Scratch

blob8108 wrote:

...because then the language wouldn't be cool enough for the name? 

No, more specific than that.  You can't name your language after the language of a planet of anarchists if the language is full of unnecessary restrictions.

(It's from The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin, the greatest SF book ever.)

shadow_7283 wrote:

my decision not to associate myself with GOP

And since then it's only gotten... no, let's see if I can stay out of trouble this week. 

Once in a while, when I'm doing something big (PowerPoint stuff, short movies), I mirror to the Apple TV. 

Really, though, I desperately need a name. You can't imagine what all is already taken… Even Babel (as in the fish, not the tower, though they both derive from the same thing) is a charset encoder in Scheme.

I want the name to have all Latin characters, not a name of anything else already, and preferably shouldn't be something hard to Google (googling something about a language called 'the' will be painful).

Last edited by Hardmath123 (2013-03-19 08:09:33)

Hehe, don't name your language "Snap!" for that matter, it's way too common and too generic 

Hardmath123 wrote:

I want the name to have all Latin characters, not a name of anything else already, and preferably shouldn't be something hard to Google (googling something about a language called 'the' will be painful).

Anything computer-related, or anything at all? The latter will be tough.

Hardmath123 wrote:

I found this, it's really professional looking. 

Thanks! Bryce Boe contributed the setup.py code a while back and put it on PyPI. 

Did you integrate snapin8r's 2.0 functionality yet? Then we can just add all of snapin8r into a part of Kurt

Not yet, but that's the plan! (I missed my self-imposed SIGCSE deadline, which was very sad — but it was a very ambitious one...  ) I have been playing with the Scratch 1.4/2.0 blockspecs, trying to figure out a decent way to do script conversion.

My plan for kurt 2 is to provide a single API for getting data out of Scratch and its mods. Each supported file format will be a kurt "plugin" and will be responsible for converting from JSON/XML/object table/whatever to kurt's internal representation (and back again).



Plugins should be able to inherit stuff from other plugins, and just redefine the blocks and classes that the format needs. So BYOB 3 would inherit the object table stuff from Scratch 1.4.

Scripts are slightly more complicated. Each plugin can define the blocks it uses, giving the equivalent blocks from another format, and kurt will use that to build a global block database that it can use to convert them. (So kurt will be responsible for converting scripts, whereas each plugin will be responsible for converting everything else. The theory's a work-in-progress...)

I'm hoping that:
* converting from any format to any other via the single internal representation should be easy
* analysis tools like Hairball can support Scratch mods with zero extra effort
* supporting new file formats (Enchanting, say) should be as easy as writing a plugin that inherits the BYOB3 one and adds a few new blocks.

Your note about showmycode.com was insanely useful — I'm parsing the 2.0 blockspecs straight out of the decompiled ActionScript, which is awesome. And I'm going to reuse your downloader code for the Scratch 2.0 plugin.

I was going to use your Scratch-to-Snap! dictionary for the Snap! plugin, too — I'm hoping that once I've finalised the API, you'll be up for rewriting snapin8r as a kurt plugin! You'll need to support reading the XML into kurt as well as writing, of course 

The only sad thing about my plan is that the cleanest way appears to be to write kurt 2 as a layer on top of the existing kurt. This does, however, have the tremendous advantage that I can avoid breaking the existing API. 

I've been reading some stuff on API design, and watching How To Design A Good API, to try and make sure I get it right this time...! I'll post a more detailed spec soon 

Apologies for long post — I'd love comments, or requests for clarification!

Hardmath123 wrote:

I want the name to have all Latin characters, not a name of anything else already, and preferably shouldn't be something hard to Google

That's easy:

xazzl
trezzax
pooqua
lakko
morryal

etc.

@blob, tb10: I'm in a hurry right now but will read your interesting-looking messages this evening!

Hardmath123 wrote:

I think I'll go with Bubble, though that could have potential Googleability issues with Bubble Sorts. Oh, well.

JFCL

blob8108 wrote:

I'm hoping that:
* converting from any format to any other via the single internal representation should be easy

How hard are you going to try to downconvert advanced features?  In principle you could simulate BYOB in Scratch 1.4 by using lists with gensyms to simulate pointers, one for the dynamic stack and others for lexical environment frames, but it's probably not a good use of your time.  OTOH I bet you could simulate nesting sprites, by using
scripts like FOREVER [GO TO (SPRITE3)] only a little more complicated.

* analysis tools like Hairball can support Scratch mods with zero extra effort

Hairball?

I've been reading some stuff on API design

Just make sure Snap! can call it. 

bharvey wrote:

* analysis tools like Hairball can support Scratch mods with zero extra effort

Hairball?

Yes, Hairball.

Hardmath123 wrote:

blob8108 wrote:

Hardmath123 wrote:

I mirror to the Apple TV. 

You can do that? O_o

Yeah.

Nice!

(I'm thrilled you added Enchanting as a mod—that is really encouraging.  )

I'm not considering official support, you realise. It's just my example of a "something that should be easy for someone to write a plugin for". 

I used ShowMyCode to make the dictionary

Yeah, I saw your comment in the source -- that's where I got the idea from, thanks 

How will you handle conversions between totally messed-up file types, like Enchanting to Scratch?)

Not sure. As I was saying to Brian, I'm going for a subset of blocks, I think.

The main idea is that each block concept has a single, unique representation that analysis tools can use. Conversion is more of a grey area. 

Anyone interested just contributes a Python script to convert and deconvert from their mod to some common spec you define.

Yup, that's the idea of kurt plugins precisely. 

@bharvey: CS question again. Have you seen the "official" JSON spec? ([urlhttp://www.json.org/[/url])

I found the diagrams they had very visually pleasing and easy to understand. So I figured there had to be an easy way to represent them—but I couldn't think of one. You could theoretically write a large regex to match them (in fact, it resembles those diagrams in a book by you about finite state machines and regexes that I once chanced upon; yet these seem fundamentally different, for some reason), but I was hoping for something that very directly translated into one of those webs.



It would be ideal for the parser for Skew, because then all I need to do is define what a "word" is, what a "phrase" is, and what "sentence" is, and let it rip.

If there isn't any format like that, I might make that a mini-project: to create a tool to graphically generate a "web" and output some JSON file containing its data, which can then be input into a downloadable parser.

EDIT: XML?



(Excuse my handwriting, Penultimate's lefty mode isn't too great. And there should be arrows, but it's hard with my worn-out iPad pen.)

Last edited by Hardmath123 (2013-03-20 08:21:41)

technoboy10 wrote:

Also, I have no idea how to restrict access to localhost. 

Bind your server to 'localhost'?