I was playing a little with Etoys and pen use today and found that it's hard to change pen color of SketchMorphs in scripts because their color category in the Viewer is not in use. But many times I may want to change the pen color of a SketchMorph so I thought a Pen Color category could be nice.
An other observation is that Pen color change is a little hard to accomplish because the color category give you access to the Player color and you have to remember to change to Players Pen color. A general Pen Color category would make the use a little easier because you would have the indirection already made.
What do others think ?
Karl
On Sunday 30 Mar 2008 11:40:09 pm karl wrote:
I was playing a little with Etoys and pen use today and found that it's hard to change pen color of SketchMorphs in scripts because their color category in the Viewer is not in use. But many times I may want to change the pen color of a SketchMorph so I thought a Pen Color category could be nice.
+1 with a slight modification.
In Logo's Turtle, the pen was a tangible and visible entity which made it easy for kids to comprehend it. In Etoy, the Pen is an invisible, abstract entity whose presence is manifest only in the trails it leaves behind. This runs counter to Morphic principle of directness. Instead, pen methods could be factored into a separate Morph, say PenMorph, that can be manipulated by kids directly to affect size, color, shape, trailstyle and up/down state.
Subbu
K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
On Sunday 30 Mar 2008 11:40:09 pm karl wrote:
I was playing a little with Etoys and pen use today and found that it's hard to change pen color of SketchMorphs in scripts because their color category in the Viewer is not in use. But many times I may want to change the pen color of a SketchMorph so I thought a Pen Color category could be nice.
+1 with a slight modification.
In Logo's Turtle, the pen was a tangible and visible entity which made it easy for kids to comprehend it. In Etoy, the Pen is an invisible, abstract entity whose presence is manifest only in the trails it leaves behind. This runs counter to Morphic principle of directness. Instead, pen methods could be factored into a separate Morph, say PenMorph, that can be manipulated by kids directly to affect size, color, shape, trailstyle and up/down state.
Subbu _______________________________________________ Etoys mailing list Etoys@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/etoys
I agree that the current pen is a little abstract and intangible, and it can feel a little left in the background. But then again, Etoys is so wast, many features are hard to grasp and get right away.
Karl
karl wrote:
K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
On Sunday 30 Mar 2008 11:40:09 pm karl wrote:
I was playing a little with Etoys and pen use today and found that it's hard to change pen color of SketchMorphs in scripts because their color category in the Viewer is not in use. But many times I may want to change the pen color of a SketchMorph so I thought a Pen Color category could be nice.
+1 with a slight modification.
In Logo's Turtle, the pen was a tangible and visible entity which made it easy for kids to comprehend it. In Etoy, the Pen is an invisible, abstract entity whose presence is manifest only in the trails it leaves behind. This runs counter to Morphic principle of directness. Instead, pen methods could be factored into a separate Morph, say PenMorph, that can be manipulated by kids directly to affect size, color, shape, trailstyle and up/down state.
Subbu _______________________________________________ Etoys mailing list Etoys@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/etoys
I agree that the current pen is a little abstract and intangible, and it can feel a little left in the background. But then again, Etoys is so wast, many features are hard to grasp and get right away.
Here is a example of the indirection one must go though to get a change in pen color. Making pen a first class object would simplify this logic a little.
This example is from a simple color filter etoy I made, where some basic digital image color manipulation can be experimented with using two turtles moving in unison. One turtle for reading and one for writing.
Karl
In Logo's Turtle, the pen was a tangible and visible entity which made it easy for kids to comprehend it. In Etoy, the Pen is an invisible, abstract entity whose presence is manifest only in the trails it leaves behind. This runs counter to Morphic principle of directness. Instead, pen methods could be factored into a separate Morph, say PenMorph, that can be manipulated by kids directly to affect size, color, shape, trailstyle and up/down state.
Yes, similar reasoning can go to the drawn trail as well. There were a few attempts to make the drawn line be a polygon.
-- Yoshiki
Hello, Subramaniam
I think a Polygon morph and its new category named "polygon" may help you. It includes many tiles for controlling vertexes by cursor. These tiles are simular of other tiles of collection type morphs like a holder, text and etc. So kids can use a Polygon as a PenMorph.
Regards, Kazuhiro Abe
On Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:33:57 +0530 "K. K. Subramaniam" subbukk@gmail.com wrote:
In Logo's Turtle, the pen was a tangible and visible entity which made it easy for kids to comprehend it. In Etoy, the Pen is an invisible, abstract entity whose presence is manifest only in the trails it leaves behind. This runs counter to Morphic principle of directness. Instead, pen methods could be factored into a separate Morph, say PenMorph, that can be manipulated by kids directly to affect size, color, shape, trailstyle and up/down state.
On Wednesday 02 Apr 2008 8:17:49 pm Kazuhiro ABE wrote:
Hello, Subramaniam
I think a Polygon morph and its new category named "polygon" may help you. It includes many tiles for controlling vertexes by cursor. These tiles are simular of other tiles of collection type morphs like a holder, text and etc. So kids can use a Polygon as a PenMorph.
I like the Polygon's extensive tile scripting capability, but I am afraid it wont be intuitive to young children. Currently, a small Rectangle (or an Ellipse) with its pen down offers an easier approach by ticking through the following script :
Rectangle pen color := Rectangle color Rectangle pen size := Recangle width.
Now the child can manipulate the pen directly through halo menu buttons - scale, rotate, move and recolor and then use the GrabMorph to create a sketch out of the trails. This is much harder than what it needs to be.
BTW, I noticed that objects dropped on the onion skin (or TinyPaint) stamp right through them! Abstract layers in a concrete world of Morphs?
Subbu
K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
On Wednesday 02 Apr 2008 8:17:49 pm Kazuhiro ABE wrote:
Hello, Subramaniam
I think a Polygon morph and its new category named "polygon" may help you. It includes many tiles for controlling vertexes by cursor. These tiles are simular of other tiles of collection type morphs like a holder, text and etc. So kids can use a Polygon as a PenMorph.
I like the Polygon's extensive tile scripting capability, but I am afraid it wont be intuitive to young children. Currently, a small Rectangle (or an Ellipse) with its pen down offers an easier approach by ticking through the following script :
Rectangle pen color := Rectangle color Rectangle pen size := Recangle width.
Now the child can manipulate the pen directly through halo menu buttons - scale, rotate, move and recolor and then use the GrabMorph to create a sketch out of the trails. This is much harder than what it needs to be.
This sounds quite good.
BTW, I noticed that objects dropped on the onion skin (or TinyPaint) stamp right through them! Abstract layers in a concrete world of Morphs?
Painting is a modal mode in Squeak. Each morph is in it's own layer and to paint you have to know which of the layer you are on. Most other systems would bring up a editor in a view that totally blocked other views. I'm not sure what is the best solution.
Karl
K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
On Wednesday 02 Apr 2008 8:17:49 pm Kazuhiro ABE wrote:
Hello, Subramaniam
I think a Polygon morph and its new category named "polygon" may help you. It includes many tiles for controlling vertexes by cursor. These tiles are simular of other tiles of collection type morphs like a holder, text and etc. So kids can use a Polygon as a PenMorph.
I like the Polygon's extensive tile scripting capability, but I am afraid it wont be intuitive to young children.
By using polygon and a some code magic we could do pattern stuff like in TileLand: http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~morey/CogEng/TileLand.html
There are lots of other cool stuff on that site also.
Karl
etoys-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org
-
K. K. Subramaniam -
karl -
Kazuhiro ABE -
Yoshiki Ohshima