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A new binary release PicoTurtle v0.2.0-alpha.7 of PicoTurtle is out. This release has minor bug fixes. The release page contains detailed release notes.

The installer, documentation and user guides are available as always at PicoTurtle.

The tenth weekly release PicoTurtle v0.2.0-alpha.4 of PicoTurtle is out.

This release features a couple of important editor features:

1. Indent/De-indent code lines and blocks. Editor shortcuts are Ctrl+] and Ctr+[ respectively. One can also indent and de-indent using Tab and Shift-Tab.
2. Toggle comment code lines and blocks using Ctrl+/.

Here's a screenshot of the application on my macbook air...

The windows installer can be downloaded here -> PicoTurtle v0.2.0-alpha.4 for Win/64-bit. Linux and Macos installers are still work in progress. Macos is turning out to especially difficult with my current CMake/vcpkg based …

A new release PicoTurtle v0.2.0-alpha.3 of PicoTurtle is out. This is the ninth weekly release.

The releases features updated documentation for two new commands circle and arc. It also fixes a major bug in the editor tabs. For details of all changes please check the release notes.

The windows installer can be downloaded here -> PicoTurtle v0.2.0-alpha.3 for Win/64-bit

A new release PicoTurtle v0.2.0-alpha.0 of PicoTurtle is out. This is the seventh in the recent series of weekly releases. It is also the first release with a windows 64-bit installer. There are several minor changes and bug-fixes in this release. You can read all about it on the release page.

The windows installer can be downloaded here -> PicoTurtle v0.2.0-alpha.0 for Win/64-bit

A new source-only release PicoTurtle v0.1.0-alpha.5 of PicoTurtle is out. This release has minor bug fixes, better documentation and an improved docs viewer, and a new about dialog. The release page contains detailed release notes.

Few changes in the CMake build to support a windows installer are added to the release. These will be used to publish a binary installer for Windows starting next release.

A new source-only release PicoTurtle v0.1.0-alpha.4 of PicoTurtle is out. The release page contains detailed release notes. However here are a few highlights:

1. Turtle Lua Console - allowing turtle run in an interactive lua console widget. This is similar to the browser developer console functionality - although with fewer features.
2. Find/replace - is enabled in the Turtle Lua editor.
3. LUA_PATH - The path of the currently run lua file is added to the LUA_PATH.

I've been working on a C++/Lua version of PicoTurtle for the last year on and off. This last week I've stretched myself to work on it and make a release. This is a full rewrite of the turtle application that I had earlier built in nodejs and electron. The previous version was slow and it was harder to add features given the tech choices I'd made.

The new version is written in C++. The turtle drawing is done on a skia surface, and the GUI is built using Qt6. Developing with Qt6 was a positive experience - espescially because of …

In the last few weeks, I've rewritten the PicoTurtle programming API in a C++ program. Here are the major features/changes of the new implementation:- * The turtle API has Lua bindings. Lua is sufficiently lightweight that the interpreter can be distributed with the new picoturtle program. * The new implementation does not have a client-server design greatly reducing its complexity from the older nodejs/electron based implementation. * The program uses Skia Canvas for the drawing implementation. Skia (developed by google) is also the canvas for google chrome. * Although bindings for other programming languages can be developed, the current version is only …

I've also added Java support to picoturtle. Here's a program to draw a rather groovy tunnel. Java code follows.

import in.abhishekmishra.picoturtle.Turtle;
import in.abhishekmishra.picoturtle.TurtleState;

public class Tunnel
{
    public static void cuboid(Turtle t, double b, double w, double h) {
        t.forward(b);

        t.right(-45);
        t.forward(h);
        t.back(h);
        t.left(-45);

        t.left(90);
        t.forward(w);

        t.left(-45);
        t.forward(h);
        t.back(h);
        t.right(-45);

        t.left(90);
        t.forward(b);

        t.left(-135);
        t.forward(h);
        t.back(h);
        t.right(-135);

        t.left(90);
        t.forward …

Recently I added C# .NET support to picoturtle. I was playing around generating waves... here's an example based on the sine function. And the C# Turtle code follows below.

using System;
using picoturtle;

namespace cspico
{
    class MainClass
    {
        public static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            // Create the turtle before using
            Turtle t = picoturtle.Turtle.CreateTurtle(args);

            if (t != null) {
                // Your code goes here

                t.penup();
                t.setx(0);
                t.sety(250);

                for(double i = 0; i < 500; i+=0.25) {
                    t.setx(i);
                    double sin = Math.Sin(i/15);
                    double y = sin * 100;
                    t.forward(y);
                    t.pendown();
                    int col = Math.Abs …