[Squeakland] MixedMorph for kids

Jerome Peace peace_the_dreamer at yahoo.com
Tue May 8 14:34:20 PDT 2007


Hi Yoshiki,


 [Squeakland] MixedMorph for kids
>  
>  Yoshiki Ohshima yoshiki at squeakland.org 
>  Tue May 8 11:34:04 PDT 2007 
>  
>  
>    Subbu,
>  
>  > My 6-year old's favorite object is the
"MixedMorph" in Squeak 3.9 because
>  of 
>  > the way it handles like putty. She uses it to
create all kinds of shapes
>  and 
>  > pictures. She misses it in Squeakland plugin
image.
>  > 
>  > Will MixedMorph make it into the Plugin image?
>  
>    There was good discussion with Jerome about it,
but I still have
>  "mixed" feeling toward including that to the
Squeakland image (and the
>  OLPC image).  This is due to the amount of
modification it makes and I
>  have not figure out what kind of side-effects it
might have. 

What test do you wish it to pass? 

What might it do that would make it unacceptable?

It is large because it had a chance to develop over a
long period of time. I do not think it is too far off
of main stream for inclusion and it comes with big
benefits. (Subbu's daugther's smile for one).

I have a chicken and egg problem here in selling this
to you.  You won't have a feel for what it does until
you include it and you won't include it until you have
a feel for what it does.

This started when I set myself to overcoming the
limitations of the old curve morph and in particular
the one sharp bend that was always present. I fixed
several other bugs in polygons as I came across them. 
When I had achieved that Edgar asked for a way to get
puzzle pieces and I created MixedCurveMorphs in
response to that. Because my programming style tends
to make my code easier to maintain and modify than the
original code I could make swift progress.

I still want to see what kids will do if they have the
expessive power these morphs deliver.  I recommend
them to you. Subbu recommends them to you. Subbu's
daughter reminds me of why I put in the self funded
time and effort.

It is in your hands.

> (Not
>  that it have a bug or something, but it is a big
commitment to change
>  all polygons.)
>  
>    For your 6-years old, CurveMorph with a bit more
control points
>  would do?
>
There is a fundamental difference between a smooth
closed curve and a smooth closed curve with endpoints.
The old CurveMorph used the same smoothing for and
open line as for a closed curve. The sharp bend is
where the two endpoints meet. 

The mixed curves get their expressive power from using
a true closed curve smoothing.
Too enable backward compatiblity I left the option of
turning that off by controling a preference flag. And
I left CurvierMorphs do the smoother smoothing and
CurveMorphs do the old smoothing.
I tried to demonstrate in that way that the changes
were not too radical. 
  
>    For older kids, the OLPC version has Etoys
scriptable polygons so
>  that they can actually write tile scripts to change
the shape of a
>  polygon.  One time I tried to merge them together,
but the effort
>  didn't go far enough.  That would be still nice to
have...
> 
If you choose to give it another go I am available to
assist.

Yours in curiosity and service, --Jerome Peace


 
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