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Knowledge Base›Genera Graphic Editor and structured drawing

Genera Graphic Editor and structured drawing

Conclusion

The Genera Graphic Editor is an object-based, two-dimensional illustration editor. It keeps named drawings as ordered collections of editable entities, not as one flat bitmap. A drawing can combine geometric shapes, curves, text, live Dynamic Windows presentations, and raster images; entities retain control points, drawing options, stacking order, grouping, and transforms. The editor can emit the same drawing as a native editable drawing file, compact encoded graphics for Concordia, generated Lisp drawing code, a raster image, or hardcopy.

This is not the Bitmap Editor and it is not established as a descendant or port of the MIT CADR SUDS editor. The public CADR sets preserve SUDS .DRW data and .PLT output plus a DPLT renderer, but not a complete runnable SUDS editor. Similarity at the level of “structured drawing” is therefore not evidence of a direct lineage.

At the inspected Open Genera media boundary, the implementation contains:

  • 16 registered entity types, of which 12 have samples in the always-visible Shapes pane, three more are constructible through Create Entity, and one (Image) must instead be created with Add Image;
  • 13 interactive transform types;
  • 57 active Graphic Editor-specific named commands, plus six inherited Help and Undo commands, for a source-defined surface of 63 commands;
  • a seven-setting interaction-style form, a six-field display-parameter pane, and extensive entity, hardcopy, and drawing defaults;
  • Dynamic Windows presentation semantics that can make an entity denote a typed Lisp object when the drawing is displayed outside the editor.

The installed help corpus has 61 unique topics named as Graphic Editor commands. It omits three active implementation commands (Read Image File, Write Image File, and Convert File Format) and still documents the separately named Rotate Entity command, whose definition is commented out in the inspected source. Rotation remains available through Transform Entity.

A fresh isolated Genera 8.5 harness run did not produce an editor frame. The base world contained none of the GRAPHIC-EDITOR, GRAPHIC-INPUT, or UNDO-PROGRAM packages, and Select-G made no visible change. Loading an optional licensed system would have required a guest-side media path that the isolated session deliberately did not provide. This page therefore has no published runtime screenshot and does not claim that source-visible menus were exercised in that world.

Scope and evidence notation

This page keeps four evidence classes separate:

  • Source means direct inspection of the licensed local Open Genera source and system records identified by checksum below. Only original analysis and short identifiers are published; no licensed source is reproduced.
  • Installed help means structural inspection of locally recovered Sage records. The recovered prose and embedded pictures remain ignored licensed output. Counts, topic names, and disagreements are reported as evidence.
  • Manual means the public archival Symbolics Concordia PDF, especially “Getting Started with the Graphic Editor,” “Creating Shapes with the Graphic Editor,” and the “Dictionary of Graphic Editor Commands,” printed pages 237–316. This consolidated PDF is dated February 2018; that date describes the archival rendering and is not treated as the date of every underlying product statement.
  • Runtime observation means the 2026-07-18 isolated Xvfb harness session described below. It establishes only what happened in that exact world and session.

“Complete” below means complete for the active definitions and installed records in the inspected media snapshot. It does not assert that every earlier Symbolics release, site patch, experimental subsystem, or separately loaded image format package had the same surface.

Release identity and component boundary

The media does not contain one version number called “the Graphic Editor version.” Its system directories were written on 1998-09-04 in a source world reporting System 452.16 and identify three separately versioned components:

System Released version Role in the declarations
Graphic Editing 441 Unadvertised substrate: UNDO-PROGRAM, GRAPHIC-INPUT, drawing utilities, and GrEd-Doc.
Graphic Editor 440 Unadvertised application: entities, transforms, editor frame, file format, and ZWEI integration. Depends on Graphic Editing.
GrEd-Doc 432 Installed Graphic Editor documentation system.

The source snapshot also records Images 431.2, Image Substrate 440.4, Bitmap Editor 441, Graphics Support 431, and Symbolics Concordia 444 in that source world's system header. Those are dependency-context versions, not aliases for Graphic Editor 440. The fresh runnable world identifies itself as Genera 8.5, but the runtime test proved that the Graphic Editor implementation was not resident there. Media presence and world load state must not be conflated.

The system declaration marks both graphic-editing and graphic-editor with advertised-in nil. It loads defs, graphic-entities, transform, graphic-editor, interim-file-format, and zwei serially after the substrate. MacDraw and QuickDraw PICT support are conditional modules: they are loaded only with MacIvory Support and only on 3600 or IMach machine types. A separate graphic-editor-experiments system is described as being for “the brave”; it is outside this released-surface inventory.

Identity, entry points, and Concordia integration

Source: the standalone Dynamic Windows program framework is named graphic-editor and assigns Select key G. When the system is loaded, Select-G selects its frame. It inherits the help-program and undo-program frameworks and the accept-values-pane command table.

Manual: Concordia supplies a second route through its Graphic Editor subactivity, documented as Super-Select-G or the corresponding Concordia selector. The standalone and Concordia routes are not independent editors: they share the same global drawing list, and a drawing created through one route is available through the other.

Source: the sharing is literal. Every program instance's graphic-editor-loaded-drawings method reads and writes the process-global *all-loaded-drawings* list. Selecting a drawing moves it to the front of that list, giving it history-like recency ordering.

The application exposes three further integration paths:

  1. A Sage picture type named :graphic-editor supplies an argument reader, a compact binary encoding callback, and an edit callback. Concordia can awaken the editor, select the named drawing, wait for Done, and receive the edited drawing.
  2. The standard ZWEI command table gains Insert Graphic Editor Drawing, Insert Graphic Editor Drawing Code, and Insert Image. The first embeds compact encoded graphics; the second inserts an editable Lisp function that redraws the entities.
  3. Copy Drawing to Image, Add Image, and Edit Image connect object drawings to the named-image and Bitmap Editor subsystems. The relationship is asymmetric: object entities remain editable in Graphic Editor, while an inserted image is one raster entity whose pixels are edited by Bitmap Editor.

