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duplicates and siblings

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Bert Freudenberg

duplicates and siblings

(moving to squeakland list)

On 14.04.2011, at 16:05, Markus Schlager wrote:

> On Thu, 14 Apr 2011, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>
>> On 14.04.2011, at 09:44, Markus Schlager wrote:
>>
>>> I'd suggest to rename the 'copy'-tile since it does return a new sibling but not a copy/duplicate. I think it would be useful if the label would state clearly this tile resembles a *new* sibling you can send messages to.
>>
>> While this would be easy to change, I think it would make sense to discuss on the users list, not only the dev list.
>>
>> FWIW, internally the operation is called "new clone".
>>
>> Personally I would only change the balloon help. Most of the time it doesn't matter if it's a duplicate or a sibling.
>
> Most of all I'm missing the *new* in the tile's label. It took me quite some time to understand the tile's behavior when I encoutered it for the first time.
>
> Markus

To me, "copy" does imply creating a new object.

Also, it is only ever used as argument to another tile. I find the difference to be obvious:

Holder include Sketch

moves the Sketch into the Holder, whereas

Holder include Sketch copy

does not affect the Sketch itself, but adds a copy of it. I don't see how adding "new" would clarify this, but I'm happy to be convinced otherwise :)

- Bert -

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Markus Schlager-2

Re: duplicates and siblings

On Thu, 14 Apr 2011, Bert Freudenberg wrote:

> (moving to squeakland list)
>
> On 14.04.2011, at 16:05, Markus Schlager wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 14 Apr 2011, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>>
>>> On 14.04.2011, at 09:44, Markus Schlager wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'd suggest to rename the 'copy'-tile since it does return a new sibling but not a copy/duplicate. I think it would be useful if the label would state clearly this tile resembles a *new* sibling you can send messages to.
>>>
>>> While this would be easy to change, I think it would make sense to discuss on the users list, not only the dev list.
>>>
>>> FWIW, internally the operation is called "new clone".
>>>
>>> Personally I would only change the balloon help. Most of the time it doesn't matter if it's a duplicate or a sibling.
>>
>> Most of all I'm missing the *new* in the tile's label. It took me quite some time to understand the tile's behavior when I encoutered it for the first time.
>>
>> Markus
>
> To me, "copy" does imply creating a new object.
>
> Also, it is only ever used as argument to another tile. I find the difference to be obvious:
>
> Holder include Sketch
>
> moves the Sketch into the Holder, whereas
>
> Holder include Sketch copy
>
> does not affect the Sketch itself, but adds a copy of it. I don't see how adding "new" would clarify this, but I'm happy to be convinced otherwise :)
>
> - Bert -

Maybe you're right and 'new' isn't the actual issue.

In Etoys there are three words: duplicate, copy and sibling (and clone).
And there are two tiles: 'copy' and 'tell all siblings'.

I'm not a native speaker, whence I must ask: Is 'copy' more like
'duplicate' or more like 'sibling'. The balloon help of the copy tile says
'returns a copy of this object'. What you get is a sibling. Is this rather
a surprise? If not I'll probably have to change the German translation.
There, 'duplicate' and 'copy' are translated the same way. If it is a
surprise to English native speakers though, I'd suggest to rename the
tile.

Markus
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dcorking

Re: duplicates and siblings

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 7:12 PM, Markus Schlager wrote:

> In Etoys there are three words: duplicate, copy and sibling (and clone). And
> there are two tiles: 'copy' and 'tell all siblings'.
>
> I'm not a native speaker, whence I must ask: Is 'copy' more like 'duplicate'
> or more like 'sibling'. ... If it is a surprise to
> English native speakers though, I'd suggest to rename the tile.

Markus, I am an English native speaker. It is a surprise to me too.
However, above, Bert wrote:

>> There is a tile named "copy". "Duplicate" is roughly equivalent to "playfield include: object copy".
>> A difference is that for siblings, "copy" creates another sibling.
and later
>> Most of the time it doesn't matter if it's a duplicate or a sibling.

Therefore I agree with Bert's suggestion that only the balloon help
should be changed. It seems to me that if a user is sufficiently
advanced to use siblings programmatically, they will be able to figure
out how to use the tile effectively despite its simplistic name.

David
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