I have a strange problem. I'm trying to put some questions and answers onto the Moodle Learning Management System with STACK. STACK is a question type in some Moodle installations that allows for teachers to develop and students to answer questions with the help of the maxima Computer Algebra System.
STACK has restricted maxima in numerous ways due to restrictions on the environment in which it will run (e.g., a university server, perhaps the same server as the one on which Moodle is running). In particular, the STACK version (plot) of maxima's plot2d command is severely restricted, and there are no alternatives (such as plot3d or draw*). STACK's plot eventually calls gnuplot with a restricted set of keywords.
All that is fine for most uses, I suppose, such as graphing a few functions or parametric curves and putting a dot at their intersections, that sort of thing.
My problem is simply that I want to put a label at that dot. I can add a legend which labels the curves; I can add a title to the graph; I can add labels to the axes; and plot supplies the number markings on the axes; but I simply can't label a point on the graph given the restrictions in place.
I admit that perhaps I may have missed something. I also admit that there are now other ways to do this, e.g., JSXGraph, that I am about to explore. However, since we can graph a number of parametric curves, I thought why not label the the point with parametric curves that trace letter shapes? What a crazy, bad idea, I know, but ... we ought to be able to do this.
Does anyone have a set of parametric curves that trace out letter shapes? Simple functions like sine and cosine would be best. Parameter t can take a range from any real number to any other. I imagine a ellipse could make a passable 0 and a line segment could make a 1. There are "geometric" typefaces that are based on lines and circles alone, so it certainly can be done. Can it be done with a minimum of fuss? The shapes don't have to be typeface-design quality, just enough to distinguish one from another. It might even be charming if the letters look like someone's handwriting.