These integration points explain why Graphic Editor belongs both to the Genera graphics environment and to Concordia's structured-document workflow. See also the separate Dynamic Windows and presentation-based interaction and bitmap, stipple, and raster editor studies.

Program frame and persistent state

Pane layout

The source declares one fixed main configuration:

Pane Source-defined role
Title Centered Graphic Editor program title.
Drawing Typeout-capable display pane with ragged border, optional top and left rulers, horizontal and vertical scroll bars, a bottom drawing label, and white borders.
Interactor Four-line command and output pane. Named commands not exposed in a menu can be typed here.
Help menu A fixed one-item Help menu.
Undo menu Fixed Undo, Redo, and Skip items.
I/O menu Fixed drawing/file lifecycle and hardcopy items.
Selection menu Fixed selection and grouping items.
Drawing menu Dynamically assembled top-level entity commands in four columns.
View menu Dynamically assembled display-transform commands.
Parameter menu An always-visible Accept Values pane for handles, grid, pointer position, quantization, and rulers.
Registers Three visible object registers, each displaying a scaled preview of stored entities.
Shapes Mouse-sensitive samples of the 12 entity types that define sample geometry.

The bottom label is more than a title. It displays the drawing name, associated file when one exists, and a [Not saved] marker when the modified flag is set.

Fixed and dynamic menu membership

The table records membership, not a runtime-verified pixel order. Fixed grouping and row/column arrangement come from the framework declaration; dynamic membership comes from the active command definitions and explicit menu handlers.

Pane Complete source-defined labels at this boundary
Help Help
Undo Undo, Redo, Skip; Clear Undo History is command-line only.
I/O Kill Drawing, Rename Drawing, Select Drawing, Read File, Write File, Hardcopy, Done
Selection Deselect, Select, Select All, Select Region, Group, Ungroup
Drawing Align, Bury, Change, Copy, Copy/Move, Copy/Transform, Create, Defaults, Delete, Delete All, Move, Raise, Transform
View Center View, Fit View, Move View, Refresh, Reset View, Zoom by Factor, Zoom/Contract, Zoom/Expand

Rotate is not in the active Drawing-menu set: the separate command definition is inside a block comment. The Rotate and Rotate n degrees choices inside Transform, however, are active.

Drawing and entity model

A drawing stores a name, optional associated file, modified flag, adjustable vector of entities, selected-entity set, six-number view transform, and a “sketch” rendering flag. Entities are ordered in the vector from back to front; raising, burying, and restacking operate on that order. Selection is stored separately and sorted by the entities' graphics priority.

Coordinates pass through three layers documented by the implementation:

  1. device/window units are pixels, with the display's usual upper-left origin;
  2. drawing/view units use a lower-left Cartesian origin and a per-drawing view transform;
  3. user-visible ruler units are centimeters, inches, or pixels, converted through a separate display transform.

The initial constants are 35 pixels per centimeter, 90 pixels per inch, and 1.25 pixels per point. These are application constants for this source snapshot, not a claim about physical calibration of every display.

Each entity has a name, outline and inside drawing-option property lists, presentation data, its own control handles, computed bounding-box handles, and an optional link to the entity from which it was copied. Shape-specific state stores points, radii, angles, text sizing, arrow parameters, or image raster and scale. Groups recursively contain entities and temporarily implode their Dynamic Windows presentations into one group presentation.

Presentation-bearing graphics

Graphic Editor entities can carry a presentation type and object. Inside the editor's own Drawing pane, the implementation deliberately presents the entity as an editor object so selection and manipulation continue to work. When the same drawing is sent to another stream, a valid presentation-bearing entity wraps its graphics in a Dynamic Windows presentation of the chosen type and object.

This is a semantic feature, not merely a hyperlink rectangle: the rendered figure can participate in presentation translators and command input according to the object's type. Generated Lisp drawing code preserves the wrapper when the presentation object and type can be made printable. The compact binary path limits defaults to the set of presentation types the graphics encoder declares encodable.

Entity and shape inventory

The 12 visible shape samples

Shape Stored structure and creation interaction
Rectangle Four rectilinear vertices; drag a bounding rectangle. Moving a corner can turn it into a more general rectilinear polygon.
Triangle Three vertices entered interactively.
Circle Center and one radius; a moved handle can make its two radii unequal.
Rectilinear Ellipse Axis-aligned center and x/y radii.
Oval Center, two radii, and rotation; uses the oval drawing primitive.
Ellipse General center, radii, and rotation.
Circular Arc/Sector Center, radius, start angle, end angle, and optional second radius. Entry uses either endpoints-and-bow or center-and-radii according to interaction style.
Polygon Point sequence, optional closure, and optional rounded or midpoint-spline corners.
Rectilinear Lines Orthogonal point sequence with optional closure and corner shaping.
Freehand Curve Sampled point sequence collected while dragging.
Text String, character style, position, one of eight transform/sizing modes, and optional second control point.
Line Two endpoints plus optional arrowheads at the start, end, or both, with configurable head length and base width.

The samples are live defaults previews: changing outline, fill, character-style, arrow, or rounding defaults causes the Shapes pane to be regenerated with the new appearance.

Registered types not shown as samples

Type Status
Quarter Ellipse Constructible through Create Entity; two endpoints define one quarter of an ellipse. A degenerate case falls back to a line.
Be'zier Cubic Constructible through Create Entity; endpoints are followed by two intermediate control points. The spelling shown here follows the installed type name.
Cubic Spline Constructible through Create Entity; accepts a point sequence and uses cyclic relaxation when the points close.
Image Registered as an entity so it can be serialized, selected, transformed, and rendered, but its ordinary entity-input method reports that an image cannot be entered that way. Add Image is the valid constructor.

Group is another entity flavor, but it is intentionally absent from the Create chooser. It is produced only by grouping existing entities. The right-click Create chooser is built from all 16 registered shape entries, so source inspection exposes a minor edge case that the visible samples hide: it can offer Image, but selecting that route reaches the deliberate input error instead of creating one.

