Rita,
If I put three sounds in a script without any repeat tile, you experience the same problem (ie: the three sounds played at the same time), so I do not believe the problem is with the Repeat tile.
The more general problem is how do you play a sound (of arbitrary length, for example recording lines in a script) in sequence. I have experienced the same problem/frustration in Etoys myself. Scratch solves this problem by providing two tiles:
- "play <sound>" - starts the sound playing and immediately executes the next tile (as Etoys "make sound <croak>" currently does - "play <sound> until done" - plays the sound until done then executes the next tile
Another nice feature of is the "wait" tile which allows you to pause a script for a period of time which is useful in animated cartoons which really motivate kids and I believe is one of the reasons kids prefer Scratch. Another nice feature I would like to see to help sequence events is the implementation of a "wait" tile which pauses the execution of a script for a period of time at the wait tile.
FYI to solve your problem (how to play a sound or sequence of sounds one after the other) you can create a script that ticks for some unit of time (lets say 1/2 second) and have a counter that increments upon each iteration of the script. Then at the appropriate time/count you can play the next sound in the sequence. I did something similar in the Cartoon example (The Holder Episosde 1v2 http://www.squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=9497 which due to the joys of the squeakland website, I have not been able to make public). Frankly sequencing was cumbersome in that I had to know how long each recorded sound was and would have preferred a simpler method.
I have included the developer list to get their comments as well.
Stephen
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 9:17 AM, Rita Freudenberg < rita@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de> wrote:
On Mar 26, 2010, at 2:03 PM, Steve Thomas wrote:
Yes I have used the repeat tile in a number of projects. Usually in iterating through objects in a collections.
What was the specific problem?
Can you provide more details on how it does not fit within the Etoys philosophy?
The problem is, that tiles in a script are timeless. Everything in a script happens at the same time. for instance, when you put a "make sound" tile in a repeat tile and then say "repeat 3 times", you will not hear 3 sounds one after the other, but at the same time. This happens with every tile. It is confusing when you put tiles in, that do something you can watch or hear. So what happens is not the same as what you think would happen when looking at the script. But in Etoys you should be able to explain the behaviour from looking at the script, I think.
Rita
Stephen
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 8:46 AM, Rita Freudenberg < rita@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de> wrote:
Hi all,
did you ever use the repeat tile? This is a new tile which you can get when you click on the supplies icon in a script. During my workshop this week we tried to use it and we had problems, because it worked not the way we expected. It is something special, which is also not fitting very well with the Etoys philosophy. So how about removing it, since it is mostly confusing?
It would not be removed completely, so that older projects would still work and you can find it if you explicitly search for it in the object catalog. But it would be removed from the supplies menu in the scripts. What do you think?
Greetings, Rita
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 2:54 PM, Steve Thomas sthomas1@gosargon.com wrote:
Rita, If I put three sounds in a script without any repeat tile, you experience the same problem (ie: the three sounds played at the same time), so I do not believe the problem is with the Repeat tile. The more general problem is how do you play a sound (of arbitrary length, for example recording lines in a script) in sequence. I have experienced the same problem/frustration in Etoys myself. Scratch solves this problem by providing two tiles:
"play <sound>" - starts the sound playing and immediately executes the next tile (as Etoys "make sound <croak>" currently does "play <sound> until done" - plays the sound until done then executes the next tile
Sound playing do not have the best implementation. Play until done is a hack.
Another nice feature of is the "wait" tile which allows you to pause a script for a period of time which is useful in animated cartoons which really motivate kids and I believe is one of the reasons kids prefer Scratch.
Wait, delay, pause or duration are missing from current Etoys. You can do this but it is hard and quite crude.
Another nice feature I would like to see to help sequence events is the implementation of a "wait" tile which pauses the execution of a script for a period of time at the wait tile. FYI to solve your problem (how to play a sound or sequence of sounds one after the other) you can create a script that ticks for some unit of time (lets say 1/2 second) and have a counter that increments upon each iteration of the script. Then at the appropriate time/count you can play the next sound in the sequence. I did something similar in the Cartoon example (The Holder Episosde 1v2 which due to the joys of the squeakland website, I have not been able to make public). Frankly sequencing was cumbersome in that I had to know how long each recorded sound was and would have preferred a simpler method. I have included the developer list to get their comments as well. Stephen
I feel your pain
Karl
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 9:17 AM, Rita Freudenberg rita@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de wrote:
On Mar 26, 2010, at 2:03 PM, Steve Thomas wrote:
Yes I have used the repeat tile in a number of projects. Usually in iterating through objects in a collections. What was the specific problem? Can you provide more details on how it does not fit within the Etoys philosophy?
The problem is, that tiles in a script are timeless. Everything in a script happens at the same time. for instance, when you put a "make sound" tile in a repeat tile and then say "repeat 3 times", you will not hear 3 sounds one after the other, but at the same time. This happens with every tile. It is confusing when you put tiles in, that do something you can watch or hear. So what happens is not the same as what you think would happen when looking at the script. But in Etoys you should be able to explain the behaviour from looking at the script, I think. Rita
Stephen
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 8:46 AM, Rita Freudenberg rita@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de wrote:
Hi all,
did you ever use the repeat tile? This is a new tile which you can get when you click on the supplies icon in a script. During my workshop this week we tried to use it and we had problems, because it worked not the way we expected. It is something special, which is also not fitting very well with the Etoys philosophy. So how about removing it, since it is mostly confusing?
It would not be removed completely, so that older projects would still work and you can find it if you explicitly search for it in the object catalog. But it would be removed from the supplies menu in the scripts. What do you think?
Greetings, Rita
etoys-dev mailing list etoys-dev@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys-dev
Steve,
the issue at hand is that I propose to hide the repeat tile from the viewer. More than any other tile it confuses people.
We just today got another question why it did not behave as expected on the German Etoys list. So I suggested she asked the education team what they thought of the idea to remove it.
It's quite natural to expect that a repeat tile works similarly to a "ticking" script. However, it is a totally different beast. It is as if you inserted the repeating tiles in the script multiple times. All the tiles in a script are executed in the same time step. There is no way to wait in the middle of a script.
Scratch has completely different execution semantics. There, a script can be stopped in the middle, and other scripts run "in parallel".
