Hi,
I'm working on the Etoys reference manual right now, and on one place I want to describe the difference between sibling and duplicate. I hope someone here can help me. Here is what I wrote, is this correct? (the green double boxes refer to the green halo icon).
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The green double boxes in the top right duplicates the object. If you hold down the shift key you will create a sibling object. There is a difference between siblings and duplicates. At the moment of creation, it is the same, you will get a copy of the object and all it's scripts. But if you later change an existing script of the original object, the same script of the siblings will change automatically, too. The same script of the duplicates will stay the same as of the moment of the duplication.
Thanks, Rita
Hi Rita,
Terminology is debatable and probably ingrained in current users but I prefer "copy" and "clone" as these have similar meanings in other software. So: "a copy can be changed without effecting the original while changes to a clone effects all it's siblings"... or something similar.
-D
On 23/02/11 14:36, Rita Freudenberg wrote:
Hi,
I'm working on the Etoys reference manual right now, and on one place I want to describe the difference between sibling and duplicate. I hope someone here can help me. Here is what I wrote, is this correct? (the green double boxes refer to the green halo icon).
The green double boxes in the top right duplicates the object. If you hold down the shift key you will create a sibling object. There is a difference between siblings and duplicates. At the moment of creation, it is the same, you will get a copy of the object and all it's scripts. But if you later change an existing script of the original object, the same script of the siblings will change automatically, too. The same script of the duplicates will stay the same as of the moment of the duplication.
Thanks, Rita
etoys-dev mailing list etoys-dev@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys-dev
There is a chapter http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/Etoys/SiblingsAndCopies?rev=3(on hold in the manual that discusses siblings, thanks to Karl for adding this) excerpts from that re-written below.
When you make a copy of an object any changes made to the copy or the original only affect the object changed. Siblings are related in that they share certain things in common, in particular: scripts and variable definitions. So if you add a variable to one sibling, all siblings will have their own instance of that variable with the same name. The same name, but the values can be different. For example if I add a variable called "speed" to one sibling, all siblings will have a variable with that name. But I can have one sibling with speed=5 and another with speed=10. Same variable name different values.
Also if I add a script to one sibling, all siblings will have the same script (and same scripting tiles, if I change it in any sibling at anytime). But although siblings share a script, each sibling has its own private "status" for that script, i.e. remembers separately whether the script as used by this instance is "normal", "paused,", or "ticking", or set to trigger on mouse-up, etc.; and what the tick-rate is.
So why would you use siblings? Well besides teaching one of the most fundamental concepts of object oriented programming, you could use siblings in a game to make characters that have similar behaviors (aka scripts) but different looks (you can change the looks by either re-drawing the sketch or by setting the Sketch's graphic (if the object is a Sketch or image you copied in) or changing its size and colors. You could also have ships in a game that keep track of how many times they were hit (using a variable to count the # of hits). That way you can program a basic ship once and make multiple siblings. Then if you decide to change the behavior (ex: modify a script, or add a new variable), you can change it once and all the siblings are changed.
Siblings could also be used to try to simulate or model real world behavior. For example deer population or some other animal. You could create an Object that simulates the behavior of a deer: searches for food, ages, breeds (at a certain age), etc. and make sibling copies of that one object. Then each Sibling (aka individual instance of the Class Deer which you have defined) could age, search for food (and find it or not which could affect its life expectancy), etc at its own rate. You could also create predators and food that grows. Then run multiple simulations varying the amount of food, starting number of dear, # of predators, etc.
If the "all instances" box is not checked in AllPlayers, you'll see the scripts for only one player of each sibling group. This will give you "control" over the scripts of only one of the players. If you want to be able to "control" scripts for both of the siblings, make sure the "all instances" checkbox is checked.
On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 9:36 AM, Rita Freudenberg < rita@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de> wrote:
Hi,
I'm working on the Etoys reference manual right now, and on one place I want to describe the difference between sibling and duplicate. I hope someone here can help me. Here is what I wrote, is this correct? (the green double boxes refer to the green halo icon).