Complete named-command inventory

Counting rule and help comparison

The command count is reproducible from the licensed source without executing it:

  1. remove top-level #|| ... ||# block comments from graphic-editor.lisp.~351~;
  2. count the active define-graphic-editor-command forms and the active macro forms that expand into them: 53;
  3. add Show File Drawings and Convert File Format, defined directly into the command table by interim-file-format.lisp.~19~: 2;
  4. add Read Image File and Write Image File, explicitly installed from the Images subsystem: 2;
  5. add the four commands inherited from undo-program and the two inherited Help commands: 6.

The result is 63 active named commands. Disabled debugging forms (Where Am I, Warp Mouse, Describe Entity, and Show Missing Help) and the block-commented Rotate Entity form are not counted.

The five recovered Graphic Editor Sage inputs contain 61 unique record topics ending in “Graphic Editor Command.” Relative to the source-defined surface, they omit the two generic Images commands and Convert File Format, and add the inactive separate Rotate Entity command. This is why a documentation-topic count must not be used as an implementation-command count.

Drawing, file, image, output, and program commands

Command Operands and effect at this source boundary
Select Drawing Accepts a loaded drawing or a string. A new string creates and selects a new drawing; an existing drawing moves to the front of the shared loaded list.
Show Loaded Drawings Reports loaded drawings grouped by associated file and marks modified drawings not yet saved.
Kill Drawing Undoably removes a chosen drawing. Killing the current drawing selects another loaded drawing or creates a new empty one.
Read File Accepts a sequence of pathnames, expands wildcards, canonicalizes newest versions, reads every drawing, and warns before replacing modified or no-longer-present drawings from the same files.
Write File Associates the current drawing with a pathname, then writes every loaded drawing associated with that pathname.
Save Drawing Saves a chosen sequence or All; unassociated drawings prompt for a pathname. It can query when saving unmodified drawings or implicitly saving other modified drawings in a shared file.
Rename Drawing Changes the current drawing's nonempty string name and updates the pane label.
Set Drawing File Associates a drawing with a pathname or no file without itself saving. If an existing, previously unseen file is named, it can offer to read that file first.
Copy Drawing Deep-copies the source drawing's entities, selection mapping, and view transform under a new name; the copy starts modified.
Copy Drawing to Image Rasterizes the current drawing at a positive scale into a newly named image and makes it the default image.
Show File Drawings Reads the drawings-in-file pathname attribute and lists drawing names without loading their bodies; accepts wildcards.
Convert File Format Reads and rewrites each selected native drawing file using current format version 3; accepts wildcards. This is a mutating migration command.
Read Image File Installed from Images. Accepts pathname and format plus Rotate and Trim; adds the decoded result to named images. Read formats documented in the installed command contract are BIN, Compact Bitmap, EPS/Macintosh, Gem IMG, GIF, Macintosh-by-type, MacPaint, PC Paintbrush, PICT, Portable Bitmap, PostScript, TIFF, Truevision, Utah RLE, X Bitmap, X Window Dump, and Xim.
Write Image File Installed from Images. Accepts image, pathname, and format. Its documented write set is BIN, Compact Bitmap, EPS/Macintosh, MacPaint, PICT, Portable Bitmap, PostScript/EPSF, TIFF, and X Bitmap.
Hardcopy Drawing Sends chosen loaded drawings to a printer or file with portrait/landscape and clip/scale/multiple-page handling. A single drawing written to a capable file stream gets an attempted EPS bounding box.
Hardcopy File Hardcopies drawings associated with a pathname, reading and retaining the file's drawings first if necessary.
Done Deselects the program frame and returns the current drawing through the editor mailbox used by callers such as Concordia. It does not itself write a drawing file.

Entity creation, selection, editing, and stacking commands

Command Operands and effect at this source boundary
Add Image Accepts a named image plus independent x and y scale factors, positions it with the mouse, and adds one selected image entity undoably.
Create Entity Accepts one registered shape plus optional starting coordinates, runs that shape's interactive input method, assigns a shape-derived serial name, and selects the new entity.
Delete All Undoably clears every entity and the selection from the current drawing.
Delete Entity Undoably removes the chosen or currently selected entities.
Select Entity Selects a sequence of existing entities, optionally clearing the prior selection. Selection changes are themselves undoable.
Select All Adds every current entity to the selected set.
Select Entity and Move Selected Selects specified entities and immediately starts moving the resulting selected set. This is the hold-after-click path.
Select Region Sweeps a rectangle and selects only entity presentations wholly contained in it; an option controls whether prior selection is cleared.
Deselect Entity Undoably removes specified entities, defaulting to the entire selected set, from the selection.
Move Entity Handle Drags one movable control handle and records the inverse displacement for undo. The manual correctly notes that the handle presentation makes this a mouse-only practical operation.
Rename Entity Changes one entity's unique name, rejecting a case-insensitive duplicate; undo restores the old name.
Move Entity Applies an interactive translation to selected entities.
Transform Entity Applies one of the 13 interactive affine transform types listed below; the last transform type becomes the next chooser default.
Copy Entity Copies selected entities and offsets them by 20 drawing units by default, adjusted to at least one grid unit when mouse quantization is on.
Copy and Move Entity Copies the chosen entities and interactively translates the copies.
Copy and Transform Entity Copies the chosen entities and applies a selected interactive transform to the copies.
Align Entity Aligns selected entities by left/right/center/no x alignment and top/bottom/center/no y alignment, optionally aligning to the current grid. Defaults are left, no y alignment, and grid use matching grid visibility.
Bury Entity Moves chosen entities to the beginning of the entity array while preserving their relative order, then redraws the affected overlap region.
Raise Entity Moves chosen entities to the end of the entity array while preserving their relative order.
Restack Entities For chosen entities that overlap, presents a reorder interface and replaces their stacking positions with the chosen sequence. It errors when fewer than two overlap.
Change Entity Edits options common to the chosen entities: shape-specific state, outline, fill, and presentation data. A group cannot be jointly changed with other entities because no common option set is defined.
Change Text String Changes only the strings of selected text entities while retaining their other text and drawing options.
Edit Image Opens one selected image entity in Bitmap Editor, preferring its still-cached named-image raster when equal to the stored raster and otherwise editing the entity bitmap. Multiple images are rejected.
Define New Pattern Invokes the Stipple Editor, interns a saved design in the STIPPLES package, and adds it to the available stipple and pattern lists.
Group Entity Replaces selected entities with one recursively containing group entity and implodes their presentations.
Ungroup Entity Replaces selected group entities with their contained entities and restores their individual presentations.

