I started to write this a long time ago, and now I am moved to send it.

On Fri, October 19, 2012 4:40 am, Rita Freudenberg wrote:

It is not the best idea to have this discussion on etoys-dev instead of squeakland, because just some of the contributors to the manual are subscribed to the dev list.

I am replying to both.

On Oct 18, 2012, at 5:58 PM, Edward Mokurai Cherlin wrote:

...

I am in the middle of repairing extensive damage in the More Objects chapter (which I just now renamed from More Etoys Objects) of the Etoys Reference Manual. I find fragments of text from unidentified object descriptions, without section headings, and out of alphabetical order, all of which I have to track down and correct.

There is no "damage" to the "More Objects"chapter, since it never has been more than the collection of text taken out of the "objects" chapter. It has been in alphabetical order, though.

That turns out not to be the case, Rita. More Objects was a jumbled mess, and I had to spend considerable time on the first pass at fixing it, with more work still remaining to be done. Compare your work on the 16th with mine on the 18th in both the Objects and More Objects chapters.

* It was not in alphabetical order. It is now.

* It had no headings for many objects. It has them now.

* Text from different object descriptions was mixed together out of order. It is separated now.

* Formatting was lost. I have added it back.

* You moved Holder, which is in the Scripting category, to the wrong chapter. I moved it back.

* You failed to move a number of objects not in any category. I have moved them.

* Information on Squeak implementations was in the More Objects chapter with nothing about what objects they go with. I have not had time to fix that, that is, to move the implementation notes to the Morph Definitions appendix.

* You have not moved many of the other Squeak implementation notes, for which I am glad. I will move them.

It will take much more work to make sure that everything that is supposed to be there actually is there, and to move what is not supposed to be there. There is text missing, for sure. I marked breaks in the text where I found them.

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Rita, is this your work? Has somebody else stepped in without talking to either of us? If so, please stop and let me do it instead.

I cleaned up the "objects" chapter to give it back the structure we intended it to have.

That's a Yes, then. It is your work.

You did not "clean up" the Objects chapter, which still contained many objects that we agreed to move, and much Squeak implementation information.

Now how about responding to my request? I don't need or want this astonishingly sloppy kind of help that ends up making more work for me than if I had done it all myself from the beginning.

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The information on Squeak implementations belongs either with the original object definitions, or in a separate chapter, which I am now leaning towards.

Definitely. The information about Squeak implementation will confuse the many users of Etoys who are not going deeper into the system. So please remove this information from "objects" chapter, or I'll remove it again.

What is this hostility about? I have not suggested moving it back in, and in fact I have offered to move it out myself.

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We cannot divide it up so that the object is defined in the Objects chapter, and the information on its Squeak implementation is in the More Objects chapter.

What about adding a list of all objects to the "Appendix Morph Definitions" and put the implementation details there?

Isn't that what I said? It is certainly what I began doing days ago. But we cannot do it in the slipshod way that you have begun. I wanted to design the new Appendix, and then move the implementation pieces in an organized manner. I see now that I must do it without preparation in order to prevent further damage.

Then we have the object and its implementation in one place.

No, we don't. We have the Etoys facilities, such as menus, buttons, and scripting tiles, in one place, and the Squeak implementation information in a completely different place.

And everyone can look up more about the object

Less, actually.

in either the "objects" or the "more objects" chapter.

Your choice, not mine. I disagree, but I will not fight about it.

Also, I would like to discuss the renaming of the chapters.

At the moment, we have "basic objects" and "more objects". I find it a bit confusing, since we also have the "basic" category in the object catalogue

I find the Basic category to be completely misnamed and misdesigned. There is nothing basic about Particles in particular. It makes no sense to call Joystick and Slider basic, but not Button. But then I find all of the categories to be misdesigned, and I find the inclusion of objects with no category to be a severe misfeature, and the implementation of the eToyFriendly Preference worse than any of those. I have created a separate appendix so that I can start to document the effects of its 59 senders.

and this is not what the chapter is about.

We could be excruciatingly precise and name the first chapter something like "Objects in Categories in the Object Catalog". That is the only correct statement of the choice we have made. Unless you want to say "Objects We Want You to Know About", and "Objects We Want to Pretend You Will Never Encounter No Matter How Advanced You Get Which is Why We Tried So Feebly to Hide Them From You". This is precisely my view of the level of delusion put forward in this discussion about pretending that only beginners will ever read this manual, which is therefore not a Reference Manual at all in that view.

I intend to write that Introduction to Etoys after the Reference Manual is complete. By myself, if I have to. I am not impressed at the level of cooperation I have seen here. I ask for help, and get ignored. I do the work as best I know how, and get complaints, even insults, and find my work shredded on the floor.

What is the matter with you people? What is the matter with the whole entire Smalltalk/Squeak/Etoys enterprise? Are we all suffering Sour Grapes because the schools will not take us seriously?

We divide the objects between the chapters based on where they are implemented. So we have the Etoys Objects and the morphs in Squeak.

This is not the case. All Etoys objects are instances of UnscriptedPlayers or subclasses of Players, costumed in instances of Morphs of one kind or another, all implemented in Squeak. When you drag an object from the Object Catalog or a flap, the system creates a new instance of UnscriptedPlayer (as you can see via the Players tool) and a new Morphic costume. The moment you start a script for that object, the system creates a new subclass of Player for it.

I drag an Ellipse from the Supplies Flap, and open its viewer. It appears in Players. I open an inspector on it from the menu provided, and I see

self an UnscriptedPlayer (1339) named Ellipse costume an EllipseMorph<Ellipse>(1499)

I can then look these items up in the System Browser and the Hierarchy Browser.

UnscriptedPlayer

Player subclass: #UnscriptedPlayer instanceVariableNames: '' classVariableNames: '' poolDictionaries: '' category: 'Etoys-Scripting'

My instances are Player objects that have not been scripted, and which hence do not require a unique scripts dictionary, etc. As soon as the needed [sic], I am transformed automatically into a unique subclass of Player.

What that means is that when I drag an empty script from the viewer, or drag out a tile and drop it so that a Script Editor is created to hold it, the Player subclass is created with the new script in its unique scripts dictionary, and the Morph is made its costume. We start with a generic viewer for the Morph type, and then seamlessly transfer to the viewer into the unique scripts dictionary for the Player subclass.

In the manual, we are making a distinction not about implementation, but about how one accesses these objects within Etoys, whether through the Object Catalog categories, through the Object Catalog alphabetical listing that includes objects not in categories, through various flaps, as components of other objects, or via an escape to Squeak (objectName new openInWorld).

As a professional Senior Technical Writer, my plan when writing Reference Manuals is always to document _everything_, except for material that should go in a different Reference Manual. A Squeak Reference Manual would be a good idea, though a large undertaking. I have the original Smaltalk-80 manuals in front of me, including The Interactive Programming Environment and The Language and Its Implementation.

My suggestion would be to name the chapter "Etoys Objects" and "Squeak Objects". But here I would like to hear the opinion of the developers. Does that make sense to you?

No, for the reasons given above.

Greetings, Rita

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I will have more to say when I finish surveying and correcting the damage.

I have not yet had a chance to finish that work. I keep finding more damage.

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-- Edward Mokurai (默雷/निशबॠदगरॠज/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