1. sectors (graphics) kh/ok add help

This item is based on Ricardo Moran's project "Sectors.8.pr" circulated in November and December 2011 on the Squeakland Educators' Google Group. It provides a new kind of object called a "Sector" which resembles a pie wedge.

The code from that project has now been extracted and submitted separately as a new item on the Squeakland tracker at:

http://tracker.squeakland.org/browse/SQ-1007

In this version, brief balloon-help messages have been provided, so if people have no objections, it should be good to go. I also attach a copy of the compressed fileout to this message for convenience in testing.

There has been a certain amount of discussion of this feature in the Educators' Google Group, including one request for a variant in which instead of presenting a true sector of a circle, the endpoints of the arc subtended are connected by a straight line, thus resulting in a triangle. But in the version described here and posted to the tracker, Ricardo's original circle-segment implementation is used.

Anyone wishing to try this out: download the proposed fix from the tracker url given above, or use the attachment accompanying this email. Fire up an up-to-date 4.1 etoys dev image; open a file-list and navigate to the fix file, and "install" it.

Now look in the Objects catalog, under "Graphics", for "Sector". Drag one out. Open its Viewer. Shift-click on the object to get a yellow angle-changing handle. Change the angle using this handle, and watch the value of "angle" change in the Viewer, and vice-versa. Try placing a watcher for the "angle" variable right beneath the sector -- you could even embed both a Sector object and a corresponding angle-watcher in a larger structure, such as a Rectangle.

Comments, please! Any objection to this going into the release? It would be great for a nice example or two of each new feature to be included in the release. Something involving pie-charts might be good for this one…

-- Scott

2. calendar? (tools) add help (ask developers about cost of adding projects)

This derives from Ricardo Moran's "Calendario" project. It provides a Calendar object looking like this:

… which can be scripted using tiles found in the "calendar" category of its Viewer:

The date, month, etc., all refer to the calendar's currently "selected date", whose month and year are showing and whose day-of-month is highlighted. Whenever any value affecting that date is changed (by script or via the UI in a Viewer or Watcher) the calendar will switch to showing the month in which that date occurs, and will highlight the newly selected date.

I've submitted a mildly modified version of Ricardo's code to the Squeakland tracker as item SQ-1008, and propose, pending comments from testers, that it be included in the forthcoming Squeakland 2012 release.

Many good things can be done with this object, and using two calendars side by side suggests further ideas -- e.g it's easy to make a project that instantly computes the number of days between any two dates. It's also easy to build a little tool that will tell you what day-of-the-week you birthday will fall in any given year, etc.

Many thanks to Richo for this work.

-- Scott

On 1/24/12 10:17 PM, Scott Wallace wrote:

[...] 15. A Rosetta Stone like (visual display of speech, graph) to help kids learn language and pronunciation).

If done properly, this would make etoys attractive to adults, also.

Lawson

Update on ongoing activity:

On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 6:17 AM, Scott Wallace scott.wallace@squeakland.org wrote:

Here are the sixteen items currently on the Squeakland Educators' Group's wish-list of changes to try to get into the "Squeakland 2012" release.  This is from an early version of a working document, and does not necessarily represent consensus or priority, but it provides a useful point of departure as we try to kickstart the process of defining and building the release.

Individual items will be addressed in separate emails shortly.

Most of the major items here relate to work (heroically) done by Ricardo Moran in 2010 and 2011, whose results were typically circulated in projects attached to emails sent to this list.  It would be very useful to hear about all experiences (in as much detail as possible) that anyone has had with any of these projects.  Items 1-5 and 7 are all in this category.

---

1. sectors (graphics) kh/ok add help

added

2. calendar? (tools) add help  (ask developers about cost of adding projects)

added ( is it possible to change week day start from sunday to monday)

3. graphing tool

4. number line

5. spreadsheet - maybe (in object catalogue?) - Skeleton -

6. input/output

7. Single Step Debugger

Added

8. When saving file display only: Name, Notes and Tags - Remove Subject, Target Age, and Region  - Matches Scratch

(can fold subject entries into tags for existing and older versions)

9. Add Koji Yokokawa's ScratchConnect (game controls and game displays)

This will allow kids to create “game controllers” using Etoys Projects on one set of computers to control a “game display” (another Etoys or Scratch Project) on another computer.

