History of JugglePro
It all started when I joined the juggling listserver (pre-rec.juggling)
in 1990. There were maybe 100 or so readers at that time and I was one
of the frequent contributers to the group. Several of us were interested
in the mathematics of juggling and would discuss siteswaps and extended
notations. To facilitate this discussion another group was added called
jugglen (the 'n' stood for notation). These discussions led me to
invent multi-hand notation (MHN), which I was anxious to make use of. At
the St. Louis IJA Convention, there was the first meeting of us computer
geek jugglers, as well as a workshop on the mathematics of juggling. I
remember telling Allen Knutson of my intensions to write a juggling
viewer then. By the way, Allen Knutson wrote the first siteswap viewer
called juggle.exe (still available and free).
The initial code began in the fall of 1991. At that time I was more used
to Atari Basic than Turbo Pascal so I began the code in Atari BASIC!
However, I soon realized that this was far too slow and switched to
Turbo Pascal on my Dad's old IBM XT with monochrome monitor. Looking
back, C++ would have been a better choice, but at that time I didn't
know C or C++ and my Dad didn't have it. The first version of JP let
you do simple pattern editing and view the pattern-- that's all!
<![CDATA[
Version Description
1.0 Pattern editing, 2d Viewer (squares for balls)
2.0 File I/O, Editing, 2d Viewer (spheres for balls)
2.3 Hand movements--rudimentary editing
3.0 Demo capability
3.5 3D!!!
3.6 More user-friendly
]]></plaintext></p></body></div>