One of the most requested features in Etoys is the ability to "wait" in a script.
While a wait tile is almost impossible to implement properly with the current Etoys design, adding a tile that schedules another script after a certain delay should be comparatively simple. In fact, the existing "do script" tile actually does that, it schedules the named script for execution after a 1 ms delay.
What needs to be done would be to add a tile with a numeric type-in similarly to the first color swatch in the "color sees" tile. This is not actually an argument tile (Etoys tiles can only have at most one argument) but just a modifier to the tile itself. While not exactly trivial, this should not be too hard to implement either. There is no precedent except the color-sees tile. Follow senders of color:sees: for the special-casing needed ...
I entered this as feature idea at
http://tracker.squeakland.org/browse/SQ-848
If anyone would like to have this, vote for it on the tracker.
And if anyone wants to implement it, go ahead ;)
- Bert -
On Sunday 03 Oct 2010 7:19:16 pm Bert Freudenberg wrote:
One of the most requested features in Etoys is the ability to "wait" in a script.
I suspect most of the requests came from adults who tried to translate their current code to Etoys :-). Most young learners I know think in terms of "event time" (kairos) rather than "H:M:S time" (chronos). They wait "for an event" rather than "for a duration". Any teacher will attest about fear of timeouts and parents about "are we there yet?" queries while driving ;-).
Existing tiles are sufficient to script statements like "x seconds after event y do z". A Digital Timer widget can be created with start/pause/reset and HMS counters for convenience but that would take the fun out of making Rube Goldberg widgets :-)
HMS readouts in Digital Clock are sufficient to do statements like "at x do y".
Subbu
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