Port the engine prototype to Rust, integrate it into the application prototype, and use it to enforce the constraints.
### Features
To see the engine in action:
1. Add a constraint by shift-clicking to select two spheres in the outline view and then hitting the 🔗 button
2. Click a summary arrow to see the outline item for the new constraint
2. Set the constraint's Lorentz product by entering a value in the text field at the right end of the outline item
* *The display should update as soon as you press* Enter *or focus away from the text field*
The checkbox at the left end of a constraint outline item controls whether the constraint is active. Activating a constraint triggers a solution update. (Deactivating a constraint doesn't, since the remaining active constraints are still satisfied.)
### Precision
The Julia prototype of the engine uses a generic scalar type, so you can pass in any type the linear algebra functions are implemented for. The examples use the [adjustable-precision](https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/base/numbers/#Base.MPFR.setprecision) `BigFloat` type.
In the Rust port of the engine, the scalar type is currently fixed at `f64`. Switching to generic scalars shouldn't be too hard, but I haven't looked into [which other types](https://www.nalgebra.org/docs/user_guide/generic_programming) the linear algebra functions are implemented for.
### Testing
To confirm quantitatively that the Rust port of the engine is working, you can go to the `app-proto` folder and:
* Run some automated tests by calling `cargo test`.
* Inspect the optimization process in a few examples calling the `run-examples` script. The first example that prints is the same as the Irisawa hexlet example from the engine prototype. If you go into `engine-proto/gram-test`, launch Julia, and then
```
include("irisawa-hexlet.jl")
for (step, scaled_loss) in enumerate(history_alt.scaled_loss)
println(rpad(step-1, 4), " | ", scaled_loss)
end
```
you should see that it prints basically the same loss history until the last few steps, when the lower default precision of the Rust engine really starts to show.
### A small engine revision
The Rust port of the engine improves on the Julia prototype in one part of the constraint-solving routine: projecting the Hessian onto the subspace where the frozen entries stay constant. The Julia prototype does this by removing the rows and columns of the Hessian that correspond to the frozen entries, finding the Newton step from the resulting "compressed" Hessian, and then adding zero entries to the Newton step in the appropriate places. The Rust port instead replaces each frozen row and column with its corresponding standard unit vector, avoiding the finicky compressing and decompressing steps.
To confirm that this version of the constraint-solving routine works the same as the original, I implemented it in Julia as `realize_gram_alt_proj`. The solutions we get from this routine match the ones we get from the original `realize_gram` to very high precision, and in the simplest examples (`sphere-in-tetrahedron.jl` and `tetrahedron-radius-ratio.jl`), the descent paths also match to very high precision. In a more complicated example (`irisawa-hexlet.jl`), the descent paths diverge about a quarter of the way into the search, even though they end up in the same place.
Co-authored-by: Aaron Fenyes <aaron.fenyes@fareycircles.ooo>
Reviewed-on: #15
Co-authored-by: Vectornaut <vectornaut@nobody@nowhere.net>
Co-committed-by: Vectornaut <vectornaut@nobody@nowhere.net>
Creates a prototype user interface for dyna3 in the `app-proto` folder. The interface is dynamically constructed using [Sycamore](https://sycamore.dev).
The prototype includes:
* An application state model (the `AppState` type)
* A constraint problem model (the `Assembly` type), used in the application state
* Two views
* A 3D rendering of the assembly (the `Display` component)
* A list of elements and constraints (the `Outline` component)
The following features confirm that the views can reflect and send input to the model:
* You can select elements by clicking and shift-clicking them in the outline. The selected elements are highlighted in the display.
* You can add elements using a button above the outline. The new elements appear in the display.
Co-authored-by: Aaron Fenyes <aaron.fenyes@fareycircles.ooo>
Reviewed-on: #14
Co-authored-by: Vectornaut <vectornaut@nobody@nowhere.net>
Co-committed-by: Vectornaut <vectornaut@nobody@nowhere.net>
This PR adds code for a Julia-language prototype of a configuration solver, in the `engine-proto` folder. It uses Julia version 1.10.0.
