[squeakland] World menu
mokurai at earthtreasury.org
mokurai at earthtreasury.org
Mon Sep 10 15:18:40 EDT 2012
Rita, could you check your e-mail settings, and see if you can turn on
Unicode, so as not to mangle my signature block?
On Mon, September 10, 2012 5:04 am, Rita Freudenberg wrote:
> Thank you for your questions! That helps a lot for improving our
> documentation. Some of your questions should be answered by the reference
> manual, like this one
>
>> "For example, nothing that systematically explain what tiles are
>> available for Etoys programming, and the places to find them. "
Thank you. I see that now.
> but obviously, we need to provide more guidance in the manual. The chapter
> 4, Common Tiles, explains most of the tiles in Etoys. We leave out some
> special tiles, which are only available for special objects.
I thought that the whole idea of a reference manual was to explain
_everything_. That's how I did it as an API Tech Writer. Obviously, we
cannot describe all of Squeak in an Etoys manual, but it seems to me that
we need to explain how the two are related. I know how to get at the
Squeak IDE using the World menu and various browsers for which there are
keyboard shortcuts, plus the menus that appear within those browsers. I
have been given some hints about which Squeak objects define Etoys
behavior. Now I would like to see how to define an object in Squeak and
put it into Etoys, in the manner of the games in the Object Catalog.
I know in principle how to treat Etoys as a glorified Turtle Art, in which
I can script the movements and pen trails of any object, or as an
animation studio, or as a presentation manager. I do not know how to evoke
some of the other facilities, such as the particle model, and I remain
unclear on what other facilities there are.
The Computer Science for Children possibilities are staggering, what with
tree-structured programming and explicit parallelism, in addition to OOP
in general. Similarly for math and science.
> The tiles are
> organized by category in the manual, like they are organized in the
> object's viewer. I'll think how to change the introduction of chapter 4 to
> give a better idea of what to expect in the chapter.
I am considering adding some explanatory information there myself on the
structure of tiles, and the different varieties. I would also like to see
sections on variables, the tiles in the Gold Box menu, and the
modifications to tiles in the math function menus. I have found three
different math menus, but not the principle by which they are distributed.
> Please let me know if this answers some of your questions!
Definitely. Thanks again. I have more questions today, and possibly some
answers of my own.
I have started a set of Smalltalk/Squeak/Etoys pages at The Undiscoverable
in the Sugar Labs Wiki. My idea is to provide the irreducible minimum,
just enough hints and pointers to make the rest discoverable. As in the
Sugar Labs version of Turtle Art, aka Turtle Blocks, tile-based Etoys
programming is much more discoverable than text-based programming, but in
both cases there are points that require hints or outright explanation.
Like dragging assignment tiles by the arrow in order to put them into
scripts. I see how that works, but I do not understand why it was done
that way.
I find the GNU Smalltalk manual and Squeak by Example to be particularly
helpful, and will add this Etoys Reference Manual to the list, but I am
not satisfied with any Etoys tutorial that I have seen. SBE could be
considerably improved, judging by my experience with what I did and did
not learn from it.
But I am not happy with the materials for teaching any programming
language. Part of the problem is that it's just hard, of course. In any
case, I see that there is much more documentation to explore in the
Smalltalk/Squeak/Etoys worlds.
I am having fun. I particularly enjoy being able to make presents for
millions of children every day. Or at least, to work on the tools to make
the presents.
> Greetings,
> Rita
>
> On Sep 9, 2012, at 5:51 AM, mokurai at earthtreasury.org wrote:
>
>> Just so. This Reference Manual is aimed at the power user. Among other
>> things, I am trying to learn how to use Squeak development to add
>> facilities to Etoys.
>>
>> I am still looking for documents that explain Etoys for the classroom
>> teacher and the student without going behind them into Squeak
>> development.
>> I have found many that begin to explain parts of Etoys, but nothing that
>> I
>> consider satisfactory. For example, nothing that systematically explains
>> what tiles are available for Etoys programming, and the places to find
>> them. I know about
>>
>> Object viewers
>> The gold chest
>> The function menus in some tiles
>>
>> Are there more?
>>
>> On Sat, September 8, 2012 9:16 am, karl ramberg wrote:
>>> On Sat, Sep 8, 2012 at 3:47 AM, <mokurai at earthtreasury.org> wrote:
>>>> I have discovered by trying many combinations that alt-shift-w brings
>>>> up
>>>> the World menu in Etoys on Ubuntu. I have added that and some other
>>>> information to
>>>>
>>>> http://booki.flossmanuals.net/etoys-reference-manual/_edit/
>>>>
>>>> and I am about to add the keyboard shortcuts for the XO. (I have two
>>>> of
>>>> them, which I have named Thing1 and Thing2.)...First pass, done now.
>>>>
>>>> Apparently I now know how to apply all that I know of Squeak (not a
>>>> lot,
>>>> but increasing) within Etoys, by bringing up menus that allow me to
>>>> bring
>>>> up everything else.
>>>>
>>>> Is there a design document for Etoys explaining what its intention is?
>>>> Am
>>>> I right in thinking that it is meant to provide a greatly restricted
>>>> programming environment on the surface, where only a few
>>>> Squeak/Smalltalk
>>>> objects and methods are available without going behind the scenes,
>>>> chosen
>>>> for younger children?
>>>
>>> Squeak is the environment in which Etoys lives. While direct access to
>>> Squeak is possible its of most interest to power user. Its not hard to
>>> break the system running Squeak so access is made not easy to stumble
>>> uppon. A broken system is quite disruptive to most lectures and
>>> newbies.
>>>
>>> Karl
>>>> --
>>>> 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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> squeakland mailing list
>>>> squeakland at squeakland.org
>>>> http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> 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
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> squeakland mailing list
>> squeakland at squeakland.org
>> http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland
>
> Rita Freudenberg
> rita.freudenberg at ovgu.de
>
>
>
>
--
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
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