[Microbit-Python] Blockly to MicroPython - is it possible?

[Andrew Ferguson]

Ah, OK. I think I'm finally getting to grips with how the XML is formatted.

All blocks that come after another block are actually contained within the
first block. So each block needs to be checked to see if it contains a
'next' tag, as that indicates if another block comes after that block.

Any pointers or ideas for the concurrent script problem (as described in
previous message) would be useful, as I'm still not sure what to do.

On 13 March 2016 at 14:16, Andrew Ferguson <andrewferguson500 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> So based on Carlos' earlier idea for a converter from Blockly to Python, I
> thought I'd have a go at doing this, just to see if it was possible. I've
> done something similar before (Scratch 2.0 to C / Pawn for the Pleo
> Dinosaur robot - side note, do any schools apart from mine have these?).
> That was fairly easy*: Scratch 2 uses JSON in a intuitive way.
>
> Blockly is proving to be a lot less intuitive. See the following snippet
> from a simple example from the website:
>
> <xml xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
>     <block type="device_button_event" x="69" y="38">
>         <field name="NAME">A</field>
>         <statement name="HANDLER">
>             <block type="variables_set">
>                 <field name="VAR">answer</field>
>                 <value name="VALUE">
>                     <block type="device_random">
>                         <field name="limit">3</field>
>                     </block>
>                 </value>
>                 <next>
>                     <block type="controls_if">
>                         <mutation elseif="1" else="1"></mutation>
>                         <value name="IF0">
>
>
> At first I assumed that each 'block' was contained in a 'block' tag, with
> one tag for each block. That appears to be the case sometimes, but not
> always. Observe how the "device_random" block is self contained but the
> "variables_set" block continues down into the "controls_if" block!
>
> In addition, Blockly supports concurrently running scripts, while I
> suspect MicroPython does not (or does it - would be fantastic if it does!).
> If my suspicion is correct, this would mean that a script in Blockly that
> has a group of blocks in a "forever" loop and another group of blocks in a
> "when button pressed" block, would not be possible to convert to
> MicroPython. Any way round this?
>
> Oh, and the Blockly editor seems to have stopped working in Chromium (at
> least it has on my computer with very outdated version - but it worked
> yesterday). Clicking "Compile" makes the logo rotate forever (I waited 55
> minutes) and nothing else happens. Has there been a recent update?
> (Chromium has no Java / Flash support, so that could be the cause).
>
> Looking forward to trying out some stuff on a real MicroBit when it
> arrives!
>
> Andrew
>
>
> *Fairly easy until I realised their development tools were all closed
> under an NDA, so I had to rewrite and reverse engineer a *lot* to get the
> basics working.
>
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