View, ruler, defaults, and register commands

Command Operands and effect at this source boundary
Edit Ruler Edits unit, ruler visibility and increments, current grid size when relevant, and the page-outline overlay.
Edit Defaults Edits initial options for subsequently created entities, command defaults, and the current drawing's sketch flag; the change is undoable.
Edit Interaction Style Edits all seven global interaction variables listed below. Unlike entity defaults, these are process variables rather than per-drawing state.
Refresh Redisplays the drawing while preserving the viewport.
Zoom by Factor Composes a uniform scale with the drawing's view transform, default factor 4, preserving the viewport center.
Reset View Undoably restores the identity view transform.
Move View Takes two points and translates the view by their vector.
Center View Translates the view so the entity bounding-box center coincides with the visible pane center; errors for an empty drawing.
Fit View Uniformly scales and translates the entire nonempty entity bounding box to fit the drawing pane.
Zoom/Expand Sweeps a nonempty region and makes that region occupy the whole pane.
Zoom/Contract Sweeps a nonempty region and scales the previously visible view down to fit inside it.
Retrieve Register Copies a register's entities into the drawing at a mouse-chosen position and optionally clears the register; the combined operation is undoable.
Store into Register Copies selected entities into a named register, creating additional keyboard-only registers when a new name is given; optional Delete Too moves rather than copies them.
Clear Register Undoably replaces a register's contents with empty state and resets its preview scale.

Inherited Help and Undo commands

Command Inherited behavior used by Graphic Editor
Help Enters the standard Help program flow for a topic or mouse-selected command/shape/register context.
Command Help Supplies standard help for command names and their operands.
Undo Undoes the current history element, or a specifically selected element. Right-clicking the menu item opens a history chooser.
Redo Redoes the next element or a specifically selected history element. A branch choice is requested when needed.
Undo Skip Advances the current history position without replaying the selected operation.
Clear Undo History Drops the whole history so its retained entity and drawing state can be reclaimed. It is not in the fixed three-item Undo pane.

The undo history is a tree, not a single stack. Performing a new undoable operation after moving backward retains the old successor and adds a new branch. Undo and Redo right-click choosers linearize the tree for selection, while Undo Skip chooses among immediate successor branches without applying the chosen element.

Transform inventory

Transform Entity and Copy and Transform Entity use the same 13 active types:

Transform Interaction and result
2 Point Two points define a translation vector.
4 Point A starting and ending vector define translation and rotation.
6 Point Two triangles define the general affine mapping, including translation, rotation, scale, reflection, and shear.
Move Interactive translation with image or outline feedback.
Reflect About Line Two points define the mirror line; a zero-length line yields identity.
Reflect About Origin Negates both axes about a chosen, center, or corner origin.
Rotate Interactive rotation about the configured origin.
Rotate n degrees Counterclockwise numeric angle from -360 through 360 degrees; default 90.
Scale Uniform interactive scale about the configured origin.
Scale into Box Uniform scale and translation that fit the entity bounds inside a swept nonempty box.
Shear Interactive shear.
Stretch Independent interactive x/y scale about the configured origin.
Stretch into Box Independent x/y scale and translation that fill a swept box.

The general transform is applied recursively to groups. Shape semantics can still produce non-obvious results: for example, the manual warns that reflecting an arc can select its complementary arc rather than merely flipping the displayed segment. Without a loaded runtime frame, that release-specific visible result remains a manual claim rather than a new runtime observation here.

Keyboard and mouse interaction

Keyboard surface

The active application source defines only one editor-selection key: Select-G. There is no Graphic Editor-specific keystroke command table analogous to Zmacs's large keymap. Named commands are entered in the four-line interactor using Dynamic Windows Command Processor parsing, completion, histories, mouse-sensitive argument presentations, and Accept Values forms. Help displays command completions and the ordinary system input editor supplies editing and abort gestures; those inherited keys are not reclassified here as Graphic Editor bindings.

The public Concordia manual also describes Super-Select-G for the Concordia subactivity. That binding is Concordia-owned, not declared by the standalone graphic-editor framework inspected here.

The manual's screen-image workflow uses Function-0-Q to create a named image before Add Image. A compatibility block in graphic-entities.lisp.~217~ would install a different Super-Shift-Q “pass a screen image to Graphic Editor” function, but the whole block is commented out. It is not an active binding in this source inventory.

Drawing-pane gestures

Context Gesture Source/help-defined effect
Entity Left Select this entity and clear the prior selection.
Entity Left, move while held Select it and move the resulting selected set.
Entity Shift-Left Add it to the selected set.
Entity Shift-Left, move while held Add it, then move the entire selected set.
Movable handle Left and drag Reshape the entity by moving that control point.
Entity Middle Copy it with the default offset.
Entity Middle, move while held Copy and interactively move the copy.
Entity Right Open entity operations according to the manual.
Entity Control-Middle or Control-Meta-Middle Store into the leftmost register. The overview help says c-Middle; the command topic says c-m-Middle; source names the abstract :yank-word gesture. Runtime is needed to resolve the physical modifier mapping.
Ordinary/text/image entity Control-Meta-Right Source installs competing :modify translators: general Change, text-string Change, and Edit Image. Installed help assigns ordinary entities to Change and images to Edit Image, but also describes text characteristic editing. Translator precedence remains a runtime TODO.
Blank drawing Left Deselect the selected set.
Blank drawing Left and drag Sweep a contained-entity selection, clearing the old set.
Blank drawing Shift-Left and drag Sweep a contained-entity selection and add it to the old set.
Blank drawing Middle and drag Create a line, or an arrow when arrow defaults request one.
Blank drawing Meta-Left and drag Create another entity of the last-created shape.

