Scratch 3.0 Technical Discussion

infinitytec

MabonBaladevaKain wrote:
infinitytec wrote:
Let's get back on topic OK?

Everything I have mentioned is relevant and related to Scratch 3.0 technical discussion. I have never left topic.
None of you have answered even a single question other than to antagonize and troll me.
Just because my wording happens to be a little long, that does not make it any less relevant.

Porting and other languages would be best suited for another topic. I am sure no one hear meant to offend you, and I certainly meant no offense.
It's just that discussions of this nature would best be put in another topic.

Can you at least then please tell me, Once they move the Scratch 2.0 projects to Scratch 3.0, will all of
the projects' Descriptions / Notes and Credits be copied over too? Or do we have to save all that stuff ourselves
if we wish to keep them? ….

All of it will be kept. Only the backpack will be lost.

The 3.0 site is actually the same as the 2.0 site. The new page designs that have been gradually appearing are part of 3.0. Because of this, this sort of stuff will be able to transfer.

MabonBaladevaKain

Thank you _nix. That answered all my questions fairly well.

By Scratch being a toy, I just meant there is no way to stay using Scratch and do real work with it unless you were to make alterations to it.
You just play with it and move on.
But with the ability to save as more common code in some manner it would become much more than a toy.
It could be used as a very nice prototyping tool as well.

I thought I should clarify that. Scratch is a great program or else I would not care if such features existed or not.

Maybe there is some unofficial offline version for those who want such a feature somewhere already, but I just don't know where to get it.
So I ask for such features and hope that maybe someone will come forward with a way to make it happen.

Now for precision of being on-topic's sake and my sheer curiosity, I ask one last question:
Will Scratch 3.0 have a text editor that displays the code that the puzzle blocks already create?

NickyNouse

_nix wrote:
MabonBaladevaKain wrote:
Will we be able to save our Scratch project files as .apk files and sign them easily to make apps for Google Play and/or other app stores?

Please say yes. It is the only feature that really needs to be added. The rest are not important.
This isn't a feature the Scratch Team is working on, as far as I know (and I more or less keep track of pretty much all their open source repositories and public discussion). While maybe it's not out of scope of Scratch 3.0 as a programming tool, it makes sense that the Scratch Team seems not to have prioritized the idea at all – their target audience is people who are learning programming, not developing and publishing/selling apps. While there are people like you who want to be able to release projects as easily-distributed binaries (APKs, EXEs, you name it), that just isn't everyone.

I can't recall if the ST has said anything about SB3 -> EXE. They may have said they're considering it (but do not quote me on that), but I doubt it's something they'd be working on right now, seeing as there's so much else they had to finish before release and there hasn't been any mention of converting Scratch projects to EXEs inside 3.0 FAQ, official ST announcements, etc. (I'm saying -> exe instead of exe/apk because I just cannot remember APK files / android export having been mentioned anywhere before your posts here.)

Another point is that the ST probably wants to keep programs hosted on Scratch so that they can be “looked inside” and remixed; the most important part of Scratch is the community aspect. If they let users package projects into standalone apps then new learners wouldn't be able to see what makes those apps tick and learn from them, which defeats the purpose.

MabonBaladevaKain wrote:
Will Scratch 3.0 have a text editor that displays the code that the puzzle blocks already create?

Judging by the Scratch Team's Github repos, no. But there's an awesome tool called tosh that does that.

_nix

MabonBaladevaKain wrote:
Thank you _nix. That answered all my questions fairly well. …] I just meant…

No problem; and I see what you mean now. You're definitely correct that people just couldn't make professional tools with Scratch, purely because Scratch projects can't be exported to a format where they'd be professionally useful.

MabonBaladevaKain wrote:
Now for precision of being on-topic's sake and my sheer curiosity, I ask one last question:
Will Scratch 3.0 have a text editor that displays the code that the puzzle blocks already create?

I actually mentioned something related to this in my post – the fact that Scratch is an interpreted language and not a compiled language. But I'll go into further detail here.

Imagine a sprite with several scripts, each starting with hats like “when green flag clicked” and “when I receive” (or any other hat blocks). Each of these scripts are composed of multiple blocks – the hat block as well as any stack and reporter blocks that make up the actual definition of what should happen when the script is active. These blocks are stored as ordinary JavaScript objects that look, more or less, like this:

{
  op: "when green flag clicked",
  children: [
    {op: "move steps", inputs: [10]},
    {
      op: "if then", inputs: [
        {op: "=", inputs: [{op: "days since 2000"}, 10000]}}
      ], children: [
        {op: "play sound", inputs: ["Bing!"]}
      ]
    }
  ]
}

The Scratch VM always has a copy of all these block representations in its own memory, and it uses them to decide how to respond to user input. For example, when you press the green flag, the Scratch VM searches through the block array for all blocks with the op “when green flag clicked”, then evaluates in sequence the children blocks.