Executing scripts in a timeless fashion was a conscious design decision I think - but I was not involved with that so I let others comment.
Adding the ability to wait inside a script would be a hack at best. I'm not sure we should give in to the desire of people to add that. It was possible in the Tweak version of Etoys, which had been redesigned from ground up.
The only thing I can think of that would fit with current Etoys is to add a tile that can schedule a future message. E.g. "car do: somescript after: 5 seconds". Not exactly easy to implement (because it would take 2 arguments) but might be nice to have.
The other solution is to just build your own "animation" tiles - Etoys is powerful enough for that. No need to even resort to Smalltalk, ticking scripts is all you need.
In any case, "repeat" is too confusing with too little utility so I'd like to get rid of it in the default viewer.
- Bert -
On 26.03.2010, at 15:54, Steve Thomas wrote:
Rita,
If I put three sounds in a script without any repeat tile, you experience the same problem (ie: the three sounds played at the same time), so I do not believe the problem is with the Repeat tile.
The more general problem is how do you play a sound (of arbitrary length, for example recording lines in a script) in sequence. I have experienced the same problem/frustration in Etoys myself. Scratch solves this problem by providing two tiles: "play <sound>" - starts the sound playing and immediately executes the next tile (as Etoys "make sound <croak>" currently does "play <sound> until done" - plays the sound until done then executes the next tile Another nice feature of is the "wait" tile which allows you to pause a script for a period of time which is useful in animated cartoons which really motivate kids and I believe is one of the reasons kids prefer Scratch. Another nice feature I would like to see to help sequence events is the implementation of a "wait" tile which pauses the execution of a script for a period of time at the wait tile.
FYI to solve your problem (how to play a sound or sequence of sounds one after the other) you can create a script that ticks for some unit of time (lets say 1/2 second) and have a counter that increments upon each iteration of the script. Then at the appropriate time/count you can play the next sound in the sequence. I did something similar in the Cartoon example (The Holder Episosde 1v2 which due to the joys of the squeakland website, I have not been able to make public). Frankly sequencing was cumbersome in that I had to know how long each recorded sound was and would have preferred a simpler method.
I have included the developer list to get their comments as well.
Stephen
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 9:17 AM, Rita Freudenberg rita@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de wrote:
On Mar 26, 2010, at 2:03 PM, Steve Thomas wrote:
Yes I have used the repeat tile in a number of projects. Usually in iterating through objects in a collections.
What was the specific problem?
Can you provide more details on how it does not fit within the Etoys philosophy?
The problem is, that tiles in a script are timeless. Everything in a script happens at the same time. for instance, when you put a "make sound" tile in a repeat tile and then say "repeat 3 times", you will not hear 3 sounds one after the other, but at the same time. This happens with every tile. It is confusing when you put tiles in, that do something you can watch or hear. So what happens is not the same as what you think would happen when looking at the script. But in Etoys you should be able to explain the behaviour from looking at the script, I think.
Rita
Stephen
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 8:46 AM, Rita Freudenberg rita@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de wrote: Hi all,
did you ever use the repeat tile? This is a new tile which you can get when you click on the supplies icon in a script. During my workshop this week we tried to use it and we had problems, because it worked not the way we expected. It is something special, which is also not fitting very well with the Etoys philosophy. So how about removing it, since it is mostly confusing?
It would not be removed completely, so that older projects would still work and you can find it if you explicitly search for it in the object catalog. But it would be removed from the supplies menu in the scripts. What do you think?
Greetings, Rita
etoys-dev mailing list etoys-dev@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys-dev
So I have a limited understanding of Etoys design philosphy and the execution semantics of operating in a timeless fashion and while I can appreciate the differences between execution models, from a child's perspective the question is: "can I make it do what I want, without getting so frustrated I give up?"
From a child and teacher's perspective the things that the Scratch execution
model allow me to do that have value, in particular:
- Ability to Visually Debug scripts (Edit -> Start Single Stepping) I have used this on a number of occasions when kids were stuck and got them to "look at" how there scripts were executing and this was a great tool to help them to think about how the scripts work and resolve their problems - Ability to create what i will call "Sequenced Animations and Sounds" (as mentioned earlier) - Ability to "pause" the action
No, I am not suggesting changing the execution semantics or a re-design, but simply asking how we can solve these problems within the Etoys paradigm.
Kids love animation and cartoons and are really motivated by creating them, providing them with a "lower floor" to do this I believe would encourage wider use of Etoys.
I tried building my own animation tiles and found it non-trivial and wound up building upon Yoshiki's example. Even then I needed to use Holders within Holders. I doubt a kid or most teachers could figure it out (probably my fault in not thinking hard enough on how to solve the problem).
If someone could provide an example that would provide a much simpler level of abstraction that kids can use that would be great. I don't know that it can be done without resorting to Smalltalk.
Sorry for bifurcating the discussion ;)
In regards to removing the "repeat" tile, I find a lot of things in Etoys that could be considered confusing and non-obvoius. I have found it useful and I am sure it was included for a reason. Frankly what I initially found more "confusing" or non-obvoius is using the ticking rate (most likely because of my non Smalltalk background) but once I learned it came to appreciate its value.
That said I need to go back and see why I used it and if there is another way to solve the same problems. Most of the reasons I recall using it were for iterating through tables of data or objects in a collection (for which I could probably use "Tell all" another confusing and non-obvious item).
Stephen
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 11:36 AM, Bert Freudenberg bert@freudenbergs.dewrote:
Steve,
the issue at hand is that I propose to hide the repeat tile from the viewer. More than any other tile it confuses people.
We just today got another question why it did not behave as expected on the German Etoys list. So I suggested she asked the education team what they thought of the idea to remove it.
It's quite natural to expect that a repeat tile works similarly to a "ticking" script. However, it is a totally different beast. It is as if you inserted the repeating tiles in the script multiple times. All the tiles in a script are executed in the same time step. There is no way to wait in the middle of a script.
Scratch has completely different execution semantics. There, a script can be stopped in the middle, and other scripts run "in parallel".
Executing scripts in a timeless fashion was a conscious design decision I think - but I was not involved with that so I let others comment.
Adding the ability to wait inside a script would be a hack at best. I'm not sure we should give in to the desire of people to add that. It was possible in the Tweak version of Etoys, which had been redesigned from ground up.
The only thing I can think of that would fit with current Etoys is to add a tile that can schedule a future message. E.g. "car do: somescript after: 5 seconds". Not exactly easy to implement (because it would take 2 arguments) but might be nice to have.
The other solution is to just build your own "animation" tiles - Etoys is powerful enough for that. No need to even resort to Smalltalk, ticking scripts is all you need.
In any case, "repeat" is too confusing with too little utility so I'd like to get rid of it in the default viewer.
- Bert -
On 26.03.2010, at 15:54, Steve Thomas wrote:
Rita,
If I put three sounds in a script without any repeat tile, you experience the same problem (ie: the three sounds played at the same time), so I do not believe the problem is with the Repeat tile.
The more general problem is how do you play a sound (of arbitrary length, for example recording lines in a script) in sequence. I have experienced the same problem/frustration in Etoys myself. Scratch solves this problem by providing two tiles:
- "play <sound>" - starts the sound playing and immediately executes
the next tile (as Etoys "make sound <croak>" currently does
- "play <sound> until done" - plays the sound until done then executes
the next tile
Another nice feature of is the "wait" tile which allows you to pause a script for a period of time which is useful in animated cartoons which really motivate kids and I believe is one of the reasons kids prefer Scratch. Another nice feature I would like to see to help sequence events is the implementation of a "wait" tile which pauses the execution of a script for a period of time at the wait tile.
FYI to solve your problem (how to play a sound or sequence of sounds one after the other) you can create a script that ticks for some unit of time (lets say 1/2 second) and have a counter that increments upon each iteration of the script. Then at the appropriate time/count you can play the next sound in the sequence. I did something similar in the Cartoon example (The Holder Episosde 1v2http://www.squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=9497 which due to the joys of the squeakland website, I have not been able to make public). Frankly sequencing was cumbersome in that I had to know how long each recorded sound was and would have preferred a simpler method.
I have included the developer list to get their comments as well.
Stephen
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 9:17 AM, Rita Freudenberg < rita@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de> wrote:
On Mar 26, 2010, at 2:03 PM, Steve Thomas wrote:
Yes I have used the repeat tile in a number of projects. Usually in iterating through objects in a collections.
What was the specific problem?
Can you provide more details on how it does not fit within the Etoys philosophy?
The problem is, that tiles in a script are timeless. Everything in a script happens at the same time. for instance, when you put a "make sound" tile in a repeat tile and then say "repeat 3 times", you will not hear 3 sounds one after the other, but at the same time. This happens with every tile. It is confusing when you put tiles in, that do something you can watch or hear. So what happens is not the same as what you think would happen when looking at the script. But in Etoys you should be able to explain the behaviour from looking at the script, I think.
Rita
Stephen
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 8:46 AM, Rita Freudenberg < rita@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de> wrote:
Hi all,
did you ever use the repeat tile? This is a new tile which you can get when you click on the supplies icon in a script. During my workshop this week we tried to use it and we had problems, because it worked not the way we expected. It is something special, which is also not fitting very well with the Etoys philosophy. So how about removing it, since it is mostly confusing?
It would not be removed completely, so that older projects would still work and you can find it if you explicitly search for it in the object catalog. But it would be removed from the supplies menu in the scripts. What do you think?
Greetings, Rita
etoys-dev mailing list etoys-dev@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys-dev
On 26.03.2010, at 17:36, Steve Thomas wrote:
So I have a limited understanding of Etoys design philosphy and the execution semantics of operating in a timeless fashion and while I can appreciate the differences between execution models, from a child's perspective the question is: "can I make it do what I want, without getting so frustrated I give up?" From a child and teacher's perspective the things that the Scratch execution model allow me to do that have value, in particular: Ability to Visually Debug scripts (Edit -> Start Single Stepping) I have used this on a number of occasions when kids were stuck and got them to "look at" how there scripts were executing and this was a great tool to help them to think about how the scripts work and resolve their problems Ability to create what i will call "Sequenced Animations and Sounds" (as mentioned earlier) Ability to "pause" the action No, I am not suggesting changing the execution semantics or a re-design, but simply asking how we can solve these problems within the Etoys paradigm.
The "visual debug" would be very hard to add after the fact - this feature would have to be included in the design from the start.
You can "pause" an action by splitting it into two scripts, and triggering the second part later.
Instead of "Sequenced Animations" maybe you can think of something that achieves the same learning goal but uses different mechanics? Some approaches to a problem work better in Etoys than others.
For synchronizing with sound we could have a tile that indicates whether a sound is still playing. Then you could test this in a ticking script.
Kids love animation and cartoons and are really motivated by creating them, providing them with a "lower floor" to do this I believe would encourage wider use of Etoys.
That may be indeed be so. However, there are many things you can do with kids that Etoys is better suited for. It's not universal enough for everything - but if it was, VPRI would have gone out of business by now ;)
I tried building my own animation tiles and found it non-trivial and wound up building upon Yoshiki's example. Even then I needed to use Holders within Holders. I doubt a kid or most teachers could figure it out (probably my fault in not thinking hard enough on how to solve the problem).
If someone could provide an example that would provide a much simpler level of abstraction that kids can use that would be great.
I doubt that it could get much simpler if you have to start from first principles. The only way to make this usable with kids is that someone experienced builds these animation helpers, and the kids start from that project. I plan to show my ideas about this at Squeakfest:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=md5UBv3pVBE
This is not the final version yet, in fact that was my first attempt to build this. I'll at least have to get rid of the "point" tiles which were convenient for me to use but are not necessary (and somewhat buggy, too).
- Bert -
On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 2:08 PM, Bert Freudenberg bert@freudenbergs.de wrote:
On 26.03.2010, at 17:36, Steve Thomas wrote:
So I have a limited understanding of Etoys design philosphy and the execution semantics of operating in a timeless fashion and while I can appreciate the differences between execution models, from a child's perspective the question is: "can I make it do what I want, without getting so frustrated I give up?" From a child and teacher's perspective the things that the Scratch execution model allow me to do that have value, in particular:
Ability to Visually Debug scripts (Edit -> Start Single Stepping) I have used this on a number of occasions when kids were stuck and got them to "look at" how there scripts were executing and this was a great tool to help them to think about how the scripts work and resolve their problems Ability to create what i will call "Sequenced Animations and Sounds" (as mentioned earlier) Ability to "pause" the action
No, I am not suggesting changing the execution semantics or a re-design, but simply asking how we can solve these problems within the Etoys paradigm.
The "visual debug" would be very hard to add after the fact - this feature would have to be included in the design from the start. You can "pause" an action by splitting it into two scripts, and triggering the second part later. Instead of "Sequenced Animations" maybe you can think of something that achieves the same learning goal but uses different mechanics? Some approaches to a problem work better in Etoys than others. For synchronizing with sound we could have a tile that indicates whether a sound is still playing. Then you could test this in a ticking script.
Kids love animation and cartoons and are really motivated by creating them, providing them with a "lower floor" to do this I believe would encourage wider use of Etoys.
That may be indeed be so. However, there are many things you can do with kids that Etoys is better suited for. It's not universal enough for everything - but if it was, VPRI would have gone out of business by now ;)
I tried building my own animation tiles and found it non-trivial and wound up building upon Yoshiki's example. Even then I needed to use Holders within Holders. I doubt a kid or most teachers could figure it out (probably my fault in not thinking hard enough on how to solve the problem). If someone could provide an example that would provide a much simpler level of abstraction that kids can use that would be great.
I doubt that it could get much simpler if you have to start from first principles. The only way to make this usable with kids is that someone experienced builds these animation helpers, and the kids start from that project. I plan to show my ideas about this at Squeakfest: http://youtube.com/watch?v=md5UBv3pVBE This is not the final version yet, in fact that was my first attempt to build this. I'll at least have to get rid of the "point" tiles which were convenient for me to use but are not necessary (and somewhat buggy, too).
- Bert -
This looks nice.
karl
Bert,
what about the "follow path" thing? I have always used that for animations. It has a bunch of problems (like having one path that you can't see or edit) but seems like a reasonable starting point.
-- Jecel
On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 11:08 PM, Bert Freudenberg bert@freudenbergs.de wrote:
project. I plan to show my ideas about this at Squeakfest: http://youtube.com/watch?v=md5UBv3pVBE This is not the final version yet, in fact that was my first attempt to build this. I'll at least have to get rid of the "point" tiles which were convenient for me to use but are not necessary (and somewhat buggy, too).
- Bert -
Though I can't attend squeakfest I look forward to play with the actual code :-)
/Korakurider
:)
For synchronizing with sound we could have a tile that indicates whether a sound is still playing. Then you could test this in a ticking script.
I'd vote for that.
I doubt that it could get much simpler if you have to start from first
principles. The only way to make this usable with kids is that someone experienced builds these animation helpers, and the kids start from that project. I plan to show my ideas about this at Squeakfest:
I like the idea of helpers, it is a very good suggestion. I look forward to your talk.
Stephen
Upon further reflection and reviewing my projects I am okay with removing the repeat tile.
Turns out I removed the Repeat tile in all but one of my projects and for the last one, I figured out a way to do it using ticking scripts.
Stephen
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 11:36 AM, Bert Freudenberg bert@freudenbergs.dewrote:
Steve,
the issue at hand is that I propose to hide the repeat tile from the viewer. More than any other tile it confuses people.
We just today got another question why it did not behave as expected on the German Etoys list. So I suggested she asked the education team what they thought of the idea to remove it.
It's quite natural to expect that a repeat tile works similarly to a "ticking" script. However, it is a totally different beast. It is as if you inserted the repeating tiles in the script multiple times. All the tiles in a script are executed in the same time step. There is no way to wait in the middle of a script.
Scratch has completely different execution semantics. There, a script can be stopped in the middle, and other scripts run "in parallel".
Executing scripts in a timeless fashion was a conscious design decision I think - but I was not involved with that so I let others comment.
Adding the ability to wait inside a script would be a hack at best. I'm not sure we should give in to the desire of people to add that. It was possible in the Tweak version of Etoys, which had been redesigned from ground up.
The only thing I can think of that would fit with current Etoys is to add a tile that can schedule a future message. E.g. "car do: somescript after: 5 seconds". Not exactly easy to implement (because it would take 2 arguments) but might be nice to have.
The other solution is to just build your own "animation" tiles - Etoys is powerful enough for that. No need to even resort to Smalltalk, ticking scripts is all you need.
In any case, "repeat" is too confusing with too little utility so I'd like to get rid of it in the default viewer.
- Bert -
On 26.03.2010, at 15:54, Steve Thomas wrote:
Rita,
If I put three sounds in a script without any repeat tile, you experience the same problem (ie: the three sounds played at the same time), so I do not believe the problem is with the Repeat tile.
The more general problem is how do you play a sound (of arbitrary length, for example recording lines in a script) in sequence. I have experienced the same problem/frustration in Etoys myself. Scratch solves this problem by providing two tiles:
- "play <sound>" - starts the sound playing and immediately executes
the next tile (as Etoys "make sound <croak>" currently does
- "play <sound> until done" - plays the sound until done then executes
the next tile
Another nice feature of is the "wait" tile which allows you to pause a script for a period of time which is useful in animated cartoons which really motivate kids and I believe is one of the reasons kids prefer Scratch. Another nice feature I would like to see to help sequence events is the implementation of a "wait" tile which pauses the execution of a script for a period of time at the wait tile.
FYI to solve your problem (how to play a sound or sequence of sounds one after the other) you can create a script that ticks for some unit of time (lets say 1/2 second) and have a counter that increments upon each iteration of the script. Then at the appropriate time/count you can play the next sound in the sequence. I did something similar in the Cartoon example (The Holder Episosde 1v2http://www.squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=9497 which due to the joys of the squeakland website, I have not been able to make public). Frankly sequencing was cumbersome in that I had to know how long each recorded sound was and would have preferred a simpler method.
I have included the developer list to get their comments as well.
Stephen
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 9:17 AM, Rita Freudenberg < rita@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de> wrote:
On Mar 26, 2010, at 2:03 PM, Steve Thomas wrote:
Yes I have used the repeat tile in a number of projects. Usually in iterating through objects in a collections.
What was the specific problem?
Can you provide more details on how it does not fit within the Etoys philosophy?
The problem is, that tiles in a script are timeless. Everything in a script happens at the same time. for instance, when you put a "make sound" tile in a repeat tile and then say "repeat 3 times", you will not hear 3 sounds one after the other, but at the same time. This happens with every tile. It is confusing when you put tiles in, that do something you can watch or hear. So what happens is not the same as what you think would happen when looking at the script. But in Etoys you should be able to explain the behaviour from looking at the script, I think.
Rita
Stephen
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 8:46 AM, Rita Freudenberg < rita@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de> wrote:
Hi all,
did you ever use the repeat tile? This is a new tile which you can get when you click on the supplies icon in a script. During my workshop this week we tried to use it and we had problems, because it worked not the way we expected. It is something special, which is also not fitting very well with the Etoys philosophy. So how about removing it, since it is mostly confusing?
It would not be removed completely, so that older projects would still work and you can find it if you explicitly search for it in the object catalog. But it would be removed from the supplies menu in the scripts. What do you think?
Greetings, Rita
etoys-dev mailing list etoys-dev@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys-dev
If someone feels this is important, please vote up the issue at
http://tracker.squeakland.org/browse/SQ-684
- Bert -
On 27.03.2010, at 04:46, Steve Thomas wrote:
Upon further reflection and reviewing my projects I am okay with removing the repeat tile.
Turns out I removed the Repeat tile in all but one of my projects and for the last one, I figured out a way to do it using ticking scripts.
Stephen
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 11:36 AM, Bert Freudenberg bert@freudenbergs.de wrote: Steve,
the issue at hand is that I propose to hide the repeat tile from the viewer. More than any other tile it confuses people.
We just today got another question why it did not behave as expected on the German Etoys list. So I suggested she asked the education team what they thought of the idea to remove it.
It's quite natural to expect that a repeat tile works similarly to a "ticking" script. However, it is a totally different beast. It is as if you inserted the repeating tiles in the script multiple times. All the tiles in a script are executed in the same time step. There is no way to wait in the middle of a script.
Scratch has completely different execution semantics. There, a script can be stopped in the middle, and other scripts run "in parallel".
Executing scripts in a timeless fashion was a conscious design decision I think - but I was not involved with that so I let others comment.
Adding the ability to wait inside a script would be a hack at best. I'm not sure we should give in to the desire of people to add that. It was possible in the Tweak version of Etoys, which had been redesigned from ground up.
The only thing I can think of that would fit with current Etoys is to add a tile that can schedule a future message. E.g. "car do: somescript after: 5 seconds". Not exactly easy to implement (because it would take 2 arguments) but might be nice to have.
The other solution is to just build your own "animation" tiles - Etoys is powerful enough for that. No need to even resort to Smalltalk, ticking scripts is all you need.
In any case, "repeat" is too confusing with too little utility so I'd like to get rid of it in the default viewer.
- Bert -
On 26.03.2010, at 15:54, Steve Thomas wrote:
Rita,
If I put three sounds in a script without any repeat tile, you experience the same problem (ie: the three sounds played at the same time), so I do not believe the problem is with the Repeat tile.
The more general problem is how do you play a sound (of arbitrary length, for example recording lines in a script) in sequence. I have experienced the same problem/frustration in Etoys myself. Scratch solves this problem by providing two tiles: "play <sound>" - starts the sound playing and immediately executes the next tile (as Etoys "make sound <croak>" currently does "play <sound> until done" - plays the sound until done then executes the next tile Another nice feature of is the "wait" tile which allows you to pause a script for a period of time which is useful in animated cartoons which really motivate kids and I believe is one of the reasons kids prefer Scratch. Another nice feature I would like to see to help sequence events is the implementation of a "wait" tile which pauses the execution of a script for a period of time at the wait tile.
FYI to solve your problem (how to play a sound or sequence of sounds one after the other) you can create a script that ticks for some unit of time (lets say 1/2 second) and have a counter that increments upon each iteration of the script. Then at the appropriate time/count you can play the next sound in the sequence. I did something similar in the Cartoon example (The Holder Episosde 1v2 which due to the joys of the squeakland website, I have not been able to make public). Frankly sequencing was cumbersome in that I had to know how long each recorded sound was and would have preferred a simpler method.
I have included the developer list to get their comments as well.
Stephen
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 9:17 AM, Rita Freudenberg rita@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de wrote:
On Mar 26, 2010, at 2:03 PM, Steve Thomas wrote:
Yes I have used the repeat tile in a number of projects. Usually in iterating through objects in a collections.
What was the specific problem?
Can you provide more details on how it does not fit within the Etoys philosophy?
The problem is, that tiles in a script are timeless. Everything in a script happens at the same time. for instance, when you put a "make sound" tile in a repeat tile and then say "repeat 3 times", you will not hear 3 sounds one after the other, but at the same time. This happens with every tile. It is confusing when you put tiles in, that do something you can watch or hear. So what happens is not the same as what you think would happen when looking at the script. But in Etoys you should be able to explain the behaviour from looking at the script, I think.
Rita
Stephen
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 8:46 AM, Rita Freudenberg rita@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de wrote: Hi all,
did you ever use the repeat tile? This is a new tile which you can get when you click on the supplies icon in a script. During my workshop this week we tried to use it and we had problems, because it worked not the way we expected. It is something special, which is also not fitting very well with the Etoys philosophy. So how about removing it, since it is mostly confusing?
It would not be removed completely, so that older projects would still work and you can find it if you explicitly search for it in the object catalog. But it would be removed from the supplies menu in the scripts. What do you think?
Greetings, Rita
etoys-dev mailing list etoys-dev@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys-dev
Okay, I just found a use for the Repeat tile. The 40 maths shapes challengeshttp://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2009/08/40-maths-shapes-challenges.html posted by Bill Kerr. Christine did a really nice project on this Creating Polygonshttp://www.squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=9444
I am sure it could be done without a Repeat Tile, but it would not be as easy and from an educational standpoint explicitly using a Repeat tile instead of copying the tiles N times or using a variable to count the iterations before turn seems preferable.
Stephen.
On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 7:16 AM, Bert Freudenberg bert@freudenbergs.dewrote:
If someone feels this is important, please vote up the issue at
http://tracker.squeakland.org/browse/SQ-684
- Bert -
On 27.03.2010, at 04:46, Steve Thomas wrote:
Upon further reflection and reviewing my projects I am okay with removing the repeat tile.
