robotkarol — Robot Karol worlds and block programs for teaching material

Version 3.6 (2026-08-23) — Anselm Wagner <anselm.wagner@posteo.de>

The robotkarol package draws worlds and Blockly-style block programs in the visual style of the German teaching environment Robot Karol Online (https://karol.arrrg.de/), for use in worksheets, exams, and slides. Colours and proportions were measured from the original interface and rebuilt with TikZ; no artwork is copied.

Features

• karolwelt environment: full 2-D worlds rendered either as a 3-D oblique view (with room frame, brick stacks, markers, walls, and the Karol avatar) or as a 2-D top view matching the original interface.
• \karolzeile: compact string notation for one-row worlds (\karolzeile{> Z 2 {2M} M Q}), drawn with the very same building blocks as karolwelt — a one-row world is visually a karolwelt with laenge=1, only the input is shorter. Plus helpers for before/after pairs, empty grids, and legends.
• karolbloecke environment and block commands (\bbefehl, \bwiederholemal, \bwenndannsonst, …) reproducing the Blockly editor: exact colours, flat design, condition plugs, number pills, ghost blocks and empty sockets for cloze exercises.
• Inline blocks (\ibefehl, \iwenndann, \iwiederholemal, …) set a single block into running text: the block's text baseline sits exactly on the surrounding baseline, the label takes the surrounding font size, and the notches are shallower so the block's height stays close to the line height. Blocks that would span several lines in a stack appear inline with their header only.
• Two figures, switched with \karolfigur{karol} (default) or \karolfigur{emma} (long hair and a flower).
• The fonts of the online interface: labels in Noto Sans, program text in Hack (falling back to DejaVu Sans Mono when Hack is not installed). Load the package as \usepackage[schrift=dokument]{robotkarol} to use the document's own \sffamily/\ttfamily instead — that also avoids loading fontspec.
• karolcode environment for syntax-highlighted Karol source text and helpers for structograms (via struktex).
• All colours and dimensions adjustable through \karolsetup.

Requirements

LuaLaTeX (the package warns if \directlua is missing), expl3, TikZ, listings, struktex, graphicx, and — unless loaded with schrift=dokument — fontspec and the Noto Sans fonts (both in TeX Live).

Installation

Put robotkarol.sty where LaTeX finds it, e.g.

TEXMFHOME/tex/latex/robotkarol/robotkarol.sty

and refresh the file database (mktexlsr) if your distribution needs it. robotkarol.cwl is a command list for TeXstudio's auto-completion and belongs in that editor's completion/user directory; it is not needed to typeset documents.

Files

Documentation

See robotkarol-doc.pdf (German, with an English abstract). A quick start:

\usepackage{robotkarol}
...
\begin{karolwelt}[breite=5, laenge=3]
  \karol[x=1, y=2, richtung=osten]
  \ziegel[x=2, y=2, anzahl=4]
  \marke[x=5, y=2]
\end{karolwelt}

Karol checks \iwenndann{IstZiegel} and repeats \iwiederholemal{5}.

License

LaTeX Project Public License, version 1.3c or later (https://www.latex-project.org/lppl.txt). This work has the LPPL maintenance status maintained; the current maintainer is Anselm Wagner.

Copyright (C) 2026 Anselm Wagner <anselm.wagner@posteo.de>