The source decides “click” versus “hold to move” by watching both mouse displacement and button state; movement greater than four pixels starts the drag path.

Multi-point shape gestures

Polygon, rectilinear-line, cubic-spline, and related point-sequence inputs share this complete click classifier:

Gesture Effect
Left Add the current point.
Shift-Left Add the current point and finish.
Middle Add the nearest already entered point, within an eight-pixel search threshold.
Shift-Middle Add the nearest existing point and finish.
Right Finish without adding a point.
Control-Left Add a point forced to the current grid even when ordinary pointer quantization is off.
Control-Shift-Left Add a grid-forced point and finish.

The last two grid gestures are active source-visible behavior absent from the public manual's point-entry table. A point sequence must contain at least two points.

Register gestures

Three registers are displayed from left to right as Register-1 through Register-3. Left on an empty register stores the selected entities; Left on a nonempty register retrieves a copy and then waits for Left to place it. Middle or Abort cancels placement. Right supplies register operations including Clear. The typed Store into Register command can create more named registers than are visible; they remain retrievable by name.

Display, appearance, and behavior defaults

Always-visible parameter pane

Field Complete choices or behavior
Handles Control points, Control if selected, Bounding box, or Box if selected. Initial value: bounding box only for selected entities. Lines always use their control points.
Display grid Yes or No. Initial value: No.
Grid size Positive user units; visible when either the grid display or pointer quantization needs it. Initial value: 1 centimeter.
Show mouse position Shows user coordinates beside the pointer. Initial value: No.
Quantize mouse position Rounds effective pointer coordinates to the nearest grid point. Initial value: No.
Display rulers Shows the top and left margin rulers. Initial value: No.

Edit Ruler selects centimeters, inches, or pixels. Changing unit resets suggested major, minor, and grid increments to 1/.1/1 centimeters, 1/1/8/1 inches, or 100/10/20 pixels. It can also show an 8.5-by-11-inch hardcopy outline with an inner dashed region. The overlay is an editing guide and is not itself a drawing entity.

Interaction-style form

The implementation registers all seven of these variables in one Accept Values form:

Setting Choices Initial value
Erase before moving Do not erase, erase, or partially erase Erase
Moving feedback Image or outline Image
Select transform origin Choose, center, or corner of entity bounds Choose
Text entry mode One-line interactor input or Accept Values menu Line of text
Circular arc input Center and two radii, or two endpoints and bow Two endpoints and bow
Default highlighting Entity outline or bounding box Outline
Sticky command defaults Whether selected command options become later defaults No

These settings are global variables in the loaded Lisp world. They are neither stored in each drawing nor serialized with the native drawing file.

Entity and command defaults

Edit Defaults covers four different classes of state:

  • Entity-specific defaults: polygon corners can be unrounded, rounded with a numeric radius, or smoothed by a midpoint cubic spline; text has a character style; lines can have start and/or end arrowheads with dimensions; and entities can have a default presentation type. When a presentation type is active, creation also asks for an object of that type.
  • Outline defaults: not drawn, opaque, or non-opaque; thickness; solid or dashed with a dash pattern; for thickness greater than one, black/white/gray/pattern/color, butt/square/round ends, and miter/bevel/round/no joints.
  • Inside defaults: not drawn, opaque, or non-opaque, filled black, white, gray, stipple pattern, or color when the output device supports color.
  • Command and drawing defaults: zoom factor (initially 4), hardcopy behavior for oversize drawings (initially multiple pages), hardcopy orientation (portrait), numeric rotation (90 degrees), and the current drawing's faster-but-less-accurate sketch flag (initially false).

The initial outline property list contains only opaque; ordinary renderer defaults supply its thickness and pattern. The initial inside list is opaque gray level .25. Global entity defaults dynamically collect unrounded polygons, the system null text style, no arrowheads, and no presentation type.

Source-visible possible defect: the Accept Values code offers four line-joint choices, but when the chosen value is not miter, the inspected assignment stores miter rather than the selected value. Source alone therefore suggests that bevel, round, and no-joint choices are lost. This was not runtime-tested and is retained as a probable implementation defect, not rewritten into a claim about every patched release.

Text has eight transform modes organized by two decisions. It can preserve the selected font or choose a different-size font as geometry scales. Within either family, only the start can move, horizontal spacing can stretch, orientation/slope can change, or glyphs can both tilt and stretch. This is why text remains a structured entity rather than becoming outlines at creation time.

File formats, encodings, and output paths

Native editable drawing files

The native drawing file is a Genera dumped-forms container, default pathname type BIN; it is not SVG, PostScript, a bitmap archive, or a VM snapshot. Writing calls sys:dump-forms-to-file on a form that assigns the serialized drawings to *the-drawings*. Reading calls the Lisp Machine binary loader in the Graphic Editor package and reconstructs drawing and entity flavor instances.

The file carries generic pathname attributes for:

  • drawing-file-version, currently 3;
  • drawings-in-file, the list of drawing names;
  • package identity for reading the forms.

A drawing's dumped form retains its name, entity vector, view transform, and sketch flag. The associated pathname and modified flag are reconstructed by the reader, and the selected set is not serialized. Entity forms retain the concrete flavor and its shape variables and drawing/presentation options; control handles are rebuilt after loading.

Version conversion is narrow and explicit. Versions before 2 and 3 translate older text sizing keywords to the current eight-mode representation. The Genera 8.3 Release Notes also record an image compatibility repair: Concordia 3.1 replaced one scale slot with independent scale-x and scale-y; the repaired reader recognizes the old single scale and maps it to both axes. The inspected image-entity initializer contains that compatibility mapping.

Before taking the native path, the reader checks file metadata for QuickDraw PICT or MacDraw input. FILE-TYPE PICT selects the conditional PICT converter. FILE-TYPE DRWG plus creator signature MDRW selects the conditional MacDraw converter. Those modules are platform- and MacIvory-Support-dependent, so their presence in the source declaration does not prove they are callable in an Open Genera VLM world.

