[etoys-dev] Another pass in the Etoys Reference Manual: tiles

[Edward Mokurai Cherlin]

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.

-- 
Edward Mokurai (默雷/निशब्दगर्ज/نشبدگرج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks