Development of Foldinator2 is off to a good start. You can see the first prototype here:
http://zingman.com/foldinator2/foldinator2.html
Admittedly it doesn’t do much yet. So far it’s mostly framework and boilerplate MVC code. Not so glamorous, but important, like pouring the concrete for the foundation of the house. The data model class is defined and has a few important properties, including a reference to an object paper, which is currently just a square drawn to the screen, but will be the heart and soul of the application. The app presents a starting UI, and all the buttons are mapped thru events to commands. There may be more views and interface elements later, but this is enough to get going; anything new will fit into the established structure. Also I put a text output console, to make debugging easier going forward.
I have one more milestone to go before I get into actual folding in simulation. First implement the guts of Load button, read in an XML file and parse it, and assign the info and the steps to the (data) model. Next is to step thru the model using the shuttle controls. At first this will be text–only. The app will display the step number and the annotation for the current step. Once this is done, then it will be time to apply the fold specifications to the paper for each step.
Meanwhile, my brother Martin has begun work on an origami application of his own, and post a demo here:
http://www.victoryhearts.com/origamagiro/
His working title for it is “origamagiro”, a nice palindrome, but then he looked up the meaning of “giro” in Japanese here:
http://jisho.org/words?jap=giro&eng=&dict=edict
Well “giro” could mean battle, argument, controversy, guillotine…. or brothel. Martin sez: “Interesting contextual possibilities! Maybe we need to find a person actually fluent in Japanese to ask!”
Martin’s approach is in many ways complimentary to mine. He’s developing in Silverlight, so the possibility of us sharing code is slim to none, but that’s ok cuz we can share ideas at a conceptual level, which may ultimately be far more fruitful. Second, while I’m working my way in and building the groundwork, he’s diving right in and confronting the hard conceptual problems of graphics, modeling an animation head on. So while my first demo has a bunch of nice looking buttons, his has a virtual piece of paper that the user can manipulate.
Watch this space for future developments.