectangle associated with them (the full rectangle of the artifact canvas), and all rendering functions are passed rectangles, either via the first and only argument, or as a property of the first argument, as is the case with @animation
renderables, which pass a Frame
argument that makes the rectangle accessible via f.a.r
(where f
is the Frame
).
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
A Rect
has lots of methods, though the most useful ones are inset
, offset
, take
, divide
, and subdivide
.
Here’s a simple example that insets, offsets, and takes.
@renderable((700, 300))
def iot(r):
return (DATPen()
.rect(r
.take(0.5, "mnx") # "mnx" refers to the edge of the rectangle "minimum x"
.inset(20, 20)
.offset(0, 10))
.f(hsl(0.5)))

More complex slicing & dicing¶
N.B. You may have noticed that the rect functions that a mix of float and int arguments. That’s because a value less than 1.0 will be treated, by the dividing-series of rect functions, as percentages of the dimension implied by the edge argument. So in that take(0.5, "mnx")
above, the 0.5
specifies 50% of the width of the rectangle (width because of the mnx
edge argument).
Here’s an example that divides a rectangle into left and right rectangles, and shows another useful method, square
(which takes the largest square possible from the center of the given rectangle).
@renderable((700, 300))
def lr(r):
ri = r.inset(50, 50)
left, right = ri.divide(0.5, "mnx")
return DATPens([
(DATPen()
.rect(ri)
.f(None)
.s(0.75)
.sw(2)),
(DATPen()
.oval(left
.square()
.offset(100, 0))
.f(hsl(0.6, a=0.5))),
(DATPen()
.oval(right
.square()
.inset(-50))
.f(hsl(0, a=0.5)))])

Here’s an example using subdivide
to subdivide a larger rectangle into smaller pieces, essentially columns.
@renderable((700, 300))
def columns(r):
dps = DATPens()
for c in r.inset(10).subdivide(5, "mnx"):
dps += DATPen().rect(c.inset(10)).f(hsl(random()))
return dps

Of course, columns like that aren’t very typographic. Here’s an example using subdivide_with_leading
, a useful method for quickly getting standard rows or columns with classic spacing.
@renderable((700, 500))
def columns_leading(r):
dps = DATPens()
for c in r.subdivide_with_leading(5, 20, "mxy"):
dps += DATPen().rect(c).f(hsl(random()))
return dps
