Internationalization

To support a user base spanning the globe, Logisim includes two features.

Gate standards

There are several standards for drawing logic gates, but most fall roughly into one of two families: shaped gates and rectangular gates. The following table illustrates the distinction.

(Some refer to these as the U.S. and European styles; I don't endorse this terminology, though, because it suggests that every region of the world needs to invent its own standard, and that would present major problems for Logisim!)

Logisim uses the shaped-gates style by default, but it can switch to rectangular-gate style via the Shaped Gates option in the Options menu.

Logisim steers a middle ground to be able to support both families. In particular, the shaped gates are more square than the dimensions defined by the relevant IEEE standard. And, although XOR and XNOR gates really ought to be the same width as OR and NOR gates with the rectangular style, they are not because of difficulties compressing the shaped-XOR gate.

Currently, the rectangular OR gate is drawn with a ">0" label rather than the proper label illustrated above, because many platforms still don't support a full Unicode character set.

Language support

Logisim supports translation to other languages. The only translation currently available is U.S. English. If you'd like a version of Logisim in your native tongue, and you're willing to deal with the tedium of translation, I'm interested in collaborating with you to make it appear in a future version. Contact me.

Next: User's Guide.