Francois-
Wow! Thanks for making that Flash recording:
http://francois.schnell.free.fr/bazar/patapata-test1/patapata-test1.html
That is a neat demo showing things I had not even thought of, like with
the jumping Morphs (and far beyond my presentation skills).
Well what I''m doing here is not really a "neat" presentation it's just that when I find something interesting like this I like to show it to other people :) (I'm also very much into Free Culture and Free Software advocating).
My wife is now
finally impressed somewhat with what I am doing. :-) The version you are
using did benefit from her trying an earlier version and her feedback on
it, as several things she (also a programmer) tried that were hard or
confusing or generated errors, I made easier or fixed.
Oh , send also to her "mes homages" and congratulations from the french man :) (my English spouse still have nearly no idea what I'm doing with electronics bits and computers all over the place).
To answer your first question: To add a method, try right-clicking in the
yellow inspector pane [...]
Dear me ... I didn't think you already have that and didn't try ... it works great thanks ! fun times ahead :)
To answer your second question: To execute a method in another morph, you
must first have a pointer to that morph directly. Ideally, that would be
supported by cut and paste in the inspector, but you can't do that yet.
However, you can, say, go to Morph 0 and add a field and call it "morph1"
and then when asked for the value, enter (without quotes):
"world.morphs[1]" which will evaluate to Morph 1 in the world. Then you
could reference "self.morph1" in any method of Morph 0, like to call
"self,morph1.X()" directly.[...]
Great my objects can now talk to each others ! It will be awesome when you'll also have "quick integration" of this. :) More fun times ahead :))
I'm guessing you're using WinXP? Nice to see the wxWindows button dragging
properly.
I'm mainly using XP for software I don't have on my Ubuntu Dapper (like quick sreencasting, itunes/podcasts for my ipod, etc). I have one screen/keyboard/mouse and a switch quickly between the Linux and XP box.
So many times one does things and thinks no one notices or cares, so I'm
very excited to see someone trying it (and going to the effort to make a
Flash video, too). Thanks again for trying it and the encouragement.
Well ... maybe it's why Einstein said it's difficult for people to understand what they never experienced (ie in our case a visual hands-on squeak-like familiarity of objects land) , that's also why he said that imagination is more important than knowledge. I believe it's Alan Kay who said that the computer revolution haven't started yet in education and that kids ~need "imagination amplifiers" => make PataPata a good imagination amplifier !
As
regards future evolution, right now I'm at a decision point as to whether
to push forward in Python further or, as per my previous discussions here
with Kirby where he rightly points to dominant paradigms in specific
languages, to jump to something like OCaml and use it to build a Self-like
prototype language on top of it (something like io, which looks great,
http://www.iolanguage.com/about/
but with a Smalltalk/Self-derived keyword syntax, which I feel is
desirable), and so essentially producing a system that supports two
extremes of permissiveness at two different levels -- strong (but
implicit) typing at a speedy supporting layer and anything-goes prototypes
above that for most GUI development work. On the other hand, I am making a
lot of progress with Python (and not knowing OCaml much) and a Python
version has value to me for other reasons. So, this seems like a big vote
on keeping it all in Python for now?
Well I don't know OCaml and io but If I were you I would be suspicious of a "yankee" advising you a language written by french people ;)
I personally would *love* if you continue this in Python, I'm not anymore in a testing phase, I've seen enough to "adopt" it and see how I can use it for games/simulations/teaching and help where I can :)
I probably won't be able to help on the core "PataPata" but my Python skills gets better and better (I'm quite new to Python).
I can help with :
- bug tracking
- playing with it and doing short examples/demos (games/simulations)
- promoting and doc (especially in the French Python sphere)
- i18n and French translation
- I begin to know more and more the multimedia part of Python (sound, video, streaming), could be handy one day
- extend morphs to the analog world (data acquisition and automation)
- I'm good at testing plenty of things and finding gems (useful if you don't want to reinvent the wheel). :)
Well it's bed time on this part of the globe => $ python dreamland.py
Please keep up your excellent work <subliminal> and use Python :) </subliminal>
francois
All the best.
--Paul Fernhout
francois schnell wrote:
> On 26/05/06, Paul D. Fernhout <pdfernhout@kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> I think Self leads the way here in generality with one inspector that can
>> be used to build GUIs, programs, or just sets of objects. And here is an
>> attempt to bring that ease of use to Python, building on ideas from Self
>> (and Squeak): :-)
>>
>>
http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.cgi/patapata/trunk/PataPata/PataPata.py?view=log
>>
>> Doesn't succeed yet perhaps in making that beginner friendly, but a
>> start.
>> (PythonCard is much better choice for current work though.)
>
>
>
> Hello,
>
> I've just gave a try to your "PataPata" and I already have fun with it
> while
> "testing" it :)
> http://francois.schnell.free.fr/bazar/patapata-test1/patapata-test1.html
>
> Will it be possible to directly add new methods to morphs (maybe from the
> inspector ? ... when I saw the 'grow' method I wanted a "shrink' one ...).
> Is there a way yet to execute a Morph method from another Morph (if I click
> on Morph 1 I'd like to execute method X from Morph 2 for example).
>
> I find your "PataPata" promising and I'm eager to see how it evolves :)
>
> francois
>
>
>
> --Paul Fernhout
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