[etoys-dev] Etoys: Etoys-Richo.103.mcz

[karl ramberg]

On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 1:49 AM, Scott Wallace
<scott.wallace at squeakland.org> wrote:
> >From the perspective of "minimizing user paralysis", I think there's an argument to be made against this change, and indeed perhaps even an argument to be made to go in the opposite direction:  instead of forcing the user to make *two* modal decisions right away (first dream up a variable name, then decide on a value-type) it might be preferable to have the user make *no* modal decisions when adding a variable.
>
> This has long been a good choice for scripts -- we give you a default name, such as "script3", and you can leave it that way if you want or you can, at your leisure, edit the name into something useful and descriptive.  But you're not blocked by being forced to give your attention to specifying a name right away.
>
> Thinking up a name can be a powerful blocker; choosing a type from list that one does not understand might be worse.  Having both of these standing in the way of creating a user-defined variable might not be a good thing.
>
> Better, arguably, is to give a newly-launched variable a default name and a default value-type, and then also make it more straightforward and inviting to change the name and change the value-type, without needing to fish in menus.
>
> We did that a while ago in an internal vpri fork: add-variable gives you a variable with a default name and a value-type already provided; when and if desired, click on the variable name and text-edit to rename the variable; click on a little "value-type" icon to the right of the name to get a list of value-type choices.  No modal roadblocks to getting started, no fishing in menus to make changes.
>
> This improves the work-flow of add-a-variable quite a bit, and might be a good thing for squeakland as well.  However, it's probably too late in the development cycle of the imminent release to make such a change…
>
> Just tossing this out for discussion...

Is this code for a other system or can it be filed into Etoys ?

Another way of doing this would be to make a Hypercard like Variable Info dialog
http://www.loper-os.org/wp-content/hypercard-calc/hc11.jpg

A modal window with all the menu options presented for a variable: a
menu to change the variable type, a field change the name etc.

Karl

>
>  -- Scott
>
>
> On Feb 6, 2012, at 8:17 PM, commits at source.squeak.org wrote:
>
>> Ricardo Moran uploaded a new version of Etoys to project Etoys:
>> http://source.squeak.org/etoys/Etoys-Richo.103.mcz
>>
>> ==================== Summary ====================
>>
>> Name: Etoys-Richo.103
>> Author: Richo
>> Time: 6 February 2012, 5:16:57 pm
>> UUID: 84503c98-7c83-064f-957f-5bacf093d22e
>> Ancestors: Etoys-kfr.102
>>
>> Sixteen items for Squeakland 2012:
>>
>> 11. On Add Variable: Show options for value type - to make it easier to discover different types besides number (Ex: player, color, etc).
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