Scratch

1. I downloaded the source code, but what am I supposed to do when I have the data? Should I expand them to the scratch folder, because I am unable to open them...

2. When I hold down the 'shift' clicking on the top of the R in the scratch logo, it opens a menu with
-'turn fill screen off'
-'turn error catching off'
.'save image for end-user'
on it. None of this buttons shows me the source code...

But although thanks a lot for these suggestions-
waja

Sorry I think you understood me wrong...
the Scratch-Python translation was only an example.
The only thing I want to know is how I can see the source code of my projects.
I mean something similar to the source code of a web page. How can I manage that?

cheddargirl wrote:

waja_zentrum wrote:

Sorry I think you understood me wrong...
the Scratch-Python translation was only an example.
The only thing I want to know is how I can see the source code of my projects.
I mean something similar to the source code of a web page. How can I manage that?

Ah, I think you mean you want to see the code in Squeak (which is what the Scratch language is based upon) as opposed to seeing blocks.

No, they do want to see blocks. I think they mean that they want a text equivalent of the blocks.
waja_zentrum, the closest thing to the "source" of projects Scratch currently has is the Project Summary function. Open a project in Scratch, then shift-click the File menu and click "Write Project Summary". Hope this helps. 

What I want is near to the what meowmeow55 meant...
But if I once converted the project into a .txt-File you can not use the txt File equal to the .sb ...

What I want is that you also can convert the written file into a scratch-file...

Waja

waja_zentrum wrote:

What I want is near to the what meowmeow55 meant...
But if I once converted the project into a .txt-File you can not use the txt File equal to the .sb ...

What I want is that you also can convert the written file into a scratch-file...

Waja

I really do not think that is possible with the simple options the Scratch team made available. You could try importing into a Scratch Mod which has XML exporting option but the process would definitely become very long.

Why would you need this though?

waja_zentrum wrote:

LS97 wrote:

I really do not think that is possible with the simple options the Scratch team made available. [...]

Why would you need this though?

I can not really believe that nobody came to the idea before me. This is such an important role, that even the Scratch-Developerment team must have thought about it and I do not believe that there isn't a way.

Scratch must have a built-in translator that converts the Scratch-Projects into text. It might be either Java-Code or Squeek-Code.

I need this because I am not satisfied, when I am programming if I can not see any text...
Scratch is for sure one of the greates ideas and it could revolutionize programming but it must have a way to see the source code of the projects ;-)

You see, Scratch was developed to be a visual language and so the Scratch team worked towards that, ignoring possible text versions. Scratch uses special text versions of blocks called 'tuples', but they are really just a text representation of the block. say, the block [blocks]
<move(  )steps>[/blocks]
would become ('move (5) steps' r) or something similar.

The Java player online does not read JavaScript or the like.
It's coded by the Scratch team to decode those tuples and the sprites in a project to run corresponding Java code. Nothing major.

There is nothing more "real" about text rather than graphical blocks, so perhaps by "real" you mean "traditional".  Both are ways to encode the underlying tuples in a human-readable way.  The Scratch team chose to make the editor and display software all use a graphical interface.  This has advantages (ease of manipulation and understanding by novices, simplified parsing since the editor maintains a consistent internal structure) and disadvantages (inability to edit with favorite other editors, difficulty generating code from another program).

More and more programming languages are choosing interfaces other than ASCII text, and I see nothing wrong with this for teaching languages.  (For larger programs, I prefer to have more choice of editor.)

It would not be too difficult to write a Python program to parse .sb files into human-readable tuples and to generate .sb files from a tuple format, though you might have to read a lot of Squeak code to reverse-engineer the binary format of the .sb files.

If it is specific concepts that you see lacking in Scratch, rather than a love of text for text's sake, you might want to look at BYOB:
http://gasstationwithoutpumps.wordpress.com/2010/09/18/build-your-own-blocks-extension-to-scratch/

For those looking for a more standard programming language after Scratch, I'd recommend Python as the next language to learn (before C or Java).