Scratch

frozenveinz wrote:

Is there any way to have a text based version of scratch?
Like, instead of the work/scripting area, have it be a big text box.
And instead of the block source area, make the blocks still there, but with a little textual equivalent right next to or under it, and the blocks be made un-draggable?
So what do you think guys? Is this possible or not? If you have any ideas or anything I would love to hear them!

My question is: Why would you wan't Scratch to be Text Based? It works fine the way it is. That's what's unique about it. Almost all other Programming languages are text based, but Scratch is kid oriented, so it's easier. But if you insist, yes it is possible to make Scratch Text based.

If you want a text based Scratch then you should try some other language because Scratch is, like I said before, kid oriented. I could try to make a text based version for you, but it may take a while. Good point on the speed thing though.

nXIII wrote:

Yes, but why not just use C++ or Java?

Thats what I was thinking

frozenveinz wrote:

Meh, sorry but im kinda newb when it comes to programming, so i was hoping to see scratch (really simple) be implemented in a text based version but whatever. Oh, and are either C++ or Java easy? And, are they free?

They are easy if you learned them - if not, they are quite hard.
And Java is completely free - C++ can be free.

"text based scratch" is called "smalltalk-80"

frozenveinz wrote:

Whats smalltalk-80?

Smalltalk-80 is actually the language Scratch is programmed in. Well actually it's programmed in a version of it called Squeak. Of course it is capable of more than Scratch is, but at the same time it is much harder to use.

frozenveinz wrote:

Ahh i see. But what I'm talking about is still using the whole scratch engine, just instead of drag&drop, have it with text, and all the same commands.
ie:
          <key[ right arrow ]pressed?>
could be:
if key[right arrow]pressed?

While in say actionscript it would be
if( Key.isDown(Key.RIGHT) )

I know. Maybe you could ask nXIII about this. He'll probably know how to make this work.

And by the way, the way Scratch blocks are written in Squeak is, for example the < key[ right arrow ]pressed? > block,

('key %k pressed?' #r #keyPressed:)

not exactly as easy as what you were thinking.

Actually, I always thought this would be cool. But i guess that's just me.