assignment four: 

With your working group of five people, you will design and implement the font for an alphabet (i.e., for 26 letters).  You will implement this font as a set of 26 commands with the following names: theLetterA, theLetterB, theLetterC, etc.  Each of these commands will accept four parameters: LeftX, UpperY, Width and Height.  The first two parameters (LeftX, UpperY) specify the upper lefthand corner of the letter.  The Width and Height parameters specify how wide and how tall the letter is to be drawn.  The output of these commands should be akin to the output of the code you wrote for assignment 3; i.e., each command should draw one letter to the DBN paper in the size and position specified by the values of the parameters.   

Since you will be working in relatively large groups (groups of 5) for this assignment, I request that you you divide the work into design work and coding work.  Initially, two of you will be designers and three of you will be coders.  The job of the designers will be to exactly specify the shape of the letters.  By "exactly specify" I mean that the specifications should be in a format that can be translated into code.  I would suggest that you plot the letters out on graph paper.  The job of the coders will be to write the DBN code to implement the letters.  However, there is also a set of work that designers and coders must do together: (1) specify the algebraic equations or known commands (e.g., if you have already implemented some commands to do lines, curves, etc. that get reused in several letters) that define the shapes of each of the parts of the letters; and, (2) write the documentation for each of the commands to explain to me how the command draws the letter.   

Halfway through the assignment -- i.e., when you have collectively designed and implemented 13 of the letters -- I want you to switch roles: designers will now be coders and coders designers.  Do the second 13 letters with the roles switched.

When you are finished put your alphabet up on the web in a series of images and code/texts like those that you created for assignment 3.  Follow the directions in the "upload" page, send me an email to tell me where to find the URL, and send me an email to evaluate each of your group members (as you did in assignment 2).