Turns out I removed the Repeat tile in all but one of my projects and for the last one, I figured out a way to do it using ticking scripts.
Stephen
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 11:36 AM, Bert Freudenberg bert@freudenbergs.dewrote:
Steve,
the issue at hand is that I propose to hide the repeat tile from the viewer. More than any other tile it confuses people.
We just today got another question why it did not behave as expected on the German Etoys list. So I suggested she asked the education team what they thought of the idea to remove it.
It's quite natural to expect that a repeat tile works similarly to a "ticking" script. However, it is a totally different beast. It is as if you inserted the repeating tiles in the script multiple times. All the tiles in a script are executed in the same time step. There is no way to wait in the middle of a script.
Scratch has completely different execution semantics. There, a script can be stopped in the middle, and other scripts run "in parallel".
Executing scripts in a timeless fashion was a conscious design decision I think - but I was not involved with that so I let others comment.
Adding the ability to wait inside a script would be a hack at best. I'm not sure we should give in to the desire of people to add that. It was possible in the Tweak version of Etoys, which had been redesigned from ground up.
The only thing I can think of that would fit with current Etoys is to add a tile that can schedule a future message. E.g. "car do: somescript after: 5 seconds". Not exactly easy to implement (because it would take 2 arguments) but might be nice to have.
The other solution is to just build your own "animation" tiles - Etoys is powerful enough for that. No need to even resort to Smalltalk, ticking scripts is all you need.
In any case, "repeat" is too confusing with too little utility so I'd like to get rid of it in the default viewer.
- Bert -
On 26.03.2010, at 15:54, Steve Thomas wrote:
Rita,
If I put three sounds in a script without any repeat tile, you experience the same problem (ie: the three sounds played at the same time), so I do not believe the problem is with the Repeat tile.
The more general problem is how do you play a sound (of arbitrary length, for example recording lines in a script) in sequence. I have experienced the same problem/frustration in Etoys myself. Scratch solves this problem by providing two tiles:
- "play <sound>" - starts the sound playing and immediately executes
the next tile (as Etoys "make sound <croak>" currently does
- "play <sound> until done" - plays the sound until done then executes
the next tile
Another nice feature of is the "wait" tile which allows you to pause a script for a period of time which is useful in animated cartoons which really motivate kids and I believe is one of the reasons kids prefer Scratch. Another nice feature I would like to see to help sequence events is the implementation of a "wait" tile which pauses the execution of a script for a period of time at the wait tile.
FYI to solve your problem (how to play a sound or sequence of sounds one after the other) you can create a script that ticks for some unit of time (lets say 1/2 second) and have a counter that increments upon each iteration of the script. Then at the appropriate time/count you can play the next sound in the sequence. I did something similar in the Cartoon example (The Holder Episosde 1v2http://www.squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=9497 which due to the joys of the squeakland website, I have not been able to make public). Frankly sequencing was cumbersome in that I had to know how long each recorded sound was and would have preferred a simpler method.
I have included the developer list to get their comments as well.
Stephen
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 9:17 AM, Rita Freudenberg < rita@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de> wrote:
On Mar 26, 2010, at 2:03 PM, Steve Thomas wrote:
Yes I have used the repeat tile in a number of projects. Usually in iterating through objects in a collections.
What was the specific problem?
Can you provide more details on how it does not fit within the Etoys philosophy?
The problem is, that tiles in a script are timeless. Everything in a script happens at the same time. for instance, when you put a "make sound" tile in a repeat tile and then say "repeat 3 times", you will not hear 3 sounds one after the other, but at the same time. This happens with every tile. It is confusing when you put tiles in, that do something you can watch or hear. So what happens is not the same as what you think would happen when looking at the script. But in Etoys you should be able to explain the behaviour from looking at the script, I think.
Rita
Stephen
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 8:46 AM, Rita Freudenberg < rita@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de> wrote:
Hi all,
did you ever use the repeat tile? This is a new tile which you can get when you click on the supplies icon in a script. During my workshop this week we tried to use it and we had problems, because it worked not the way we expected. It is something special, which is also not fitting very well with the Etoys philosophy. So how about removing it, since it is mostly confusing?
It would not be removed completely, so that older projects would still work and you can find it if you explicitly search for it in the object catalog. But it would be removed from the supplies menu in the scripts. What do you think?
Greetings, Rita
etoys-dev mailing list etoys-dev@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys-dev
etoys-dev mailing list etoys-dev@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys-dev
I had an off-list conversation with a french Art teacher, who was really glad it had been added. Allows many Logo-style turtle graphics patterns:
http://community.ofset.org/index.php/TimesRepeat_Panes_and_graphic_drawings
In fact, turtle graphics might be *the* one intrinsically useful application of the repeat tile. If that is so, how about moving it to the pen category?
- Bert -
On 08.04.2010, at 03:20, Steve Thomas wrote:
Okay, I just found a use for the Repeat tile. The 40 maths shapes challenges posted by Bill Kerr. Christine did a really nice project on this Creating Polygons
I am sure it could be done without a Repeat Tile, but it would not be as easy and from an educational standpoint explicitly using a Repeat tile instead of copying the tiles N times or using a variable to count the iterations before turn seems preferable.
Stephen.
On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 7:16 AM, Bert Freudenberg bert@freudenbergs.de wrote: If someone feels this is important, please vote up the issue at
http://tracker.squeakland.org/browse/SQ-684
- Bert -
On 27.03.2010, at 04:46, Steve Thomas wrote:
Upon further reflection and reviewing my projects I am okay with removing the repeat tile.
Turns out I removed the Repeat tile in all but one of my projects and for the last one, I figured out a way to do it using ticking scripts.
Stephen
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 11:36 AM, Bert Freudenberg bert@freudenbergs.de wrote: Steve,
the issue at hand is that I propose to hide the repeat tile from the viewer. More than any other tile it confuses people.
We just today got another question why it did not behave as expected on the German Etoys list. So I suggested she asked the education team what they thought of the idea to remove it.
It's quite natural to expect that a repeat tile works similarly to a "ticking" script. However, it is a totally different beast. It is as if you inserted the repeating tiles in the script multiple times. All the tiles in a script are executed in the same time step. There is no way to wait in the middle of a script.