Because native files are loaded as dumped Lisp forms, they belong on the trusted-data side of a preservation boundary. A portable extractor should parse the FASD/dumped form grammar inertly and whitelist reconstruction forms; it should not “extract” a drawing by evaluating an untrusted file inside a museum world.

Other representations

Representation What is retained and what it is for
Compact binary graphics drawing-binary-encoding translates the drawing's lower-left bounds to the origin and asks the Genera graphics encoder to record its drawing operations. Concordia and ZWEI use this compact display form. It is optimized for replay, not for recovering the editor's full flavor graph.
Generated Lisp drawing-code and print-drawing-code emit a drawing function composed from Graphics calls, group recursion, options, and printable presentation wrappers. This is source-like replay code, not the original hand-written source of an illustration.
Raster named image Copy Drawing to Image draws into a bitmap at a selected scale. Entity editability and typed presentation semantics are flattened to pixels.
Images within drawings Add Image stores raster, dimensions, position, name, and independent x/y scale as one object entity. Moving and affine transformation remain structured at the entity level, but pixel editing is delegated.
Hardcopy Graphics are replayed to the hardcopy stream with portrait/landscape and clip/scale/multiple-page policy. A one-drawing file output attempts EPSF bounding-box metadata.

The public Programming the User Interface manual's advanced graphics chapter lists the corresponding binary encode/decode facilities and identifies Concordia Graphic Editor illustrations as users of that compacted graphics path (PDF page 1774). This independently corroborates the source integration without treating the installed licensed picture payloads as publishable assets.

Architecture and dependencies

Layer Graphic Editor use
Dynamic Windows program framework Pane layout, command loop, command tables, presentations, translators, menus, Accept Values, typeout, and Help inheritance.
undo-program Branching undo elements and the four inherited commands. This is shipped in the Graphic Editing substrate rather than being a general Genera core package in the inspected declaration.
graphic-input Pointer blinkers, coordinate display and quantization, drag feedback, point/shape entry, transforms, erasing and restoring presentations, and sample menus.
Graphics Geometric primitives, transforms, scan conversion, stipple/color, bounding boxes, compact encoding, bitmap output, and drawing streams.
Images and Bitmap/Stipple Editor Named-image file I/O, image entities, raster editing, screen-image workflows, and custom fill patterns.
Sage/Concordia Picture type, compact illustration storage, edit callback, and structured-document embedding.
ZWEI Commands to insert compact drawings, generated drawing code, and images into editor buffers.
Hardcopy/PostScript Printer/file rendering, multipage behavior, and optional EPS bounding box.
MacIvory Support Conditional MacDraw and PICT import modules.

There is no private “canvas widget” concealing the data model. The Drawing pane is a Dynamic Windows display/typeout stream; entities are drawn as presentations, and the selection gestures are presentation-to-command translators. This explains behaviors that look unusually semantic compared with later widget-based paint programs: menu arguments can be filled by clicking drawing objects, group presentations can be imploded and exploded, and the same output becomes a domain presentation outside the editor.

Findings not safely obtained from the manual alone

Finding Evidence and confidence
Separate Rotate Entity is inactive, but rotation is not absent High-confidence source finding. Its command form is block-commented “Since in Transform”; both Rotate transform types remain active. The installed help and public dictionary still list the separate command.
Help and implementation counts differ High-confidence structural finding. 61 unique installed Graphic Editor command topics versus 63 active source-defined commands, with the exact three omissions and one extra identified above.
The point input protocol has two grid-only gestures High-confidence source finding. Control-Left and Control-Shift-Left are in the active click classifier but absent from the manual's point-entry table.
Image is offered by the all-types Create chooser but rejects ordinary creation High-confidence source finding. The entity is registered; the chooser iterates the registry; its input method deliberately signals an error.
Bitmap editing is not integrated into undo High-confidence source limitation. Edit Image contains an explicit implementation TODO saying it should be undoable and saves no pre-edit raster. It also rejects more than one image at a time.
Transform notification is unfinished High-confidence source limitation, user effect unknown. note-entities-transform is an empty stub even though move, handle motion, and alignment call it. No manual contract establishes what notification was intended.
Non-miter joint choices appear to be discarded Probable source defect; runtime TODO. The chooser accepts bevel, round, and none but the assignment stores miter for any non-miter choice.
Register modifier documentation disagrees with itself Installed-help disagreement. The overview says Control-Middle; the command topic says Control-Meta-Middle. Source records only the abstract :yank-word gesture.
Drawings are shared more broadly than frames High-confidence source finding. The standalone and Concordia editors share one process-global loaded-drawing list, not merely copies synchronized through files.
Logout saving is narrower than “save everything” High-confidence source finding. A default-enabled application logout initialization offers to save modified drawings that already have files. Modified drawings with no associated file are not included in that automatic query.
File replacement is guarded High-confidence source finding. The editor records last read/write file identity and creation information, warns when disk state differs, and separately warns about modified or missing drawings before a reread.
The old direct screen-to-editor function key is not active High-confidence source finding. Its compatibility code and key installation are inside a block comment, despite manual workflows that still discuss screen capture through named images.

These findings illustrate why the manual is evidence of intended use, not a complete behavioral specification. Conversely, an unexercised source branch is not proof of its rendered appearance. The unresolved physical gesture mappings and Accept Values joint behavior remain TODOs until the optional editor can be run.

Runtime attempt and screenshot boundary

Result

Fresh isolated session d32-graphic-editor-20260718, generation 1, booted the licensed base world successfully. In Dynamic Lisp Listener 1 the exact nonmutating query

,(mapcar (function find-package)
         '("GRAPHIC-EDITOR" "GRAPHIC-INPUT" "UNDO-PROGRAM"))

returned (NIL NIL NIL). The next recorded action sent Select followed by g. After three seconds the selected Genera window remained the same Listener, with no editor frame, message, or other visible change.

