Laboratory: Boolean Values and Predicate Procedures

Summary: In this laboratory, you will have the opportunity to explore a number of issues relating to predicates, Boolean values, and conditional operations.

Preparation

You need not do any preparation for this lab, other than the traditional preparation. Make sure you’ve done the reading and asked questions about it. Start GIMP. Start the MediaScript plugin.

Exercises

Exercise 1: Writing Your Own Predicates

a. Write a predicate, (not-very-blue? color), that holds only when the color’s blue component is less than 64.

b. Write a predicate, (red-dominates? color), that holds only if the red component is greater than the sum of the green and the blue components.

c. Write a predicate, (greyish? color), that holds only if no two components of color differ by more than 8.

Exercise 2: Comparing Colors

As you’ve noted, the < procedure can be used to determine if one number is smaller than another. Can we do similar comparisons for colors? Certainly. There are, however, a number of different criteria one could use to compare colors.

a. Write a two-parameter predicate, (irgb-greener? color1 color2), that holds only if the green component of color1 is larger than the green component of color2.

b. Write a two-parameter predicate, (irgb-lighter? color1 color2), that holds only if color1 is lighter than color2. Note that in doing this comparison, you should first figure out how light a color is (either by averaging the three components or by using the more complex lightness computation).

Exercise 3: Ranges

Write a procedure, (valid-component? comp), that determines if the value named by comp is between 0 and 255, inclusive.

Exercise 4: Exploring and and or

a. Determine the value and returns when called with no parameters.

b. Explain why you think the designers of Scheme had and return that value.

c. Determine the value and returns when called with one, two, and three integers as parameters.

d. Explain why you think the designers of Scheme had and return that value.

e. Determine the value or returns when called with no parameters.

f. Explain why you think the designers of Scheme had or return that value.

g. Determine the value or returns when called with only integers as parameters.

h. Explain why you think the designers of Scheme had or return that value.

If you are puzzled by some of the answers, you may want to look at the notes on this problem.

For Those With Extra Time

Extra 1: Exploring Shades, Revisited

You may recall that in problem 2, you explored how certain components can affect whether a color is considered light or dark, and you attempted to find colors that helped you make those determinations. As you know, an important aspect of computer science is taking the informal processes we use and attempting to formalize them. So, let’s try that for a similar problem.

Give instructions that someone else could follow in order to determine the darkest shade of grey that is still considered light. In writing these instructions, assume that the precise algorithm irgb-light? uses is unknown. All you know about the procedure is that if it considers one shade of grey light, then it considers every lighter shade of grey light. (Recall that we have decided that a color is a shade of grey if its three components are all equal.)

If someone else in the class has also developed a set of instructions, get their instructions and attempt to follow them. (You should also share your instructions with others.)

Extra 2: Converting to Black, Grey, or White

The reading included a procedure that used and and or to convert colors to black, grey, or red.

;;; Procedure:
;;;   irgb-bgw
;;; Parameters:
;;;   color, an integer-encoded RGB color
;;; Purpose:
;;;   Convert an RGB color to black, grey, or white, depending on
;;;   the intensity of the color.
;;; Produces:
;;;   bgw, an integer-encoded RGB color
;;; Preconditions:
;;;   irgb-light? and irgb-dark? are defined.
;;; Postconditions:
;;;   If (irgb-light? color) and not (irgb-dark? color), 
;;;      then bgw is pure white ("255/255/255")
;;;   If (irgb-dark? color) and not (irgb-light? color), 
;;;      then bgw is pure black ("0/0/0")
;;;   If neither (irgb-light? color) nor (irgb-dark? color), then bgw is
;;;      grey ("128/128/128")
;;; Problems: 
;;;   In the unexpected case that none of the above conditions holds, 
;;;      bgw will be one of black, white, and grey.
(define irgb-bgw
    (lambda (color)
      (or (and (irgb-light? color) 
               (irgb-new 255 255 255))
          (and (irgb-dark? color) 
               (irgb-new 0 0 0))
          (irgb-new 128 128 128))))

a. Test this procedure by applying it to some colors you know are light, some colors you know are dark, and some colors you know are neither light nor dark. For example,

> (irgb->string (irgb-bgw (irgb-new 10 10 10)))

b. Try building an image variant using irgb-bgw. For example,

> (define kitten (image-load "/home/rebelsky/MediaScheme/Images/kitten.png"))
> (image-show (image-variant kitten irgb-bgw))

c. Write a similar procedure, irgb-bgy, in which light colors are converted to yellow, dark colors to blue, and other colors to green.

d. Try building an image variant using this new version of irgb-bgy.

Extra 3: Dominance

Write three predicates, each of which checks if one component is greater than the others.

• (mostly-red? color) holds if the red component of color is the largest of the three components.
• (mostly-green? color) holds if the green component of color is the largest of the three components.
• (mostly-blue? color) holds if the blue component of color is the largest of the three components.

Extra 4: Transforming to Dominant Colors

a. Write a procedure, (irgb-dominant color), that that converts a color to red if the color is mostly red, to blue if the color is mostly blue, and to green if the color is mostly green. If the color is none of those, irgb-dominant should convert the color to a moderate grey. You may want to use the structure of irgb-bgw as a pattern for this procedure.

b. Try applying irgb-dominant to a variety of colors.

c. Try building an image variant using irgb-dominant.

Notes

Notes on Problem 4

(and) has value true (#t) because “and has a value of true if none of the parameters have value false”. This call has no parameters, which means none are false.

Alternately, you can think of #t as the “and-itive identity”. That is, (and #t x) is x. When given no parameters, and returns its identity value.

(or) has value false (#f) because “or has value false if none of the parameters is non-false”. Since this call has no parameters, none are non-false.

Alternately, you can think of #f as the “or-itive identity”. That is, (or ... x) is x. When given no parameters, or returns its identity value.

Go back to the problem