I looked at the Viewer categories for every object in the Object Catalog, and at the Squeak lists of categories and tiles, and documented every tile in every category I found as much as I could in the Common Tiles chapter of the Etoys Reference Manual. I have not updated the introduction to the chapter yet. It is incorrect in saying that some categories are explained only in the Objects chapter.
Now I have some questions.
1) Should we split the Common Tiles chapter, as we split the Objects chapters, so that we have a chapter for the nearly universal categories that every Morph has (but not, for example, the Kedama objects), and another for all of the categories specific to individual objects and small groups of objects? In the draft chapter, the boundary is at section 4.18, on book navigation. Near the beginning of the chapter there is an image of the category menu for Morphs, and a list of categories for specific object types that do not appear on the list for Morphs.
2) There are a number of tiles whose effects I could not determine from the help text or through experiment, and some that appear to be so buggy as to be unusable. I have made notes in the draft on all of them, mostly in Formatted (monospace on colored background) text. Any assistance on interpreting these, or filing bug reports, would be welcome. At some point I mean to look at their Squeak implementations (via 'show code textually' on the Scripting Editor menu, and 'selectors containing it' on the control-click menu for text selections) to see whether they are any more illuminating.
3) Some of the help text clearly needs to be rewritten to, you know, help.
4) I am about to write the chapter on Programming Tools, which will begin by describing every Squeak tool accessible from any Etoys menu, such as the System Browser, and tools for viewing Senders, Implementors, Selectors, and so on provided on the World menu and the open... and authoring... menus that it gives access to. I intend to describe the Morphic and Etoys-Scripting classes, also, to some extent, and then stop. I do mean to write more about the implementation of Etoys in Squeak, but in other books, which we can discuss. For example, I have thought about a chapter on writing Squeak in text-mode scripting tiles in an Etoys User Manual or Etoys By Example, so that we can discuss concretely teaching more advanced programming and Computer Science topics on the basis of Etoys.
5) Then I intend to go over the entire book again, with the benefit of what I have learned. Presumably I will have more questions at that point.
Hi Ed,
at the moment, I don't have the time to look through your changes. The common tiles chapter hasn't been in need for additions, so I have to look what you added and find out if it will stay there. Please stop making additions before I have the time to look it up. I don't want you to do work that will be removed later.
We will not split up the common tiles chapter for this manual, this is the chapter for the nearly universal categories. I will look through your comments about unusable tiles or functions you can not determine. This will be very helpful, since we want the reader to understand the manual. The programming tool chapter needs to be part of another manual. This manual will stay in the shape we decided when we started it and then we can have part two, which focuses on the Etoys-squeak relation. Feel free to create the new manual, or do you want me to do it?
Greetings, Rita
On Mon, 3 Dec 2012 12:51:19 -0500, Edward Mokurai Cherlin wrote:
I looked at the Viewer categories for every object in the Object Catalog, and at the Squeak lists of categories and tiles, and documented every tile in every category I found as much as I could in the Common Tiles chapter of the Etoys Reference Manual. I have not updated the introduction to the chapter yet. It is incorrect in saying that some categories are explained only in the Objects chapter.
Now I have some questions.
- Should we split the Common Tiles chapter, as we split the Objects
chapters, so that we have a chapter for the nearly universal categories that every Morph has (but not, for example, the Kedama objects), and another for all of the categories specific to individual objects and small groups of objects? In the draft chapter, the boundary is at section 4.18, on book navigation. Near the beginning of the chapter there is an image of the category menu for Morphs, and a list of categories for specific object types that do not appear on the list for Morphs.
- There are a number of tiles whose effects I could not determine
from the help text or through experiment, and some that appear to be so buggy as to be unusable. I have made notes in the draft on all of them, mostly in Formatted (monospace on colored background) text. Any assistance on interpreting these, or filing bug reports, would be welcome. At some point I mean to look at their Squeak implementations (via 'show code textually' on the Scripting Editor menu, and 'selectors containing it' on the control-click menu for text selections) to see whether they are any more illuminating.
- Some of the help text clearly needs to be rewritten to, you know,
help.
