xabacus
=======
An Abacus Widget
Web: https://www.sillycycle.com/abacus.html
Download: Primary site: https://www.sillycycle.com/abacus/
Secondary site: http://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/apps/math
Maintainer: David A. Bagley <bagleyd AT verizon.net>
By default, this is an implementation of the classic Chinese abacus
(Suanpan). Other implementations are easily configurable including
the Japanese Abacus (Soroban), the Korean Abacus (Jupan), the Roman
Hand-abacus, the Russian Abacus (Schoty), and the Danish Learning
Abacus.
Essentially, this is a proof by induction that a computer is more
powerful than an abacus, since a computer program can contain an abacus.
(But then again, you can simulate a computer within a computer, so what
does that show). Actually, with a real abacus, one can move more than
one row at a time with 10 fingers. But on the other hand, a real abacus
does not have the current sum displayed as a number.
To build you need at minimum both of these, X11 and Xt (unless you are
looking to build win32).
sudo apt-get install libx11-dev
sudo apt-get install libxt-dev
You may need to install one of these to build Motif version:
sudo apt-get install libmotif-dev (strongly recommended)
sudo apt-get install lesstif2-dev (defunct)
You need to install XPM if you want color icons:
sudo apt-get install libxpm-dev (strongly recommended)
To install XMU if you want editres:
sudo apt-get install libxmu-dev (probably not useful)
To install sound libraries (defunct):
sudo apt-get install librplay3-dev
sudo apt-get install libesd0-dev
sudo apt-get install libaudiofile-dev
sudo apt-get install nas-dev
sudo apt-get install pulse-dev
In place of these it is just configured by default with
--enable-def-play=play.sh
You need to install XML reader for demo:
sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev (recommended)
Without this compiled in it falls back to a brief static demo.
With this compiled in it parses the abacusDemo.xml file to read in
all the demos.
Then should be a simple
configure; make
Try resizing the abacus. Notice the shape and size change of the beads.
Try editing the file Abacus.ad to get a certain feature and then copying
to $(HOME)/Abacus (where Abacus is the file name) and running xabacus
again. There is also a Windows port (wabacus), though not all features
are included.
Keep in mind that the Abacus is a widget that can be simply stuck in
other X programs. (If you find a use for this, let me know).
It has a built-in demo-mode that instructs the user:
- how to count (from 1 to 20) using the abacus
- how to perform simple additions
- how to perform simple subtractions.
- how to multiply... works best on Lee's Abacus
There is also a teach-mode feature (requires Motif) that teaches the
user the "proper" way to carry out calculations supplied by the user for:
- addition
- subtraction
- multiplication
- division
- square root
- cube root
I started an Internationalization for this teach-mode feature.
(I do not use this for my own use, so help here would be nice).
./configure --enable-gettext
make msgfmt # creates mo files from po
make install-msgfmt # to install all this
# not supported on my system: LANG="fr_FR.iso-8859-15"
sudo locale-gen fr_FR.UTF-8 de_DE.UTF-8 nl_NL.UTF-8 nb_NO.UTF-8
export LANG="fr_FR.UTF-8"
Non-ASCII letters need a hex code in po file, e.g. for French
use "\xe9" to get an "é". (Any better solutions out there?)
In addition, there is a rudimentary facility for generating data that
may be used to write customized scripts for teaching other concepts.
The PostScript document, Abacus.ps, included in the distribution,
describes every possible technique for performing additions and
subtractions using an abacus.
Refer to the man page for detailed command line options.
FOUND A BUG?
Send bugs reports and fixes to the author. For bugs, please include
as much information as to their location as possible, since I may not
be able to duplicate them.