[MultimediaApps] Presentation system and SqueakNews

Hannes Hirzel hirzel at spw.unizh.ch
Fri Jul 27 19:10:11 UTC 2001


Hi Tansel


Thanks again for sending me the July issue of Squeak news. I actually
downloaded it on a Mac and unzipped it. I had some troubles picking 
the right VM, finding out that I had to assign memory to it, find a 
utility to assign the right file type and setting
the screen resolution up. 
Probably the CD has all things already set up. I would suggest
that you mention the screen size needed for the e-zine on your web page. 
I could image though that some people would be interested to run it from a
laptop. Last years laptops were mostly 600 * 800 pixel. So to have a wider
audience I would suggest at least to consider this. (Acutally on my laptop
it is possible to switch to a higher resolution, but then I have to
scroll.) 


When I saw your announcement I was very excited and went to your home page
to order it.
However the payment software did'nt work properly for me although I
thought I had supplied all the necessary data (at least I thougt so). 
Then I quit and forgot about it until you sent me the link.

I would like to become a subscriber. But perhaps the easier way is to use
the second option then - writing an article and get a free one-year
subscription.

I could think of
- writing a tutorial for newbies. Somebody on the list mentioned that he
liked to play meccano. I think this could be a useful approach. A detailed
explanation how to build something from scratch. 
As an example I could think of a project with 
a map of Africa where you can click on and get information about language
families and writing systems. 


- An extension to export Squeak presentations (TextMorphs, ImageMorphs) to
html (with CSS).
Basically the explantations how to come with something like that with code
examples.
There is something in the Guzial book (MAT) but I could think of something
that keeps
the layout more or less.


- Instructions on how to use Squeak as a concept mapping tool (popularily
'brain map').
This would more or less just be use cases for the Ned Konz connectors
tool.



The main selling point for the e-zine is surely that it is accompanied
with a complete
development system. You can have people evaluate things as they go
on. Actually as in the
juggler example. However I didn't have the patience to really follow it. I
missed an 
explanation at the beginning what the thing will show me and why I should
do it.

Am I going to learn to juggle myself with actual balls or am I going to
learn to program
Squeak somehow. For the first some nice animations would probably serve
better.

But to sum up I really appreciate your effort and I wish you all the best.


Regards
Hannes Hirzel







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