ginzu for NeXT geomview

[Dennis Roseman <roseman at dimension4.math.uiowa.edu>]

I am teaching a calculus course this semester using Mathematica on  
NextStep machines.  We will do some things with calculus with several  
variables and I will use geomview for some of the topics.

There are a lot things that I can do now with geomview as is, but two  
modules, not yet implemented for Next would be helpful to have:

1) Transformer
2) Ginzu

The most useful of these two would be Ginzu, (I could make a crude  
Transformer myself)

Is it possible to get versions of these modules soon?  I will be  
getting to the material that would need Ginzu in about 10 days.

I know that's pretty short notice. 


But maybe it is possible to get a command version of ginsu.

It might go something like this:

In the command panel window one would type:
(| path/cutit a b c d) where a, b, c, and d are floats.

This would take the targetgeom (if not the world) and cut it into two  
pieces by the plane ax+by+cz=d.

(so in the above "cutit is a shell script which might run a command  
line C version of ginzu.  Or something like that.)

-----------------

Notes:

1) most of the cutting we need to do in the class are cuts parallel  
to a coordinate plane.

2) The following modification of Ginzu would be useful (with whatever  
kind of interface).  I will describe it in terms of the hypothetical  
"cutit" above.  The idea is to cut the targetgeom into uniform  
"slabs" between two given planes.

(| path/cutit a b c d D n) where a, b, c, d, and D are floats and n  
is an integer, 2<=n.

would slice the target geom with n planes
it would slice at ax+by+cz=d
it would slice result at ax+by+cz=D
and then also (if 2<n) slice at ax+by+cz=d +(D-d)/(n-1) 

 then slice at slice at ax+by+cz=d +2*(D-d)/(n-1)
etc.

So (| path/cutit 0 0 1 -3 3 7) would cut the target geom by the 7  
planes z=-3, z=-2, z=-1, z=0, z=1, z=2, z=3.

&&&&&&&&

If you can't get to this, I understand.  I should have thought of  
this earlier.  Just let me know and I'll see what I can hack out  
myself.

Dennis