Note that the Scratch VM keeps track of objects that look like the above. That is the “text representation” of the blocks, if you will – and it is the only text representation. While many other programming languages would take a step of compiling those JavaScript objects into a lower-level programming language, such as actual executable JavaScript code, Scratch does not do that; instead it bases a project's behavior directly around those JavaScript objects.

Scratch 3.0 does not have a direct way to edit those JavaScript objects. (Besides being confusing to most users, it would be quite difficult to implement – various different components of 3.0 keep track of those objects and in several different formats, so updating them all at runtime from changes made via a text editor would be relatively complicated.) However, if you download a project onto your computer as an SB3 file, you can rename the to “.zip” and, using your own text editor, modify the contained files – Scratch 2.0 and 3.0 projects are both renamed zip files. You'll want to search for a “project.json” file; this contains the text representation of the entire project.

But, as you might figure, much of the benefit of editing via text is lost in this JavaScript object format. Since the project text is written in a verbose object format, it's difficult to edit. (Even more so in Scratch 3.0 projects, since the example code I showed was an extremely simplified version of how 3.0 projects are stored – they take more of a linked list approach, rather than nesting blocks inside each other.) In fact, virtually anything you might want to do by editing text would simply be faster to do by dragging around blocks!

That said, like NickyNouse suggested, you might be interested in checking out tosh. Keep in mind that when you use it, you're not editing the text representation of the project that the Scratch VM will see – rather, you're editing code that Tosh will compile into the text representations that Scratch can use.

infinitytec

Well, tomorrow is the big day!

AmazingMech2418

infinitytec wrote:
Well, tomorrow is the big day!

LOL! However, while some projects may not function as the creators intended, that will allow new changes to Scratch 3.0 to improve it. After tomorrow is probably when the most change will occur.

AmazingMech2418

I wonder when the documentation and processes will be posted for extension development… Also, when will experimental extensions be added for unshared projects?

_nix

AmazingMech2418 wrote:
I wonder when the documentation and processes will be posted for extension development… Also, when will experimental extensions be added for unshared projects?

I asked thisandagain pretty recently, here's the comment thread.

Sheep_maker

I've just tested scratch-www just to see what the website will look like in a few hours. Here are some screenshots:

Home page, signed out
Project page, signed out
Project page, signed in (as shown above)
Add to studio dialog with own project in the background
Report dialog
Scratch Desktop page
Scratch Desktop FAQ

There are no new redesigned pages as far as I can tell, though I think the tips page has been changed to the ideas page. That means the forums, studios, and my stuff pages are still using the old website design.

The Scratch Desktop download isn't up yet

Last edited by Sheep_maker (Jan. 2, 2019 06:44:43)

Jonathan50

Wow, this is really exciting, but I suppose they really are making text and number inputs look identical, removing custom block number inputs, and removing numerical dropdowns?

It is nice that it still works on SeaMonkey, though.

Last edited by Jonathan50 (Jan. 2, 2019 07:27:23)

DeleteThisAcount

Sheep_maker wrote:
I've just tested scratch-www just to see what the website will look like in a few hours. Here are some screenshots:

Home page, signed out
Project page, signed out
Project page, signed in (as shown above)
Add to studio dialog with own project in the background
Report dialog
Scratch Desktop page
Scratch Desktop FAQ

There are no new redesigned pages as far as I can tell, though I think the tips page has been changed to the ideas page. That means the forums, studios, and my stuff pages are still using the old website design.

The Scratch Desktop download isn't up yet

teach me how you did this please

Wettining

DeleteThisAcount wrote:
Sheep_maker wrote:
I've just tested scratch-www just to see what the website will look like in a few hours. Here are some screenshots:

Home page, signed out
Project page, signed out
Project page, signed in (as shown above)
Add to studio dialog with own project in the background
Report dialog
Scratch Desktop page
Scratch Desktop FAQ

There are no new redesigned pages as far as I can tell, though I think the tips page has been changed to the ideas page. That means the forums, studios, and my stuff pages are still using the old website design.

