Snap! v BUILD YOUR OWN BLOCKS - Release Notes - Feb. 5, 2018 Jens Mönig

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1 Snap! v BUILD YOUR OWN BLOCKS - Release Notes - Feb. 5, 2018 Jens Mönig New Features: translation support for custom blocks new "direction to..." primitive as variant of "distance to..." in "Sensing" included local methods in the OF-block's left drop-down menu added "width" and "height" selectors to Pixels library added scroll events, thanks, Bernat! new dial widget POINT IN DIRECTION's drop-down menu new "rotate" option for sprite context menu new sound recorder, thanks, Bernat! new "Crayons" library, thanks, Brian! Notable Changes: global and local variables are now separat in the palette, each sorted alphabetically, local vars marked with location pin (only in palette) keyboard events are now always thread safe (the same as in Scratch nowadays) the OF-block auto-unringifies when being dropped on ring-slots, such as in CALL accidentally clicking on a custom block definition no longer fires up the Block Dialog Notable Fixes: scroll menus if they are taller than the world enabled color picker for pen trails on stage track keyboard events after accepting ASK using the keyboard improved support for emojis, thanks, Michael! avoid occasional stuck text cursors, thanks, Bernat! paint editor flood fill alpha issue, thanks, Bernat! implicit parameter binding in visible stepping, thanks, Joan! when deleting a temporary clone, detach all its parts and delete the temporary ones new release protocol to avoid browser caching related version conflicts Translation Updates: German Greek Turkish Chinese Spanish Russian - 1 -

2 Translating Custom Blocks Custom blocks - including the tools library - can now be translated - such as the MAP reporter shown here: The translation editor can be accessed via the context menu of the custom block s definition hat block: Translations can be added for each custom block by prefixing the language code followed by the translation, where an underscore character represents an input. As of this release (Feb. 2018) formal parameters cannot be rearranged nor their names translated

3 Scrolling Snap s menus now scroll automatically whenever there is not enough space to display them fully. This happens especially when blocks are zoomed. The sprite-interaction hat block now features two options to let the sprite react to user scroll events. These are triggered when the user scrolls the mouse-wheel down or up, or scrubs with two fingers on a touch-pad. Note: Scroll events are also available for the stage, the directions up and down can be dependent on the OS s user settings. Variable Scope Variable getters in the palette are now divided into two groups: Global variables ( for all sprites ) and - in a separate group - local variables ( for this sprite only ). Each group is sorted alphabetically. In addition, spritelocal variables in the palette are marked by a locationpin symbol to emphasize their local-ness (the same as sprite-local custom blocks, i.e. methods)

4 Working with directions The point in direction block now sports an interactive dial widget that lets you directly choose the target heading. The widget is embedded in the drop-down menu which still includes a set of explicit angles, as well as the empt-input choice. These menu items support Snap s keyboard entry mode. The same dial widget now also pops up when you select the new rotate option in the sprite s context menu. Note: By default the rotation widget snap s to multiples of 5 degrees. By holding down the shift key you can rotate freely. The former distance to _ reporter now sports a dropdown menu letting you choose between distance and direction. Selecting direction returns the absolute angle of the current sprite to the selected one. Note: instead of selecting a named sprite you can also drop a reporter referring to another sprite (e.g. item random of my neighbors or a variable referring to a clone), or a two-item list representing x- and y- coordinates

5 Discovering Other Sprites Methods Sprite-local custom blocks ( for this sprite only ) can now be discovered on the OFreporter s drop-down menu, the same as other attributes of the target sprite: Evaluating a selected method of another sprite returns a ring with all inputs empty, i.e. being implicit formal parameters: This result can now be CALLed, RUN or LAUNCHed, as well as directly used in TELL and ASK blocks. Note: Don t forget to specify actual arguments for all implicit formal parameters. Note: If the sending sprite already has its own corresponding local method, it can still simply use a dignified instance of its own version inside the OFreporter, to evaluate it in the context of the receiving sprite

6 Working with Media Snap! now features a simple sound recorder that lets you record short audio snippets directly on the fly. You can use the Audio Comp library to manipulate such recordings and create your own sound effects by accessing the sound s samples. The Pixel library has been rearranged. The current costume reporter can now be found in the Sensing category. The costume accessor reporter now has a dropdown menu letting you select not only the pixels, but also the dimensions of a costume

7 Crayons A new Crayons library offers numbered colors for sprite-pens, and a cascaded menu letting you select pen colors by their crayon names: Acknowledgements This release has been made possible by significant contributions from Bernat Romagosa, Brian Harvey, Michael Ball, Eckart Modrow and Joan Guillén i Pelegay. Thank you! - 7 -