On Sep 19, 2012, at 5:20 PM, Edward Mokurai Cherlin wrote:
I have completed a first pass over the draft Etoys Reference Manual, adding as much information as I could easily find about Object types, program tiles, tools, menus, and so on, and adding outlines for a chapter on Etoys programming and a Glossary. More information is needed.
The chapter of Etoys programming should be part of another book, not of the reference manual. The manual is thought of as a technical reference book, where you can find bits of information, but not much prose. Also, the manual can be used as a check list: for users of what to find in Etoys, for developers what needs to be maintained, for beta testers what should still work in a new version. We need the explanation chapters very much, maybe even more than the manual. But it should not be mixed up.
I am in a strange position, learning Etoys by writing substantial portions of its Reference Manual, something that I do not think would be possible for any other programming system. I found the early tutorials a delight, up to the point where everything else was completely opaque to me. After learning a bit of Squeak, and getting just a few more hints, I found Etoys starting to make real sense, and now I can use a substantial subset of it. When I get through the parts of this manual that I can do, I will turn to creating Etoys projects to illustrate the issues I found missing, and to take up various education topics. Some will be in the manner of my Turtle Art tutorials and Tony Forster's, but of course Etoys supports doing far more than that.
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/TurtleArt/Tutorials
Can anybody help with these Etoys objects that either need explanation or are simply not present in the versions I have access to? In particular, communication between Etoys sessions and users remains entirely opaque to me.
Communications
Attachment Adjuster Badge Fridge NebraskaServer
Objects not found in Object Catalog--Can we remove these?
Calendar Dr. Geo http://www.olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=676.0 Flap Graph Graphing H Number Line Key press Speech Bubbles
I've started to make a note if objects are available in later version only, the calendar, for instance, is in Etoys 5.0.
Other
Arrow Editor Image How to substitute another image?
I think you just need to remove the old image, make a new screenshot and upload it using the insert image symbol.
Particles What is Kedama? http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1092381
Kedama: A GUI-Based Interactive Massively Parallel Particle Programming System http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/VLHCC.2005.49 Purchase article: $19
This should be another book, maybe part of the programming etoys book.
I plan to combine redundant accounts of particular features, move a few topics to what seems to me a more logical order, and add some more topics.
We should discuss that. We had two book sprints when we started writing the manual and discussed its structure. The manual is 3/4 done, I would prefer not to open up more topics here and not to change basic things of the structure. But I would love to discuss this, because the manual should be a guide for users and if it is not helpful, we need to make it better.
I especially plan to explain how Etoys development tools work, and how one accesses Squeak development tools from Etoys.
This is something we have often talked about, but not written down. Needs to be part of the Etoys programming book!
A tutorial on either Etoys or Squeak development is, of course, inappropriate for this manual, but I do want to demonstrate how one can look inside Etoys object definitions using Squeak.
It is the Etoys manual and the transition is not on the focus. Therefore, if it should be part of this manual, I would like to put it in an appendix.
This question is somewhat confusing, because things may have different names and different structures in their Etoys and Squeak manifestations. Has anybody ever made a tool for exposing the structure of the Squeak definitions of Etoys objects?
Lots more questions to come.
-- 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 _______________________________________________ etoys-dev mailing list etoys-dev@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys-dev
Rita Freudenberg rita.freudenberg@ovgu.de