|  |  | Introduction

# Introduction

Dr. Genius is the interactive geometry package for the Gnome Desktop. It allows users to create geometric figures that can be manipulated with respect to geometric rules. The program is useable with students from the primary through secondary levels.

DR. GEOwelcome screen

To create a new empty geometric figure, the user clicks on the first (on the left) button in the toolbar. Alternatively, a new figure can be created using the menu item `File->New->Figure` from the menu bar. When a new figure is created, a new toolbar with a set of six icons appears. The last item (on the right) in the toolbar is an option menu; it is used to adjust the scale of the current geometric figure.

An empty geometric figure

The six icons correspond to different types of functions. These functions are described in the next chapter.

A DR. GEOfigure and its description

With each figure, a pane is available. By default the pane is pushed to the extreme left so that only the representation of the figure is visible. At any moment, the user can push the pane to the right to make visible the figure description. A figure description is a tree list. The tree is composed of all the elements of the figure. The elements relative to other elements can be expanded by pressing the '+' sign, that way the user can visualize the parents of this element.

|  |  | Introduction