[squeakland] duplicates and siblings

[Markus Schlager]

On Thu, 14 Apr 2011, Bert Freudenberg wrote:

> (moving to squeakland list)
>
> On 14.04.2011, at 16:05, Markus Schlager wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 14 Apr 2011, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>>
>>> On 14.04.2011, at 09:44, Markus Schlager wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'd suggest to rename the 'copy'-tile since it does return a new sibling but not a copy/duplicate. I think it would be useful if the label would state clearly this tile resembles a *new* sibling you can send messages to.
>>>
>>> While this would be easy to change, I think it would make sense to discuss on the users list, not only the dev list.
>>>
>>> FWIW, internally the operation is called "new clone".
>>>
>>> Personally I would only change the balloon help. Most of the time it doesn't matter if it's a duplicate or a sibling.
>>
>> Most of all I'm missing the *new* in the tile's label. It took me quite some time to understand the tile's behavior when I encoutered it for the first time.
>>
>> Markus
>
> To me, "copy" does imply creating a new object.
>
> Also, it is only ever used as argument to another tile. I find the difference to be obvious:
>
> 	Holder include Sketch
>
> moves the Sketch into the Holder, whereas
>
> 	Holder include Sketch copy
>
> does not affect the Sketch itself, but adds a copy of it. I don't see how adding "new" would clarify this, but I'm happy to be convinced otherwise :)
>
> - Bert -

Maybe you're right and 'new' isn't the actual issue.

In Etoys there are three words: duplicate, copy and sibling (and clone). 
And there are two tiles: 'copy' and 'tell all siblings'.

I'm not a native speaker, whence I must ask: Is 'copy' more like 
'duplicate' or more like 'sibling'. The balloon help of the copy tile says 
'returns a copy of this object'. What you get is a sibling. Is this rather 
a surprise? If not I'll probably have to change the German translation. 
There, 'duplicate' and 'copy' are translated the same way. If it is a 
surprise to English native speakers though, I'd suggest to rename the 
tile.

Markus