[etoys-dev] Slots without watchers

[Ricardo Moran]

On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 6:25 AM, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de>wrote:

>
> On 26.09.2009, at 04:43, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
>
>  Hi,
>>
>> In Etoy viewers, some of the slots like bearingTo don't have watchers on
>> them.
>>
>
> Requiring an argument, these are not slots, but functions. Not having a
> read-out on them is intentional.


>
>  Is this because of  computational load?
>>
>
> I don't think so, but maybe Scott can enlighten us on the design reasoning?
> I think it made sense that only properties of the object itself have
> read-outs, not relationships to its environment.


I don't see why a function shouldn't have a readout. It returns a value,
and IMHO all useful values should have readouts. This includes bearingTo,
distanceTo, isOverColor, colorSees, overlaps, overlapsAny, and so on. I know
some of them can't have readouts because of performance issues but if
bearingTo is not the case I think it should have one.

Cheers


>
>
>  They don't act like number tiles in assignments. It is disturbing to drop
>> them
>> into assignments and not be able to append arith operators.
>>
>
> That's just a bug. Please file a ticket.
>
>  If so, could a different icon (say yellow menu instead of a white one) be
>> used
>> for such slots?
>>
>
> Maybe, maybe not. Having a lot of different icons might be confusing, too?
>
> - Bert -
>
>
>
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