This proves that those packages and the Select binding were absent from this world at that time. It does not prove that the systems cannot be loaded from the licensed distribution. The session had no guest-visible host file service and loading optional media was intentionally outside its nonmutating scope.

Portable run provenance

Item Recorded identity
Session/window d32-graphic-editor-20260718, generation 1; main window ID 4194310, title Genera on DIS-LOCAL-HOST, 1200 by 900 at (72,55) on Xvfb :200.
Base and private world Genera-8-5.vlod, 54,804,480 bytes, SHA-256 a8ee5e86cc7e322f7385af3e0cd579d7650d4dcfc3ce328acbf8b25515dd0672; private copy matched at start and remained byte-identical at stop.
Debugger VLM_debugger, 346,880 bytes, SHA-256 2db918cfe8f35f52c7ff4b7695b0ecd3bb85e41a3327ea5a94874edf05edb54a.
VLM genera, 1,533,760 bytes, execution SHA-256 9f5e18d5770f973879716182b6856ef5a8ee9d3b2bb907476ea0cf35986aa4c7.
Purchased archive identity opengenera2.tar.bz2, 206,213,430 bytes, SHA-256 89fb3e76b91d612834f565834dea950b603acf8f9dbacacdd0b1c3c284a2d36e.
Configuration Private .VLM, 285 bytes, execution SHA-256 5ce6509f5adf2cf2d054d34eb4ba777ce462285b8cd9b01bc071bf819139e086.
Legacy-command preload Execution SHA-256 f45f45461622975996ab41138f64bb84a4b17c51fba0dbb649208914898c26b7; source SHA-256 a4d126dbb6fd6f4903835bbb41c39652cfc53c91e942267dc9166c1c938c36e7.
X compatibility preload Execution SHA-256 acd71dbcb948f05b7fd2730b2b4706c08f16f46d792bd9aa6aa64370e855e4b1; source SHA-256 4db1dee8e71d5ddc5cfd8289ecc3607738370ac97f856853786cfe713e94e392.
RFC 868 responder Source and execution SHA-256 cc3a2274149c5593b52e6608d732d4048518c766134df5e0f018746ad5cf98bb; one request and reply validated, evidence SHA-256 36a22d8f4a25e1590202b4ac6ddb6632ab1ee066455ee7c0ce4988fb0daaae5a, responder exit 0.
Harness sources Shell entry e10d07a1c745d37044f1a97903455d334d6dcdb0c1d0e6854598e10fab24fa05; Python harness bc9276ac766913bc15018dd334a2a2704ae5a926e1fcbc30ccfcff08af8cb48a; namespace helper 17a3e297930eef45a6f59a349f92ec1f6dc99b2c4d5caa2392dc0521636af01c; VLM helper cbf9ee0520b4892325266ed17afba8f1b663e7d266fea6d80de9cf98de17d2f8.
Toolchain Guix manifest SHA-256 3adae999bbe420182f22adc2499fcc82449a46eaf580a362de9c0e718fa6b37d, Guix channel commit 230aa373f315f247852ee07dff34146e9b480aec; Python 3.11.14, Xorg Xvfb 21.1.21, xdotool 3.20211022.1, ImageMagick 6.9.13-5.

The Bubblewrap run used separate user, mount, network, PID, IPC, and hostname namespaces. Host root was hidden; the Guix store, exact helpers, and exact X socket were read-only; only the private runtime was writable. The private tun0 network had no default/external route or guest-visible file service. Xvfb disabled MIT-SHM and live verification found it absent. Both exact pinned guest-relay X substitutions were observed before the session reached running; nonmatching writes were delegated.

The action log contains four entries—intent and outcome for the package query, then intent and outcome for keys F1, g—and has SHA-256 a9a27d01c1d43e854115691d5410dc8ded48298cca23d8d578d845d7f832484f. Two 1200-by-900 raw research captures remain in the ignored session tree:

Capture PNG SHA-256 Pixel SHA-256 Meaning
0002-package-query.png 0a1d54875bac06ed08a068774176949d198a04a08ce7f71d4f69f7dfa8c9de9c d24e89d8f9a7129e7e347965f079ef88061f94a597c18c080099565166e95a95 Listener showing (NIL NIL NIL).
0003-select-g.png 865612be081dc8038a3572ec3d3b3b241b6f7eeb2b7201afd58490cbf85b64ce 15f7f9513b45b11f20b477466b982d629f92d8ece2eefdbb7afe6aa4b2090817 Same Listener after Select-G; no Graphic Editor frame.

Neither image is published: a Listener and vendor startup screen does not evidence Graphic Editor's visible behavior, so copying it into the curated screenshot tree would add screen content without supporting this article's application claims. A future representative screenshot requires a safely loaded Graphic Editor frame, a minimal synthetic drawing, and the image-specific review in Publishing runtime screenshots for museum documentation.

Shutdown evidence is deliberately separated. The VLM showed its shutdown prompt, accepted yes, and showed cleanup progress, then reached the already characterized confirmed stall. The harness bounded the wait and sent SIGKILL. forced_after_confirmed_shutdown_stall, forced_stop, and state_may_be_incomplete are true; orderly_vlm_host_shutdown is false. The harness did not invoke Save World or create a host process checkpoint; save_world_performed and guest_checkpoint_created remain unknown. The private and base worlds were unchanged, so no persisted world mutation is inferred.

CADR and LM-3 boundary

The public System 46 snapshot at commit 8e978d7d1704096a63edd4386a3b8326a2e584af and the maintained LM-3 System 303 Fossil check-in 4df393c68d7f083ce42d5c377039d26043cc18a9031ace28258dc97f4137eb91 were checked through the repository's existing visual-assets inventory and software-area catalog.

Those bounded sets establish:

  • 324 SUDS .DRW files totaling 4,776,539 bytes;
  • 86 .PLT streams totaling 669,231 bytes;
  • a System 46 and System 303 DPLT program that reads 36-bit SUDS plot output and reproduces vector, text, and diamond commands for Dover/Press output;
  • no complete runnable SUDS drawing editor in either inspected software set.

