Beyond Loom

Beyond Loom is a personal blog that publishes technical articles on programming and creative computing. This page focuses on the Lil scripting language and how it can be used to describe and render 2D vector graphics within the Decker ecosystem.

The article introduces foundational concepts such as points, strokes, and paths, representing them as nested lists in Lil. It connects these ideas to the Hershey fonts developed by Dr. Allen Vincent Hershey, which encode typefaces as sequences of line segments and are used by the hershey module for laying out text.

Lil’s design is notably influenced by APL, which gives it an unusual but expressive approach to data and arrays. The article builds on examples from the interactive documentation, showing how these language features apply to practical vector drawing tasks.

This content suits programmers interested in array languages, creative coding, or the Decker ecosystem, as well as anyone curious about the history of digital typefaces. Readers should have some programming background and be comfortable with list-based data structures.

It is best read alongside the linked interactive documentation, trying the examples directly in Lil. Overall, the page offers a focused, example-driven introduction to vector graphics in an unconventional scripting language.