Martin
First my appologies and thanks for all your efforts. I managed to track down the executable file and now have Templot3 installed. I notice there is a button in the RH corner inviting me to swop to Templot5, is it an advantage to do this?
AndyLR
@AndyLR
Hi Andy,
Hopefully that is a typo and you now have Templot2 installed?
(Templot3 is a defunct partially-working open-source version from 2018.)
Templot2 is the fully working version of Templot which I have been developing for over 40 years and has been available to others for over 25 years.
In recent months the Templot2 code has been migrated to an open-source version Templot5 using a different compiler, and to which anyone can contribute code to the ongoing developments. This allows me to be run over by a bus without affecting anyone's use of Templot in future.
The Templot5 developments are mainly in the field of building 3D-printed track. This means there is now much more in Templot5 than in Templot2, but not everything from Templot2 has yet been migrated. The main function not yet available in Templot5 is the sketchboard function.
To learn "traditional" Templot track-planning you are probably best to use Templot2 at present, but you can swap to and fro between them whenever you want by clicking the buttons in the top right corner. If something doesn't seem to be working in Templot5, simply swap back to Templot2 and try again.
When we are ready, Templot2 will be discontinued and we shall swap permanently to Templot5. But we are not there yet and it is likely to be some time before that happens.
The Templot5 code is open-source so it's possible others may release a different version called something else, such as TemplotBeansOnToast or whatever. Which may contain bits of Templot5 and/or bits of something else. But that hasn't happened yet.
Templot4 does not exist, but the name is being kept in reserve should we need to compile a version of Templot5 in Delphi. Templot1 never did exist. Before 2011 the first version of Templot was called TemplotZero.
Cripplegate Park, Worcester, a couple of years ago:
In the late 1970s, not far beyond those trees, I had my
85A Models workshop manufacturing pointwork kits and components. On summer lunch-times we would walk down to the park for a game of bowls. Nothing has changed, it looks now exactly as it did 45 years ago. I sat for a while remembering those days.
One day in the late summer of 1979 I walked back from here and began scribbling ideas for a computer program to generate some curved turnout templates which I needed. I had recently received a programmable calculator for my 31st birthday, and I thought it might be used to try out such ideas.
I wonder what became of all that?
cheers,
Martin.