Scratch has completely different execution semantics. There, a script can be stopped in the middle, and other scripts run "in parallel".
Executing scripts in a timeless fashion was a conscious design decision I think - but I was not involved with that so I let others comment.
Adding the ability to wait inside a script would be a hack at best. I'm not sure we should give in to the desire of people to add that. It was possible in the Tweak version of Etoys, which had been redesigned from ground up.
The only thing I can think of that would fit with current Etoys is to add a tile that can schedule a future message. E.g. "car do: somescript after: 5 seconds". Not exactly easy to implement (because it would take 2 arguments) but might be nice to have.
The other solution is to just build your own "animation" tiles - Etoys is powerful enough for that. No need to even resort to Smalltalk, ticking scripts is all you need.
In any case, "repeat" is too confusing with too little utility so I'd like to get rid of it in the default viewer.
- Bert -
On 26.03.2010, at 15:54, Steve Thomas wrote:
Rita,
If I put three sounds in a script without any repeat tile, you experience the same problem (ie: the three sounds played at the same time), so I do not believe the problem is with the Repeat tile.
The more general problem is how do you play a sound (of arbitrary length, for example recording lines in a script) in sequence. I have experienced the same problem/frustration in Etoys myself. Scratch solves this problem by providing two tiles: "play <sound>" - starts the sound playing and immediately executes the next tile (as Etoys "make sound <croak>" currently does "play <sound> until done" - plays the sound until done then executes the next tile Another nice feature of is the "wait" tile which allows you to pause a script for a period of time which is useful in animated cartoons which really motivate kids and I believe is one of the reasons kids prefer Scratch. Another nice feature I would like to see to help sequence events is the implementation of a "wait" tile which pauses the execution of a script for a period of time at the wait tile.
FYI to solve your problem (how to play a sound or sequence of sounds one after the other) you can create a script that ticks for some unit of time (lets say 1/2 second) and have a counter that increments upon each iteration of the script. Then at the appropriate time/count you can play the next sound in the sequence. I did something similar in the Cartoon example (The Holder Episosde 1v2 which due to the joys of the squeakland website, I have not been able to make public). Frankly sequencing was cumbersome in that I had to know how long each recorded sound was and would have preferred a simpler method.
I have included the developer list to get their comments as well.
Stephen
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 9:17 AM, Rita Freudenberg rita@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de wrote:
On Mar 26, 2010, at 2:03 PM, Steve Thomas wrote:
Yes I have used the repeat tile in a number of projects. Usually in iterating through objects in a collections.
What was the specific problem?
Can you provide more details on how it does not fit within the Etoys philosophy?
The problem is, that tiles in a script are timeless. Everything in a script happens at the same time. for instance, when you put a "make sound" tile in a repeat tile and then say "repeat 3 times", you will not hear 3 sounds one after the other, but at the same time. This happens with every tile. It is confusing when you put tiles in, that do something you can watch or hear. So what happens is not the same as what you think would happen when looking at the script. But in Etoys you should be able to explain the behaviour from looking at the script, I think.
Rita
Stephen
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 8:46 AM, Rita Freudenberg rita@isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de wrote: Hi all,
did you ever use the repeat tile? This is a new tile which you can get when you click on the supplies icon in a script. During my workshop this week we tried to use it and we had problems, because it worked not the way we expected. It is something special, which is also not fitting very well with the Etoys philosophy. So how about removing it, since it is mostly confusing?
It would not be removed completely, so that older projects would still work and you can find it if you explicitly search for it in the object catalog. But it would be removed from the supplies menu in the scripts. What do you think?
Greetings, Rita
etoys-dev mailing list etoys-dev@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys-dev
etoys-dev mailing list etoys-dev@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys-dev
On Thursday 08 April 2010 02:47:13 pm Bert Freudenberg wrote:
In fact, turtle graphics might be the one intrinsically useful application of the repeat tile. If that is so, how about moving it to the pen category?
Repeat is convenient outside of pen drawing. Sure, one can write scripts without it but repetition is intuitive operation for kids and dropping it would be a pity.
How about extending "do:" to "do:times:" in scripting category?
Subbu
On 08.04.2010, at 18:52, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
On Thursday 08 April 2010 02:47:13 pm Bert Freudenberg wrote:
In fact, turtle graphics might be the one intrinsically useful application of the repeat tile. If that is so, how about moving it to the pen category?
Repeat is convenient outside of pen drawing.
Do you have an example?
Sure, one can write scripts without it but repetition is intuitive operation for kids and dropping it would be a pity.
No, it usually does not do what it intuitively should do.
How about extending "do:" to "do:times:" in scripting category?
In theory that would be a possibility. However, tiles can only have one argument. There is only a single exception and that tile is special-cased in a gazillion places.
- Bert -
On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 7:02 PM, Bert Freudenberg bert@freudenbergs.de wrote:
On 08.04.2010, at 18:52, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
On Thursday 08 April 2010 02:47:13 pm Bert Freudenberg wrote:
In fact, turtle graphics might be the one intrinsically useful application of the repeat tile. If that is so, how about moving it to the pen category?
Repeat is convenient outside of pen drawing.
Do you have an example?
Sure, one can write scripts without it but repetition is intuitive operation for kids and dropping it would be a pity.
No, it usually does not do what it intuitively should do.
How about extending "do:" to "do:times:" in scripting category?
In theory that would be a possibility. However, tiles can only have one argument. There is only a single exception and that tile is special-cased in a gazillion places.
- Bert -
etoys-dev mailing list etoys-dev@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys-dev
Could we not add a tick feature so you could ask a script to tick 10 times for example ? I have not looked at how much special cases that touches ;-) Karl
On Thursday 08 April 2010 10:32:18 pm Bert Freudenberg wrote:
On 08.04.2010, at 18:52, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
On Thursday 08 April 2010 02:47:13 pm Bert Freudenberg wrote:
In fact, turtle graphics might be the one intrinsically useful application of the repeat tile. If that is so, how about moving it to the pen category?
Repeat is convenient outside of pen drawing.
Do you have an example?
A couple of them.