### Approaches
Development of this PR tried two broad approaches to the constraint geometry problem. Each one suggested various solution techniques. The Gram matrix approach, with the low-rank factorization technique, seems the most promising.
- **Algebraic** *(In the `alg-test` subfolder).* Write the constraints as polynomials in the inversive coordinates of the elements, and use computational algebraic geometry techniques to solve the resulting system. We tried the following techniques.
- **Gröbner bases** *(`Engine.Algebraic.jl`).* Symbolic. Find a Gröbner basis for the ideal generated by the constraint equations. Information about the solution variety, like its codimension, is then relatively easy to extract.
- **Homotopy continuation** *(`Engine.Numerical.jl`).* Numerical. Cut the solution set along a random hyperplane to get a generic zero-dimensional slice, and then use a fancy homotopy technique to approximate the points in that slice.
A few notes about our experiences can be found on the [engine prototype](wiki/Engine-prototype) wiki page.
- **Gram matrix** *(in the `gram-test` subfolder).* A construction is described completely, up to conformal transformations, by the Gram matrix of the vectors representing its elements. Express the constraints as fixed entries of the Gram matrix, and use numerical linear algebra techniques to find a list of vectors whose Gram matrix fits the bill. We tried the following techniques.
- **LDL decomposition** *(`gram-test.sage`, `gram-test.jl`, `overlap-test.jl`).* Find a cluster of up to five elements whose Gram matrix is completely filled in by the constraints. Use LDL decomposition to find a list of vectors with that Gram matrix. This technique can be made algebraic, as seen in `overlap-test.jl`.
- **Low-rank factorization** *(source files listed in findings section).* Write down a quadratic loss function that says how far a set of vectors is from meeting the Gram matrix constraints. Use a smooth optimization technique like Newton's method or gradient descent to find a zero of the loss function. In addition to the polished prototype described in the results section, we have an early prototype using an off-the-shelf factorization package (`low-rank-test.jl`) and an visualization of the loss function landscape near global minima (`basin-shapes.jl`).
The [Gram matrix parameterization](wiki/Gram-matrix-parameterization) wiki page contains detailed notes on this approach.
### Findings
With the algebraic approach, we hit a performance wall pretty quickly as our constructions grew. It was often hard to find real solutions of the polynomial system, since the techniques we use work most naturally in the complex world.
With the Gram matrix approach, on the other hand, we could solve interesting problems in acceptably short times using the low-rank factorization technique. We put the optimization routine in its own module (`Engine.jl`) and used it to solve five example problems:
- `overlapping-pyramids.jl`
- `circles-in-triangle.jl`
- `sphere-in-tetrahedron.jl`
- `tetrahedron-radius-ratio.jl`
- `irisawa-hexlet.jl`
We plan to use low-rank factorization of the Gram matrix in our first app prototype.
### Visualizations
We used the visualizer in the `ganja-test` folder to visually check our low-rank factorization results. The visualizer runs [Ganja.js](https://enkimute.github.io/ganja.js/) in an Electron app, made with [Blink](https://github.com/JuliaGizmos/Blink.jl). Although Ganja.js makes beautiful pictures under most circumstances, we found two obstacles to using it in production.
- It seems to have precision problems with low-curvature spheres.
- We couldn't figure out how to customize its clipping and transparency settings, and the default settings often obscure construction details.
Co-authored-by: Aaron Fenyes <aaron.fenyes@fareycircles.ooo>
Co-authored-by: Glen Whitney <glen@studioinfinity.org>
Reviewed-on: #13
Co-authored-by: Vectornaut <vectornaut@nobody@nowhere.net>
Co-committed-by: Vectornaut <vectornaut@nobody@nowhere.net>
This commit adds a utility to parse package-lock.json and write the proper
contents of externals.js to standard output. In addition, if the utility
(src/helpers/pkglock_to_externals.litcoffee) is invoked with a --doc option,
it instead emits a Markdown bulleted list of all of the external dependencies.
