Snap! Team development discussion, vol. 2

bharvey

cycomachead wrote:
they re-implemented most of Snap!

I was excited when I read this, but after installing it on my phone I see that it's not true. They didn't even implement custom blocks, let alone lambda!

bharvey

Jonathan50 wrote:
cycomachead wrote:
I don't think so. […] my understanding is that the GPL doesn't prevent you from distributing an app on the app store as long as you provide the source, which has always been true of the BirdBrain stuff.
This is what the FSF said: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement

Sigh. Apple could conceivably have written an enforceable ToS saying that you can't use the software on an iPhone in violation of their ToS regardless of third party (first party, really, if you think about it) licenses. But to say that their ToS overrides other licenses in all contexts is an absurd piece of hubris. The only difference between the FSF and anybody else, in this respect, is surely that everyone else is just ignoring Apple instead of doing battle with them.

cycomachead

bharvey wrote:
Jonathan50 wrote:
cycomachead wrote:
I don't think so. […] my understanding is that the GPL doesn't prevent you from distributing an app on the app store as long as you provide the source, which has always been true of the BirdBrain stuff.
This is what the FSF said: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement
Sigh. Apple could conceivably have written an enforceable ToS saying that you can't use the software on an iPhone in violation of their ToS regardless of third party (first party, really, if you think about it) licenses. But to say that their ToS overrides other licenses in all contexts is an absurd piece of hubris. The only difference between the FSF and anybody else, in this respect, is surely that everyone else is just ignoring Apple instead of doing battle with them.

Yeah, and my understanding was that things have changed since 2010. I don't know if they're necessarily better but I do know people release GPL'd apps.

bharvey

MIT Scratch Day registration will open this Saturday, April 7th at 10am
EST at this link: http://bit.ly/mit-scratchday18

(Alas, I can't come this year; I'll be in California to celebrate Wavy Gravy's 82nd birthday.)

Hardmath123

“Frequently arrested at demonstrations, he decided he would be less likely to be arrested if he dressed as a clown, so he became a founding member of the Phurst Church of Phun, a secret society of comics and clowns dedicated to ending the Vietnam War through the use of political theater.”

That sentence gets better and better each word you read.

Relevant: if you're a middle school or high school student in the Bay, you can come to Stanford Splash instead — we will have a Scratch workshop (alas, only one this quarter).

bharvey

Hardmath123 wrote:
“less likely to be arrested if he dressed as a clown”

Sadly, it wouldn't work any more. Too many horror movies featuring clowns.

Hardmath123

Yeah, especially after this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_clown_sightings#United_States (ctrl-F “arrest”).

EDIT: Forums stripped the clown emoji.

Last edited by Hardmath123 (April 5, 2018 23:00:49)

s_federici

Hi everybody, I'm struggling behind a problem of a Snap mod I developed several years ago. The problem is that sometimes, when I click on the menu arrow of an argument of a block (e.g. the variable name argument of the “set to” block), the menu doesn't open, but a shadow shows up below the block, so that I can drag the block but not choose a value for the argument by using the menu.

Sometimes the problem is solved by closing the browser and reopening it, but not always (as, e.g., now: I closed and reopened the browser at least ten times…). I'm trying to debug the problem with the browser's javascript debugger, but it is a slow and painful process, so I didn't get any meaningful result untl now. Did someone had (and solved) a similar problem? Or could you at least give me hints where to start a serious debugging?

BTW, being several years old, the Snap version of my mod is not aligned with the current version of Snap. But while I was importing several “new” features in my mod today, I noticed that the current general structure didn't change much from the one of my mod.

Thank a lot in advance for any suggestion!

Last edited by s_federici (April 9, 2018 15:44:18)

s_federici

s_federici wrote:
Hi everybody, I'm struggling behind a problem of a Snap mod

BTW, the problem seems Chrome specific (if I open my mod with Firefox menu arguments work fine). But I would very much like to use Chrome instead of Firefox, as Firefox is VERY SLOW when I open my mod…

-stache-

s_federici wrote:
as Firefox is VERY SLOW when I open my mod…

Uh… What version of firefox are you using..?

3x3 pb: 13.240
3x3 avg: ~21-26

s_federici

-stache- wrote:
Uh… What version of firefox are you using..?

The very last one. But Firefox has been very slow with my mod since 2014, when I developed it. For example, I cannot open “large” project in my mod without Firefox asking forever if I want to wait or interrupt the process. Chrome instead loads small and large projects without any problem.

Last edited by s_federici (April 12, 2018 06:27:46)

s_federici

s_federici wrote:
Hi everybody, I'm struggling behind a problem of a Snap mod

Just an update. The problem showed up again today, after working with my mod's new project for a couple of days, without any problem. This time, closing and reopening Chrome (after having emptied the cache) solved the problem at the first attempt.

Last edited by s_federici (April 12, 2018 07:05:41)

s_federici

Is there in Snap a concept of stable/latest release? I'm going to swap from BYOB to Snap for my non-CS-majoring students that quickly panic if there is something not perfectly working (especially something making their long developed project not saving). Even BYOB sometimes has some inesplicable behaviours (e.g. blocks getting scrambled in the block editor area) but I have discovered all of them in the years and they know how to handle them.

Now I have to pick a version of Snap with a reasonable set of features, but I need to avoid to pick a version that has several well-known bugs. Or that has not been tested enough yet. Is there in the numbering mechanism of Snap versions something saying “this version has less features than the following one but all the features are stable as far as we know of”?

Thanks in advance for your help.

_nix

s_federici wrote:
Is there in Snap a concept of stable/latest release? […] Is there in the numbering mechanism of Snap versions something saying “this version has less features than the following one but all the features are stable as far as we know of”?

Now, naturally no version of Snap! will be absolutely bug-free, but the general idea is that the "run Snap! now" button is the relatively-most-stable version of Snap!, aka the “release” or “stable” version. Note that clicking that brings you to the URL /snapsource/snap.html. Now, if you wanted to run the absolute-latest bleeding edge version, you'd go to /snapsource/dev/snap.html; that version is more likely to have bugs (especially in relation to features that were recently added and only currently exist in dev).

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bharvey

s_federici wrote:
Is there in the numbering mechanism of Snap versions something saying “this version has less features than the following one but all the features are stable as far as we know of”?

It's more complicated than that. Right now we have a new cloud server with a suspected bug of sometimes losing saved projects. (And a known misfeature of letting users save empty projects over their good ones.) That isn't reflected in the Snap! version number because those numbers just track the client side code.

But, other than that, the version you get with …/run is thought to be stable. I can't say “bug-free” because of the large number of bugs noted in the Github issue tracker, but there should be no new bugs.

On the third hand, the amount of testing that happens once a new version is posted is much greater (thousands of users!) than the testing by the development team. So sometimes a bug doesn't turn up until the version is theoretically stable. Jens fixes these as soon as they're reported; that's why you see sub-sub-version numbers.

cycomachead

Anything in 4.1.x should be stable except for features labeled as experimental.

The project saving thing is a mystery. :'(

s_federici

cycomachead wrote:
except for features labeled as experimental

Do you mean in the history.txt file?

bharvey

← I trimmed it. (Still experimenting.)

Hardmath123

I hear there's a solid Scratch contingent (including mres himself!) at the Bay Area Maker Faire this year… who else is going?

bharvey

Hardmath123 wrote:
I hear there's a solid Scratch contingent (including mres himself!) at the Bay Area Maker Faire this year… who else is going?

Huh. I hadn't planned to go. I still don't, unless it turns out to be an irreplaceable opportunity to meet some of our gang f2f.

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