The Scratch Desktop download isn't up yet
teach me how you did this please

I think he just cloned the github repo and ran it locally lol

DeleteThisAcount

Wettining wrote:
DeleteThisAcount wrote:
Sheep_maker wrote:
I've just tested scratch-www just to see what the website will look like in a few hours. Here are some screenshots:

Home page, signed out
Project page, signed out
Project page, signed in (as shown above)
Add to studio dialog with own project in the background
Report dialog
Scratch Desktop page
Scratch Desktop FAQ

There are no new redesigned pages as far as I can tell, though I think the tips page has been changed to the ideas page. That means the forums, studios, and my stuff pages are still using the old website design.

The Scratch Desktop download isn't up yet
teach me how you did this please
I think he just cloned the github repo and ran it locally lol

i only speak english sorry

can you please explain further

Wettining

DeleteThisAcount wrote:
Wettining wrote:
DeleteThisAcount wrote:
Sheep_maker wrote:
I've just tested scratch-www just to see what the website will look like in a few hours. Here are some screenshots:

Home page, signed out
Project page, signed out
Project page, signed in (as shown above)
Add to studio dialog with own project in the background
Report dialog
Scratch Desktop page
Scratch Desktop FAQ

There are no new redesigned pages as far as I can tell, though I think the tips page has been changed to the ideas page. That means the forums, studios, and my stuff pages are still using the old website design.

The Scratch Desktop download isn't up yet
teach me how you did this please
I think he just cloned the github repo and ran it locally lol
i only speak english sorry

can you please explain further

He went here: https://github.com/LLK/scratch-gui
He cloned the files to his desktop (downloaded them basically, like so)
and then ran it locally by going into the directory, running npm install (you would need npm to do that ofc), and then npm start (this starts it locally on your system)

If you need more help look at the documentation here

DeleteThisAcount

Wettining wrote:
DeleteThisAcount wrote:
Wettining wrote:
DeleteThisAcount wrote:
Sheep_maker wrote:
I've just tested scratch-www just to see what the website will look like in a few hours. Here are some screenshots:

Home page, signed out
Project page, signed out
Project page, signed in (as shown above)
Add to studio dialog with own project in the background
Report dialog
Scratch Desktop page
Scratch Desktop FAQ

There are no new redesigned pages as far as I can tell, though I think the tips page has been changed to the ideas page. That means the forums, studios, and my stuff pages are still using the old website design.

The Scratch Desktop download isn't up yet
teach me how you did this please
I think he just cloned the github repo and ran it locally lol
i only speak english sorry

can you please explain further
He went here: https://github.com/LLK/scratch-gui
He cloned the files to his desktop (downloaded them basically, like so)
and then ran it locally by going into the directory, running npm install (you would need npm to do that ofc), and then npm start (this starts it locally on your system)

If you need more help look at the documentation here

actually its more complicated:
https://sheeptester.github.io/longer-tweets/scratch-www-troubles/

infinitytec

I hope the rollout is going smoothly.

DatOneLefty

infinitytec wrote:
I hope the rollout is going smoothly.

i hope staging updates with the new editor while its happening

Sheep_maker

DeleteThisAcount wrote:
actually its more complicated:
https://sheeptester.github.io/longer-tweets/scratch-www-troubles/

With node installed,

git clone https://github.com/LLK/scratch-www.git
cd scratch-www
npm install
npm install make -g
npm run build
./bin/get-localized-urls localized-urls.json
./bin/build-locales node_modules/scratchr2_translations/www/translations intl
FALLBACK=https://scratch.mit.edu node ./dev-server/index.js

Then go to localhost:8333 in your browser

Old pages still don't work with the CORS policy; you'll have to start Chrome with the CORS policy disabled. Since I don't know your operating system, seethis Stackoverflow post. Then to sign in, I copied my scratchcsrftoken cookie.

Scratch still does a check; you can't actually do anything (save projects, comment), but the site will be visually signed in

Alzter

THE NEW SCRATCH IS HE-none of the site changed except for the project pages which don't work on mobile and are slow to load. All the issues everybody had with the block text, colours and padding weren't fixed, as well as the blurry stage and my personal issues with the block workspace feeling unorganized.

MrMeowington

Alzter wrote:
THE NEW SCRATCH IS HE-none of the site changed except for the project pages which don't work on mobile and are slow to load. All the issues everybody had with the block text, colours and padding weren't fixed, as well as the blurry stage and my personal issues with the block workspace feeling unorganized.

Scratch 3.0 doesn't fully support mobile yet.

Discuss Scratch