#97 Better Examples

Hello,
I suggest new examples, because many of the old ones are incomprehensible or they don't work anymore (see my bug report).
It will be better if someone make new examples, and these should be
accessible via Help -> Examples directly (not only the HTML-file).

Best regards, Jan

[David Costanzo]

FMSLogo has three levels of examples. The simplest is in the manual, which shows how to run a specific command. The second level are the "examples" which show how to use multiple commands to accomplish a specific task. They should serve as a way for programmers to discover tasks that accomplished and to show a way to do it. The third is the "extras" which are complete programs. These are not part of the FMSLogo core for legal reasons, but can be downloaded as a separate package. I wonder, did you discover the third class?

I agree that the examples are out-dated. Many were written for Windows 3.1 and some were written for UCBLogo and don't run quite right in FMSLogo. I haven't put much effort into these because I don't know what people want to see examples of and I suspect that "FD" and "RT" cover most of what people want to do. Is there some specific task that you would like to see an example of? Would you be willing to contribute it?

As for the UI, I guess you don't like that it calls out to a web browser, then calls back into Logo. What do you envision here? There's a quick-and-dirty solution of making the examples a nested set of menus. Another more involved idea, is to display a small dialog box that shows the examples with a tree control, and when you select the example, it shows you a description of what the example does, and when you click "load" (or double-click on the example) it loads and runs the example. Are either of these what you had in mind?

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your answer.
I know all these three levels. And I think they should all be edited.

Before we had Logo in school, we had scratch. Scratch is a bit like Logo, however, limited and for younger children. But scratch is better organized and almost bugfree, and have a big community. I'm not saying that FMSLogo need a big community or should be like scratch, but it should be improved.

Thoughts from me about Logo:
Logo is in my opinion a very good programming language to learn programming. Children came in contact with procedures and variables, it builds on the "real" programming languages, for an example Java.
So I think that logo should not only be for "FD" and "RT". Logo should be on the level of creating own small programs. We work a half year with FMSlogo in our class. In the first lesson we looked at "FD" and "RT". Then we looked at recursion and PRINT and OUTPUT, and so on. At the end of the semester, we will submit a self-developed game, which will be graded. Maybe we can make some of them available to you (if you want).

Logos target group is young people and schools.
And to make FMSLogo attractive to schools and children, it should:

• (Almost) bug free
• modern and clear
• Good examples available
• updated
• Controllable / restrictable
• have a Community
• ...
  Since these points are not satisfied, I believe that slowly Logo will "die out".
  Because Logo is old, has many bugs, and the examples are designed for Windows 3.1.
  Take this not personal, that's just my thoughts and maybe I'm completely wrong. I will not even act rude and I know that you have to do other work.

Back to the examples.
Many of the examples of level 2 are meaningless or don't working anymore.
The examples (lvl 2) in my bug report should be either removed or revised. Thus, these do not help. I might do better or revised examples with the help of our teacher, and I will think about new examples, too.
Examples of Level 1 are mostly good. Compared to MSWLogo, these are very good and clear. Some of them should be modernized and features that don't exist in Logo also don't need to be mentioned.

Another more involved idea, is to display a small dialog box that shows the examples with a tree control, and when you select the example, it shows you a description of what the example does, and when you click "load" (or double-click on the example) it loads and runs the example.

That's what I had in mind. :)

Thanks for reading this long text
Jan