[Edu-sig] Summary: would you use PythonCard?

[Kevin Altis]

I got a number of messages off the list about this topic, so I'll try to
summarize the responses, skipping over a lot of the discussion that occurred
on the list since you probably already read that.

There were no specific messages about any of the samples or how those might
be useful in education. I thought there might be some regarding the turtle
graphics sample if nothing else.

Many people expected PythonCard to provide a complete environment like
HyperCard. This issue is described nicely by Paul Fernhout:

"I looked at PythonCard but it did not correspond to my expectations
based on the name and association with "HyperCard" or SuperCVard (which
I have used on the Mac years ago). I expected PythonCard to be a
GUI development environment where I dragged and dropped buttons and menu
items and set backgrounds for cards set up visually using a property
editor (ala HyperCard or SuperCard things) and what I saw was that I had
to edit program files to define the GUI (although granted there was a
simplified structure for these files)."

The short answer is that a complete environment is where we're heading, we
just aren't there yet because the project is too new. My bad for bringing up
a project at the alpha stage.

So, I won't post more to edu-sig until we have a full environment for people
to use; today, you can use the samples like the resourceEditor which
simplify part of the process, but we can do better. If you're interested in
contributing ideas to PythonCard, please subscribe to the PythonCard list to
keep up with the latest developments.
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/pythoncard-users

Thanks for all the responses,

ka
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Kevin Altis
altis@semi-retired.com