Troubleshooting

Here is a list of some common problems you may have and some possible solutions.

If you are running Windows 98, NT, or Linux, and still have problems, send me mail: tomrdavis@earthlink.net. You can probably get Geometer to work on some versions of Windows 95, but it's likely you'll need to get some libraries, OpenGL, for example.

Most of the suggested solutions here involve the file .geometerrc. Click here to learn about that file. Here is an index of the topics covered on this page:

Colors wrong/no text
Display wrong size
Text/geometry too small
The .geometerrc file

Colors wrong/no text

If you get weird colors, or no text, or circles with gaps, try this:

By default, Geometer runs in RGB mode, so if your graphics card is unable to display more than 256 colors, add the line:

    indexmode

to your .geometerrc file.

If your system is able to display in 65536 colors or in "True Color", we recommend that you use the default setting.

Display wrong size

You can control the initial size of your Geometer window with an entry like:

    size 500 700

in your .geometerrc file. The particular entry above will make the drawing area 500 pixels wide and 700 high. The size of the control area is fixed. You can, of course, resize the window as the program runs.

Text/geometry too small

If you can't read the text because it is too small, or if the sizes of the points are too small, or if you hate the font, you can change the default sizes with appropriate commands in your .geometerrc file. Here are a couple of examples:

    displayfont TIMES
    fontsize 18
    edittextsize 14
    vertexsize 14

The first line sets the display font to Times Roman, the second sets the size of that font to 18 pixels. The third sets the size of the font that appears in the editor (which you may never use) to 14 pixels, and the last line sets the size of a point on the screen to 14 pixels. Some sanity checks are done on the entries to this file, so all the above values can only be changed within reasonable limits. Set the font size to 100 pixels, and you'll get the default.

If the lines are too thin to see, you can simply type (hold down the "Ctrl" key and type a lower-case "L"), and all the lines will double in thickness. Type again to toggle back to the normal thickness. You can also set the lines permanently to a thicker form using the "Styles" pull-down menu and changing the width. The default is 1 pixel.

The .geometerrc file

All user-specific preferences for Geometer are in .geometerrc which is a text file. Geometer searches for the file first in your home directory, and if it is not found there, then in the directory where Geometer was installed. Be sure to include the leading "." in the file name; it is ".geometerrc", not "geometerrc".

To set your home directory, add a line like:

    SET HOME = C:\Windows\Profiles\davis\Personal

to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

See Startup for a list of the possible preferences you can put in this file. Be sure to save the file as a text file, not a Word file or something like that. Word has its own special format, but it can save files in "text" format. It's probably easier (and much faster) just to use a straight text editor like notepad, emacs, nedit, or vi.