The International tab

These preferences support options allowing Logisim to be used in many countries.

• Gate Shape: Logisim supports three standards for drawing gates: shaped gates, rectangular gates, and DIN 40700 gates. The following table illustrates the distinction. Because the shaped style tends to be more popular in the U.S., while the rectangular style tends to be more popular in Europe, some people refer to these styles according to these regions; the region-neutral terms shaped and rectangular are preferred. The DIN 40700 standard was a standard for drafting digital and analog electronic components adopted by DIN, a German standards organization. DIN adopted the rectangular standard for digital components in 1976, but some engineers continue to use the older style; they appear to be increasingly rare.

  Logisim does not follow any standard exactly; it steers a middle ground to allow switching between them. 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: Change between languages. The current version is supplied with both an English translation and a Spanish translation. The Spanish translation has been contributed by Pablo Leal Ramos, from Spain.

  I welcome translations of Logisim into other languages! If you are interested, contact me, Carl Burch. This will not be a commitment: I will be happy to hear of your interest, and I will tell you whether I know of somebody who is working on it already, prepare a version for you to work with, and send you instructions. The translation process does not require an understanding of Java.

• Replace Accented Characters: Some platforms have poor support for characters (such as ñ or ö) that do not appear in the 7-bit ASCII character set. When this is checked, Logisim will replace all instances of the characters with the appropriate equivalent 7-bit ASCII characters. The checkbox is disabled when the current language does not have any equivalents available (as with English).

Next: The Experimental tab.