I have seen kids drag turnBy:5 tiles multiple times into a script, then try to use the repeat tile before they stumble on the fact that repeat 5 turnBy: 5 is same as turnBy: 25. Understanding angular magnitudes seems to take more 'cooking' time than that for linear magnitudes. Is it because one has to run one's eye over 'empty space' to gage angles? I don't know.
When placing elements along a circle, it is easier to use repeat tile than to dup individual tiles.
self heading: 0. 12 timesRepeat: [ self dosomething. self turnBy: 30 ]. or self heading: 0. 60 timesRepeat: [ self dosomething. self turnBy: 6 ].
(Sorry for delayed response. It is summer vacation time for my kids).
Subbu
On 09.04.2010, at 17:37, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
On Thursday 08 April 2010 10:32:18 pm Bert Freudenberg wrote:
On 08.04.2010, at 18:52, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
On Thursday 08 April 2010 02:47:13 pm Bert Freudenberg wrote:
In fact, turtle graphics might be the one intrinsically useful application of the repeat tile. If that is so, how about moving it to the pen category?
Repeat is convenient outside of pen drawing.
Do you have an example?
A couple of them.
I have seen kids drag turnBy:5 tiles multiple times into a script, then try to use the repeat tile before they stumble on the fact that repeat 5 turnBy: 5 is same as turnBy: 25. Understanding angular magnitudes seems to take more 'cooking' time than that for linear magnitudes. Is it because one has to run one's eye over 'empty space' to gage angles? I don't know.
That's more of a mis-use than use, right?
When placing elements along a circle, it is easier to use repeat tile than to dup individual tiles.
self heading: 0. 12 timesRepeat: [ self dosomething. self turnBy: 30 ]. or self heading: 0. 60 timesRepeat: [ self dosomething. self turnBy: 6 ].
This sounds pretty equivalent in spirit to turtle graphics to me (even if you're placing objects and not just marks).
In any case the discussion showed repeat is too useful to remove or even to hide. But moving it to the pen category seems like win-win to me. You still can use it for anything else but it would encourage to use it with pen drawings.
- Bert -
On Friday 09 April 2010 09:18:55 pm Bert Freudenberg wrote:
On 09.04.2010, at 17:37, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
I have seen kids drag turnBy:5 tiles multiple times into a script, then try to use the repeat tile before they stumble on the fact that repeat 5 turnBy: 5 is same as turnBy: 25. Understanding angular magnitudes seems to take more 'cooking' time than that for linear magnitudes. Is it because one has to run one's eye over 'empty space' to gage angles? I don't know.
That's more of a mis-use than use, right?
From an adult's PoV, yes. From a kid's PoV, no. That is the way some kids pick up numeracy. See Deborah case study in page 118 of Mindstorms.
When placing elements along a circle, it is easier to use repeat tile than to dup individual tiles.
self heading: 0. 12 timesRepeat: [ self dosomething. self turnBy: 30 ].
or
self heading: 0. 60 timesRepeat: [ self dosomething. self turnBy: 6 ].
This sounds pretty equivalent in spirit to turtle graphics to me (even if you're placing objects and not just marks).
Repetition occurs in many places including graphics. Visual thinkers tend to use graphics heavily but think of weavers, potters, musicians or dancers. See Ron Eglash's research in http://csdt.rpi.edu for its ties into many cultures around the world.
In any case the discussion showed repeat is too useful to remove or even to hide. But moving it to the pen category seems like win-win to me. You still can use it for anything else but it would encourage to use it with pen drawings.
Thanks. Repeat tile has an important role to play in developing numeracy. It helps make the connection between 2+2+2+2 and 2x4.
Subbu
Subbu,
Thanks for the link to Ron Eglash's research in http://csdt.rpi.edu for its ties into many cultures around the world. What a great resource. I especially liked the Pre-Columbian Pyramids and Rhythm Wheels. I am going to try some of them with my kids.
I wonder if Ron would mind if we rendered some of these lesson plans in Etoys
CC'ing Education team as this would be of interest to them as well.
Stephen
On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 10:21 PM, K. K. Subramaniam subbukk@gmail.comwrote:
On Friday 09 April 2010 09:18:55 pm Bert Freudenberg wrote:
On 09.04.2010, at 17:37, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
I have seen kids drag turnBy:5 tiles multiple times into a script, then try to use the repeat tile before they stumble on the fact that repeat
5
turnBy: 5 is same as turnBy: 25. Understanding angular magnitudes seems to take more 'cooking' time than that for linear magnitudes. Is it because one has to run one's eye over 'empty space' to gage angles? I don't know.
That's more of a mis-use than use, right?
From an adult's PoV, yes. From a kid's PoV, no. That is the way some kids pick up numeracy. See Deborah case study in page 118 of Mindstorms.
When placing elements along a circle, it is easier to use repeat tile than to dup individual tiles.
self heading: 0. 12 timesRepeat: [ self dosomething. self turnBy: 30 ].
or
self heading: 0. 60 timesRepeat: [ self dosomething. self turnBy: 6 ].
This sounds pretty equivalent in spirit to turtle graphics to me (even if you're placing objects and not just marks).
Repetition occurs in many places including graphics. Visual thinkers tend to use graphics heavily but think of weavers, potters, musicians or dancers. See Ron Eglash's research in http://csdt.rpi.edu for its ties into many cultures around the world.
In any case the discussion showed repeat is too useful to remove or even
to
hide. But moving it to the pen category seems like win-win to me. You still can use it for anything else but it would encourage to use it with pen drawings.
Thanks. Repeat tile has an important role to play in developing numeracy. It helps make the connection between 2+2+2+2 and 2x4.
Subbu _______________________________________________ etoys-dev mailing list etoys-dev@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys-dev
On Saturday 10 April 2010 08:40:38 am Steve Thomas wrote:
Thanks for the link to Ron Eglash's research in http://csdt.rpi.edu for its ties into many cultures around the world. What a great resource. I especially liked the Pre-Columbian Pyramids and Rhythm Wheels. I am going to try some of them with my kids.
His talk at TED is interesting too: http://www.ted.com/speakers/ron_eglash.html
Subbu
etoys-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org
-
Bert Freudenberg -
Jecel Assumpcao Jr -
K. K. Subramaniam -
karl ramberg -
Korakurider -
Steve Thomas