The green double boxes in the top right duplicates the object. If you hold down the shift key you will create a sibling object. There is a difference between siblings and duplicates. At the moment of creation, it is the same, you will get a copy of the object and all it's scripts. But if you later change an existing script of the original object, the same script of the siblings will change automatically, too. The same script of the duplicates will stay the same as of the moment of the duplication.
Thanks, Rita
etoys-dev mailing list etoys-dev@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys-dev
Thanks for all your answers! The quick guides are great! Steve, thank you very much for pointing me to the chapter about siblings, this really got lost when I imported the manual to the new booki-system. Now I'll look at the old site more carefully to find what else I might have missed. Fortunately, it is not lost yet. Derek, I agree that it is a good idea to orientate ourselfs on existing software terminology. For the manual, we need to use the terms we find in Etoys. But terms can be discussed and changed in later versions, if we have a good reason.
Here is the new link to the reference manual. Please help us review the "Getting Started" and "User Interface" chapters!
http://booki.flossmanuals.net/etoys-reference-manual/edit/
Greetings, Rita
On Feb 23, 2011, at 4:32 PM, Steve Thomas wrote:
There is a chapter (on hold in the manual that discusses siblings, thanks to Karl for adding this) excerpts from that re-written below.
When you make a copy of an object any changes made to the copy or the original only affect the object changed. Siblings are related in that they share certain things in common, in particular: scripts and variable definitions. So if you add a variable to one sibling, all siblings will have their own instance of that variable with the same name. The same name, but the values can be different. For example if I add a variable called "speed" to one sibling, all siblings will have a variable with that name. But I can have one sibling with speed=5 and another with speed=10. Same variable name different values.
Also if I add a script to one sibling, all siblings will have the same script (and same scripting tiles, if I change it in any sibling at anytime). But although siblings share a script, each sibling has its own private "status" for that script, i.e. remembers separately whether the script as used by this instance is "normal", "paused,", or "ticking", or set to trigger on mouse-up, etc.; and what the tick-rate is.
So why would you use siblings? Well besides teaching one of the most fundamental concepts of object oriented programming, you could use siblings in a game to make characters that have similar behaviors (aka scripts) but different looks (you can change the looks by either re-drawing the sketch or by setting the Sketch's graphic (if the object is a Sketch or image you copied in) or changing its size and colors. You could also have ships in a game that keep track of how many times they were hit (using a variable to count the # of hits). That way you can program a basic ship once and make multiple siblings. Then if you decide to change the behavior (ex: modify a script, or add a new variable), you can change it once and all the siblings are changed. Siblings could also be used to try to simulate or model real world behavior. For example deer population or some other animal. You could create an Object that simulates the behavior of a deer: searches for food, ages, breeds (at a certain age), etc. and make sibling copies of that one object. Then each Sibling (aka individual instance of the Class Deer which you have defined) could age, search for food (and find it or not which could affect its life expectancy), etc at its own rate. You could also create predators and food that grows. Then run multiple simulations varying the amount of food, starting number of dear, # of predators, etc.
If the "all instances" box is not checked in AllPlayers, you'll see the scripts for only one player of each sibling group. This will give you "control" over the scripts of only one of the players. If you want to be able to "control" scripts for both of the siblings, make sure the "all instances" checkbox is checked.
On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 9:36 AM, Rita Freudenberg rita@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de wrote: Hi,
I'm working on the Etoys reference manual right now, and on one place I want to describe the difference between sibling and duplicate. I hope someone here can help me. Here is what I wrote, is this correct? (the green double boxes refer to the green halo icon).
The green double boxes in the top right duplicates the object. If you hold down the shift key you will create a sibling object. There is a difference between siblings and duplicates. At the moment of creation, it is the same, you will get a copy of the object and all it's scripts. But if you later change an existing script of the original object, the same script of the siblings will change automatically, too. The same script of the duplicates will stay the same as of the moment of the duplication.
Thanks, Rita
etoys-dev mailing list etoys-dev@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys-dev
On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 3:32 PM, Rita Freudenberg wrote:
Derek, I agree that it is a good idea to orientate ourselfs on existing software terminology. For the manual, we need to use the terms we find in Etoys. But terms can be discussed and changed in later versions, if we have a good reason.
My suggestions (for a future version of Etoys)
Stick with "sibling": it is slightly clearer than clone. I don't think the word "clone" as used in the Java language's Object.clone() message is any more helpful. I suspect "clone" is more easily confused with "copy" by those children whose English isn't very strong. (Also "clone" doesn't help translators who need to distinguish nouns from verbs.)
"Duplicate" could easily be simplified to "copy" in a future version of Etoys. It means exactly the same thing, as far as I can tell, and sounds more friendly: a major goal.
David
On Thu, 24 Feb 2011, David Corking wrote:
On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 3:32 PM, Rita Freudenberg wrote:
Derek, I agree that it is a good idea to orientate ourselfs on existing software terminology. For the manual, we need to use the terms we find in Etoys. But terms can be discussed and changed in later versions, if we have a good reason.
My suggestions (for a future version of Etoys)
Stick with "sibling": it is slightly clearer than clone. I don't think the word "clone" as used in the Java language's Object.clone() message is any more helpful. I suspect "clone" is more easily confused with "copy" by those children whose English isn't very strong. (Also "clone" doesn't help translators who need to distinguish nouns from verbs.)
"Duplicate" could easily be simplified to "copy" in a future version of Etoys. It means exactly the same thing, as far as I can tell, and sounds more friendly: a major goal.
+1
Markus
On Thursday 24 Feb 2011 10:45:30 pm David Corking wrote:
Stick with "sibling": it is slightly clearer than clone. I don't think the word "clone" as used in the Java language's Object.clone() message is any more helpful. I suspect "clone" is more easily confused with "copy" by those children whose English isn't very strong. (Also "clone" doesn't help translators who need to distinguish nouns from verbs.)
Sibling seems to be the best option here. The only drawback is that it breaks the stage play metaphor guiding the other terms (player, costume, script) etc. Perhaps some simple word that means 'member of a chorus or choir' could be a better fit?
"Duplicate" could easily be simplified to "copy" in a future version of Etoys. It means exactly the same thing, as far as I can tell, and sounds more friendly: a major goal.
Copy is already used to mean "copy to clipboard" :-(. While the action may be suppressed in Etoys mode, it will still lead to confusion.
Subbu
On 24.02.2011, at 17:55, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
On Thursday 24 Feb 2011 10:45:30 pm David Corking wrote:
Stick with "sibling": it is slightly clearer than clone. I don't think the word "clone" as used in the Java language's Object.clone() message is any more helpful. I suspect "clone" is more easily confused with "copy" by those children whose English isn't very strong. (Also "clone" doesn't help translators who need to distinguish nouns from verbs.)
Sibling seems to be the best option here. The only drawback is that it breaks the stage play metaphor guiding the other terms (player, costume, script) etc. Perhaps some simple word that means 'member of a chorus or choir' could be a better fit?
"Duplicate" could easily be simplified to "copy" in a future version of Etoys. It means exactly the same thing, as far as I can tell, and sounds more friendly: a major goal.
Copy is already used to mean "copy to clipboard" :-(. While the action may be suppressed in Etoys mode, it will still lead to confusion.
There is a tile named "copy". "Duplicate" is roughly equivalent to "playfield include: object copy".
A difference is that for siblings, "copy" creates another sibling.
- Bert -
On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 8:55 PM, K. K. Subramaniam kksubbu.ml@gmail.comwrote:
On Thursday 24 Feb 2011 10:45:30 pm David Corking wrote:
Stick with "sibling": it is slightly clearer than clone. I don't think the word "clone" as used in the Java language's Object.clone() message is any more helpful. I suspect "clone" is more easily confused with "copy" by those children whose English isn't very strong. (Also "clone" doesn't help translators who need to distinguish nouns from verbs.)
