[Olpc-open] [Etoys] squeaky tales and waveplace vision

[Timothy Falconer]

Yoshiki,

Thanks for your suggestions and kind comments.

At the end of #19, I actually say something like, "I've run into a  
roadblock, something I don't know, which is very common in  
programming.  The thing to do at this point is send an email asking  
for help on the squeakland mailing list."

Instead of doing this, though, I go on to show a short-term  
workaround .... the "right now" answer versus the "right" answer.   
Part of my point throughout is to show the real experience of  
programming, which definitely involves roadblocks and workarounds.   
I'm trying to convey a sense for what it's really like being a  
programmer using Etoys.


>   I might be missing what you're explaining around 7 minutes, but  
> you *can* put the variable "tot11's turnHolder into the place of  
> any player-type variable (such as the left hand side of "cursor  
> increase by 1".

What I couldn't figure out in #19 was "tot11's totHolder's cursor  
increase by 1"    I knew how, but "cursor" simply didn't appear on  
the list, I'm guessing because only Player stuff shows there.

>   Around 4:30 minutes into the movie, you say something like:
> "... unless there some good reasons..., you should always use the
> commands for the same object."  Is that because you are using siblings
> and have been bitten by the issue?  (I think so.)

Hmm... I think my point there was to train people to default to using  
the "self" receiver for each message .... if it's tot11's script, use  
tot11 as the receiver of everything unless you have a good reason not  
to, such as tot11 telling some other object what to do.  There are  
several commands that really don't require the exact right receiver,  
such as sibling sends and  "clear pen trails", etc.  I'm just making  
the point that people should train themselves to stay consistent.

>   I have no idea what causes the magnification issue.  So strange.  
> You have siblings and copies, right?  If so, yes, that could be  
> hard.  The last issue you have seems to be related to it.

Yes, the visual stuff in the holder were copies and the active  
players are siblings.  If the magnification is a by-product of  
siblings/dupes co-existing, it's a good thing to know.

>   Perhaps, I'd add a variable to these guys that holds a number,  
> and each of them compares the number with page5's timeTicks to  
> figure out what to do.  In this way, the script may be shorter.

Yeah, the stuff in the timeline script in the page could be farmed  
out to the objects on the page.  I choose the massive if-statement  
approach to make the sequencing clearer to newcomers.

I might move to a scratch-like event sending approach in the  
future .... marmie sends "settleDownClass" message to the tots and  
the tots respond to the message, rather than have it all be time  
driven.  Any hints on how I'd do asynchronous multi-recipient event  
passing like this?   (on "settledDownClass" do ...)

One other request  ... a "wait" tile ... with seconds.  Could go in  
"basic".