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Today, I worked on the Linkage for Mac app. I had been running into an issue where changing a setting to track the open sidebar panel triggered a callback in the editor, notifying it of the setting change. This caused a crash when the editor view called a…
Continue readingThe Windows Linkage app has a feature where you can control the position of inputs manually. I added this a long time ago and I just implemented the first thing that came to mind. What I did was add sliding controls, sort of like scroll bars, to pick…
Continue readingI am currently porting the Linkage app from Windows to the Mac. It’s a fun project with many challenges and many annoyances. Designing a Mac-style sidebar to show the properties of selected items was fun. Trying to use a Mac-centric help system is terribly tricky. For many years,…
Continue readingMuch of this post is written and/or edited by ChatGPT 4 based on my prompts. Abstract This paper presents a novel approach to simulating complex mechanical systems by representing mechanisms as collections of individual components that interact to form functional units. A key focus of the method is…
Continue readingThe editor has a lot of missing features, but a lot of it works. You can create mechanisms, save them, and load them later. There is no simulation and no undo feature. Feel free to try it, and let me know how it works for you. I would…
Continue readingI’m working on the Linkage app for Mac, and I’m a little annoyed at the online comments about installers in general and Windows in particular. I appreciate many of the shortcomings of the Windows MSI files and how a simple drag-drop action to install an app is simple….
Continue readingI’m always trying to write software that is as elegant and readable as possible. This often means identifying areas of confusion in the code and improving it. This also often means picking between styles or ideas that are all equally crappy. Today’s dilemma concerns snap lines. Snap lines…
Continue readingThe Linkage app uses a simplistic simulation algorithm that has some weaknesses. I’m not talking about the issues around links with three connections to the rest of the mechanism where each connection would need one of the others simulated before it could be simulated (being simulated means all…
Continue readingI recently told someone that the Windows version of the Linkage app has 30,000 lines of source code. I didn’t get a chance to explain what all those lines of code do, but I want to explain where they all come from in case anyone finds it interesting….
Continue readingI was trying to make a tutorial for the Linkage software to show how to design a vertical sliding garage door. The door is built out of four or five segments with rollers at the intersections. The rollers roll in tracks that are vertical then transition through a…
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