Author(s)

B. Autin

Abstract

The functional programming introduced by Geometrica in geometry is illustrated with various aspects of the concept of parallelism. Parallelism is well defined for a continuous curve. Its generalisation to a broken line or a polygon requires some convention at the vertices where the normal and the distance are undefined. The next level of generalisation consists of defining a curve whose distance to a reference curve varies according to a given law. Such a curve is called paraxial Applications to architecture and optics are proposed. 1 Genericity A property is generic for a set of elements if it applies to all the elements of the set. In Geometrica, the set is composed of points, straight lines, circles, arcs of circle, conies and polygonal lines. All the functions of the program are designed to be g

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