- I am about to write the chapter on Programming Tools, which will
begin by describing every Squeak tool accessible from any Etoys menu, such as the System Browser, and tools for viewing Senders, Implementors, Selectors, and so on provided on the World menu and the open... and authoring... menus that it gives access to. I intend to describe the Morphic and Etoys-Scripting classes, also, to some extent, and then stop. I do mean to write more about the implementation of Etoys in Squeak, but in other books, which we can discuss. For example, I have thought about a chapter on writing Squeak in text-mode scripting tiles in an Etoys User Manual or Etoys By Example, so that we can discuss concretely teaching more advanced programming and Computer Science topics on the basis of Etoys.
- Then I intend to go over the entire book again, with the benefit
of what I have learned. Presumably I will have more questions at that point.
Agree with Rita, while not perfect we as a team spent a lot of time working on the chapter and the organization. Not perfect but it does have a structure.
Edward,
Perhaps it would be best if you made a separate manual and once done you can ask for input on that. Perhaps along the lines you discussed earlier (Etoys by Example). I think that could add more value as it is a good idea and would give people different ways to approach, learn about and use Etoys.
Thanks for all your input.
Stephen
On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 10:04 PM, rita rita@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de wrote:
Hi Ed,
at the moment, I don't have the time to look through your changes. The common tiles chapter hasn't been in need for additions, so I have to look what you added and find out if it will stay there. Please stop making additions before I have the time to look it up. I don't want you to do work that will be removed later.
We will not split up the common tiles chapter for this manual, this is the chapter for the nearly universal categories. I will look through your comments about unusable tiles or functions you can not determine. This will be very helpful, since we want the reader to understand the manual. The programming tool chapter needs to be part of another manual. This manual will stay in the shape we decided when we started it and then we can have part two, which focuses on the Etoys-squeak relation. Feel free to create the new manual, or do you want me to do it?
Greetings, Rita
On Mon, 3 Dec 2012 12:51:19 -0500, Edward Mokurai Cherlin wrote:
I looked at the Viewer categories for every object in the Object Catalog, and at the Squeak lists of categories and tiles, and documented every tile in every category I found as much as I could in the Common Tiles chapter of the Etoys Reference Manual. I have not updated the introduction to the chapter yet. It is incorrect in saying that some categories are explained only in the Objects chapter.
Now I have some questions.
- Should we split the Common Tiles chapter, as we split the Objects
chapters, so that we have a chapter for the nearly universal categories that every Morph has (but not, for example, the Kedama objects), and another for all of the categories specific to individual objects and small groups of objects? In the draft chapter, the boundary is at section 4.18, on book navigation. Near the beginning of the chapter there is an image of the category menu for Morphs, and a list of categories for specific object types that do not appear on the list for Morphs.
- There are a number of tiles whose effects I could not determine
from the help text or through experiment, and some that appear to be so buggy as to be unusable. I have made notes in the draft on all of them, mostly in Formatted (monospace on colored background) text. Any assistance on interpreting these, or filing bug reports, would be welcome. At some point I mean to look at their Squeak implementations (via 'show code textually' on the Scripting Editor menu, and 'selectors containing it' on the control-click menu for text selections) to see whether they are any more illuminating.
Some of the help text clearly needs to be rewritten to, you know, help.
I am about to write the chapter on Programming Tools, which will
begin by describing every Squeak tool accessible from any Etoys menu, such as the System Browser, and tools for viewing Senders, Implementors, Selectors, and so on provided on the World menu and the open... and authoring... menus that it gives access to. I intend to describe the Morphic and Etoys-Scripting classes, also, to some extent, and then stop. I do mean to write more about the implementation of Etoys in Squeak, but in other books, which we can discuss. For example, I have thought about a chapter on writing Squeak in text-mode scripting tiles in an Etoys User Manual or Etoys By Example, so that we can discuss concretely teaching more advanced programming and Computer Science topics on the basis of Etoys.
- Then I intend to go over the entire book again, with the benefit of
what I have learned. Presumably I will have more questions at that point.
______________________________**_________________ etoys-dev mailing list etoys-dev@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/**mailman/listinfo/etoys-devhttp://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys-dev
etoys-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org