DPLT is a consumer and printer path for already exported plot streams, not evidence of the editor that created .DRW. The SUDS artifacts are valuable structured-drawing evidence, but this audit found no source-level names, file format, or implementation chain tying Genera Graphic Editor 440 to SUDS. A historical relationship is therefore unknown, not “obviously the same editor.” Decoding SUDS .DRW remains a separate preservation task and should not borrow the Genera native-file decoder by analogy.

Licensed artifact identities

All paths in this section are portable logical media locations. The underlying files remain local licensed inputs.

Principal source files

SYS:GRAPHIC-EDITOR; file Bytes SHA-256
DEFS.LISP.~1~ 4,707 4d093b08a242171c1afed583c3f1008f35193e52b95fe59dbc274e1837f94a96
DRAWING-FUNCTIONS.LISP.~20~ 11,746 32816bed3036a3b8b7805c12b0a8ef514a449e9911b8ed31c57e4e17914b5259
GRAPHIC-EDITING-SYSDCL.LISP.~20~ 5,036 2e43d308da6409e93b9927baeef3de7a7be7742d63e05b781698b612a42af04b
GRAPHIC-EDITOR-DOC.LISP.~16~ 4,580 0c03a4ac21bb701d5962467da2ac2afadfb6ff0dd1eb5db0ad57f8936936aecd
GRAPHIC-EDITOR-SYSDCL.LISP.~28~ 4,274 76d3f1ee146cbc1df901574e85e44a22a36e09eb893a145ff45edecbd70ad8f8
GRAPHIC-EDITOR.LISP.~351~ 133,916 d041ed45c1bf5fd8c27f96d3383e3fac07f81efc918270ae3e0fb1011a968c4d
GRAPHIC-ENTITIES.LISP.~217~ 96,716 d314d2b3bd7dc980b765f7a563c1288e5de465167dfe7e45676ba44eef0657d6
GRAPHIC-INPUT.LISP.~186~ 97,192 ad8a61298245200bccb7febe532730078d39d0517ca8b85f9e8729fbfb633d2f
INTERIM-FILE-FORMAT.LISP.~19~ 9,658 27214364b0f8ae1905eea6f019a06684b802b468881a8ee507c39aa3b22d2f77
TRANSFORM.LISP.~48~ 13,975 4673be0a803858aaf099119e8aa00d697a90ca51d64a462aeee71b37361848bd
UNDO.LISP.~16~ 12,680 ce9e4a764cda0615c0771a55b3430e0a2c96d4e74cd8d0d910b50f61efaf7e9f
ZWEI.LISP.~9~ 5,447 2fefc01e894605c0563d4ba35cd4a83fe6d322f6a6212a74bc21cf620134e185

System and help evidence

Artifact Bytes SHA-256 Evidence retained
GRAPHIC-EDITING.SYSTEM-DIR.~154~ 11,614 7e4d8f401a2657a6bada3565c75747685becd047e641ab3568cae2e02de0e766 Released 441 and source-world header.
GRAPHIC-EDITOR.SYSTEM-DIR.~188~ 14,271 2c55c82c81bd5cca7e4908e62e8ba87db3e55db57cbcff1f2d852dc33073daea Released 440 and source-world header.
GRED-DOC.SYSTEM-DIR.~83~ 8,689 66f474555f27abc1102faa658de27955a46429140ccc742133b241513f359184 Released 432 and source-world header.
DOCUMENTATION.SAB.~111~ 556,419 e8f695ea55be41f09351fefdec9fcb3e3182cf359e40e990af8eab93c668d6f6 126 records, 58 embedded pictures, 395,255 embedded byte-array bytes.
USING-GRED.SAB.~136~ 853,599 c39a1528900e39e7e7c39aafbad55bb8226f86627c117407704f31f95869a011 92 records, 53 embedded pictures, 679,645 embedded byte-array bytes.
GRAPHICS-IN-DOC.SAB.~69~ 75,638 c5448cfff633e14c14387f415e3821b229765a3abac66358fb9e2318d5eb9d51 15 records and 8 pictures.
PICTURE-RECORDS.SAB.~19~ 24,077 024cc636348da8035b105ae57b4a0e7a2ffc196325f3a3fe47bd10d552884307 5 picture-bearing records.
SHARED-DOCUMENTATION.SAB.~12~ 6,602 c9e5b26d6c76a1fb415e7154572ed8c3211694e850467708ab68f89fce82ae96 9 shared records.
CP6.SAB.~50~ 76,382 26e2b0a9a81295f7d3af4aab7c91a51c0bd04c9873dec96d646d873413297d51 Installed global command contracts for image file I/O.

The public Concordia PDF inspected for the manual comparison is 3,121,750 bytes, 508 pages, SHA-256 4b4625068731f1da52d2c0c8d0b50baf76c41707d237b9909339f378d22b7dfe.

Open questions and next preservation work

  • Provide the isolated world a rights-safe, read-only path to the already owned optional system binaries, load exactly Graphic Editing 441 and Graphic Editor 440, and repeat the Select-G test without configuring a Symbolics site.
  • Capture a minimal frame and synthetic geometry through the harness, verify actual menu ordering, right-click menus, Control-Middle versus Control-Meta-Middle, Control-Meta-Right translator precedence, and non-miter line-joint behavior.
  • Review only the smallest representative frame/synthetic-drawing screenshot under the repository's per-image four-factor process; do not publish installed Help pictures or a decorative interaction sequence.
  • Build an inert native drawing-file inspector that recognizes the version-3 dumped forms and whitelists remake-drawing/remake-entity data without evaluating Lisp.
  • Compare older system directories and release media to establish when the graphic-editing substrate, Sage picture type, and current entity registry first appeared. Copyright-year ranges alone are not sufficient lineage evidence.
  • Decode CADR SUDS .DRW independently, then compare its actual object and transform model with Genera only after both formats are established.

Sources

Last verified: 2026-07-18.

Try “search window system”, “open genera”, or “help”.