Jigwin piece template
The Jigwin piece template is a file format used by the Jigsaws Galore program. It defines the shape of a "fun piece": a fancifully-shaped puzzle piece which can appear in jigsaw puzzles alongside normal-shaped pieces.
The "fun piece" feature was added in version 6 (2005), which comes with 22 pre-made Jigwin piece templates and explains the format in its help file. To be recognized by the program, a template file must have the asc extension and be placed in the Pieces/ subfolder.
The pre-made files all start with the line Jigwin piece template version 1.0, hence the title of this article. The name "Jigwin" refers to the Jigsaws Galore executable, jigwin.exe.
The format
Jigwin piece template files are plaintext lists of vertex coordinates.
An example Jigwin piece template (square.asc, one of the default ones bundled with version 6) looks as follows:
Jigwin piece template version 1.0 Title: Square Author: David P. Gray Corners: 1,2,3,4 1, 0.0, 0.0 2, 1.0, 0.0 3, 1.0, 1.0 4, 0.0, 1.0
The format is pretty self-explanatory. Some notes: (Checked as of Jigsaws Galore version 6)
- The initial metadata section must contain a line starting with
Corners:. This line specifies the ids of the four vertices which are the corners of the piece, in the order: top-left, top-right, bottom-right, bottom-left. - The
Title:andAuthor:lines are optional. They specify the title and author name that will be displayed by Jigsaws Galore in the fun piece settings dialog. - Any other lines in the metadata section are ignored.
- After the initial metadata, each row contains a vertex id number (integer), and x, y coordinates (floats or integers). Coordinates can be positive or negative, and given to any scale or precision; the program automatically resizes the piece to match the other jigsaw pieces. There can be of course more than four vertices listed (it's unknown if there's any specific limit to their number).
- The vertices must be listed in increasing order, starting from 1, without repetitions or gaps in id numbers. This section of the file cannot contain any lines other than vertex definitions. The final line can end with a newline character, but this is not required.
- The piece templates bundled with the program sometimes have additional numbers after the coordinates, e.g.
1,0.330000,9.210000,0.000000,1. However, the help file clarifies that those extra numbers are ignored. (Perhaps they're the leftovers of some cut feature.)
