Knotscape 1.0
by Jim Hoste and Morwen Thistlethwaite
with help from Bruce Ewing, Ken Millett, Ken Stephenson and Jeff Weeks
Knotscape is an interactive program for the study of knots. Originally designed
to allow easy access to the knot tables, its purpose has expanded somewhat to
include computation of a variety of knot invariants. Users may enter a knot in
several ways: as a braid, via Dowker/Thistlethwaite code (Gauss code), by
selecting from the knot tables, or by
drawing with a mouse. Once a knot has been entered Knotscape will, among other
things,
- find the knot (or
its summands with respect to connected sum) in
the tables (provided it is truly a 16 crossing knot or less!),
- draw a pretty
picture of it,
- compute its
HOMFLY, Kauffman, Jones, or Alexander polynomial,
- compute representations of its
fundamental group into the symmetric group on five letters, or
- compute various
hyperbolic invariants a la Snap Pea. (We are indebted to Jeff Weeks for allowing
us to include portions of Snap Pea.)
The program requires Tcl 7.4, 7.5, or 7.6 / Tk 4.0, 4.1 or 4.2.
Binaries of the executables are provided for the following three
platforms:
Knotscape may be downloaded from
Morwen Thistlethwaite's home page. Instructions for its installation will be found
there, and instructions for using Knotscape are included in the package.
A preliminary version of Knotscape ported to the Mac by Adrian Sampson
is now available. Click here to download.
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