The image displayed in the Silicon Mirror window is created by repeatedly reflecting the image coming up from Moe’s Image Viewer through the transparent portal in the Silicon Mirror. The edges of the portal are drawn with black and white lines.


Note that the image coming up through the portal is reflected about the sides of the portal. This process of reflection is performed iteratively. When the portal image is first reflected about a side, that reflection is often tilted because the side of the portal was tilted. When the next reflection is created, it is reflected about the sides of the first reflection. Only certain portal shapes can be reflected about their sides to seamlessly tile the plane. Check out the equilateral triangle shaped portal. The shape of the Silicon Mirror window is generally set to the smallest rectangle that captures the type of tiling implied by the shape of the portal.


The Silicon Mirror window looks like an ordinary window in several respects. It has a title bar, and can be resized by dragging its border. In addition to its peculiar habit of reflecting things, it has some other more subtle features. Like most windows, the Silicon Mirror window can be moved by dragging with the mouse button on the title bar. Unlike most other windows, the Silicon Mirror window can also be moved by dragging with the mouse button almost everywhere else on the window.


It is generally recommended to move the Silicon Mirror by dragging on the interior of the Silicon Mirror rather than by dragging the title bar. This is because of a bug in the current MacOS code that causes dragging on the title bar to repaint the window ‘jerkily’. Repaints are smooth and fast when dragging on the interior on the window. We hope to eventually fix this bug.


Note that the Silicon Mirror title bar in the sample image above contains the text ‘(888 , 518)’. This indicates that the current Silicon Mirror tile image is 888 pixels wide and 518 pixels tall. This feedback can be helpful when you wish to precisely control the size of the tile.


Right click or Control click the mouse button anywhere over the Silicon Mirror window to bring up the Silicon Mirror menu.