10. re-arrange the objects in supplies

remove Press me (back in object catalog), polygon in supplies instead (to have a non-symmetric object to let kids see heading when moving)

11. On Add Variable: Show options for value type - to make it easier to discover different types besides number (Ex: player, color, etc).

Added

12. When deleting a project icon, change "delete the icon and delete the project" to "delete the icon and remove the project" delete indicates it may delete it from disk. And change wording from "Really delete the project <name> and all its contents? <yes/no>" to "Realy delete the icon and remove the project from Etoys (file will still be saved on disk) <yes/no>"

13. Fix Connector Labels so they display properly in “middle” of connector.

a. Fix: connector labels so that when added they move to the "middle" of the connector, not "openAtMousePosition"  b. Fix: connector labels so that repositioning does not place back to position of "openAtMousePosition" relative to move.

14. An "ask" tile to get user input.

Suggestion by Richo. Hate to be looked at.

15. A Rosetta Stone like (visual display of speech, graph) to help kids learn language and pronunciation).

16. Add perimeter, etc. tiles to polygon tool.

---

-- Scott _______________________________________________ etoys-dev mailing list etoys-dev@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys-dev

On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 6:17 AM, Scott Wallace scott.wallace@squeakland.org wrote:

Here are the sixteen items currently on the Squeakland Educators' Group's wish-list of changes to try to get into the "Squeakland 2012" release.  This is from an early version of a working document, and does not necessarily represent consensus or priority, but it provides a useful point of departure as we try to kickstart the process of defining and building the release.

Individual items will be addressed in separate emails shortly.

Most of the major items here relate to work (heroically) done by Ricardo Moran in 2010 and 2011, whose results were typically circulated in projects attached to emails sent to this list.  It would be very useful to hear about all experiences (in as much detail as possible) that anyone has had with any of these projects.  Items 1-5 and 7 are all in this category.

---

1. sectors (graphics) kh/ok add help

2. calendar? (tools) add help  (ask developers about cost of adding projects)

3. graphing tool

4. number line

5. spreadsheet - maybe (in object catalogue?) - Skeleton -

6. input/output

7. Single Step Debugger

8. When saving file display only: Name, Notes and Tags - Remove Subject, Target Age, and Region  - Matches Scratch

(can fold subject entries into tags for existing and older versions)

9. Add Koji Yokokawa's ScratchConnect (game controls and game displays)

This will allow kids to create “game controllers” using Etoys Projects on one set of computers to control a “game display” (another Etoys or Scratch Project) on another computer.

10. re-arrange the objects in supplies

remove Press me (back in object catalog), polygon in supplies instead (to have a non-symmetric object to let kids see heading when moving)

11. On Add Variable: Show options for value type - to make it easier to discover different types besides number (Ex: player, color, etc).

12. When deleting a project icon, change "delete the icon and delete the project" to "delete the icon and remove the project" delete indicates it may delete it from disk. And change wording from "Really delete the project <name> and all its contents? <yes/no>" to "Realy delete the icon and remove the project from Etoys (file will still be saved on disk) <yes/no>"

13. Fix Connector Labels so they display properly in “middle” of connector.

a. Fix: connector labels so that when added they move to the "middle" of the connector, not "openAtMousePosition"  b. Fix: connector labels so that repositioning does not place back to position of "openAtMousePosition" relative to move.

14. An "ask" tile to get user input.

15. A Rosetta Stone like (visual display of speech, graph) to help kids learn language and pronunciation).

16. Add perimeter, etc. tiles to polygon tool.

---

-- Scott

A couple of thing that would be nice as well:

Make ColorPickerMorphs and PaintBoxMorph use event system when picking color, not polling sensor. This will fix bugs with event recorder and some other issues.

SketchMorphs have a scalePoint setting that is independent of scale factor. This is quite confusing. I'm not sure how to consolidate this issue. Suggestions welcome. http://tracker.squeakland.org/browse/SQ-882

Karl