Sibling seems to be the best option here. The only drawback is that it breaks the stage play metaphor guiding the other terms (player, costume, script) etc. Perhaps some simple word that means 'member of a chorus or choir' could be a better fit?
How about a mimic?
--Fred
"Duplicate" could easily be simplified to "copy" in a future version of Etoys. It means exactly the same thing, as far as I can tell, and sounds more friendly: a major goal.
Copy is already used to mean "copy to clipboard" :-(. While the action may be suppressed in Etoys mode, it will still lead to confusion.
Subbu
On Friday 25 Feb 2011 7:51:25 am Frederick Grose wrote:
On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 8:55 PM, K. K. Subramaniam
kksubbu.ml@gmail.comwrote:
Sibling seems to be the best option here. The only drawback is that it breaks the stage play metaphor guiding the other terms (player, costume, script) etc. Perhaps some simple word that means 'member of a chorus or choir' could be a better fit?
How about a mimic?
Good suggestion. Siblings share the same 'acts'. Siblings are like actors acting out the same script but not necessarily at the same time or place.
Subbu
I'd suggest to rename the 'copy'-tile since it does return a new sibling but not a copy/duplicate. I think it would be useful if the label would state clearly this tile resembles a *new* sibling you can send messages to.
Markus
On 14.04.2011, at 09:44, Markus Schlager wrote:
I'd suggest to rename the 'copy'-tile since it does return a new sibling but not a copy/duplicate. I think it would be useful if the label would state clearly this tile resembles a *new* sibling you can send messages to.
While this would be easy to change, I think it would make sense to discuss on the users list, not only the dev list.
FWIW, internally the operation is called "new clone".
Personally I would only change the balloon help. Most of the time it doesn't matter if it's a duplicate or a sibling.
- Bert -
Bert wrote:
There is a tile named "copy".
A very good reason to wait for a major Etoys version (or more) before acting on Derek's suggestion. (Also, the "tiles to get" popup menu of that tile calls the copy a "newClone".)
I can't figure out the pedagogical purpose for the "copy" tile.
Can you point me to a project that demonstrates the "copy" tile? (or documentation on how a student could use it in a real program)
Bert also wrote:
A difference is that for siblings, "copy" creates another sibling.
Someone please add that to the reference manual at 4.13 Common Tiles and Menu Items / Miscellaneous / Copy.
Best, David
p.s. Subbu wrote:
Copy is already used to mean "copy to clipboard" :-(. While the action may be suppressed in Etoys mode, it will still lead to confusion.
I think that, from a user's point of view, both a copy pasted from the clipboard, and a duplicate, work in the same way. Or at least they should.
On Feb 25, 2011, at 7:31 AM, David Corking wrote:
Bert also wrote:
A difference is that for siblings, "copy" creates another sibling.
Someone please add that to the reference manual at 4.13 Common Tiles and Menu Items / Miscellaneous / Copy.
Done :)
Rita
Best, David
etoys-dev mailing list etoys-dev@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys-dev
On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 1:31 AM, David Corking lists@dcorking.com wrote:
I can't figure out the pedagogical purpose for the "copy" tile.
Can you point me to a project that demonstrates the "copy" tile? (or documentation on how a student could use it in a real program)
Circle Explorer http://www.squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=10212- Which lets kids play with inscribing and circumscribing a circle with triangles to get a better understanding of Pi.
Polygon Maker http://www.squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=10215 - The "Hand me Polygon" button uses make a sibling instance, could have used copy but I wanted the new Polygon handed to the user so they could place it where they wanted.
M&M Artifact http://www.squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=10524s - This has a bunch of different samples for kids to explore multiplication, fractions and a number is all the ways you can name it.
Stephen
etoys-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org
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Bert Freudenberg -
David Corking -
Derek O'Connell -
Frederick Grose -
K. K. Subramaniam -
Markus Schlager -
Rita Freudenberg -
Steve Thomas