I'm new to programming, and I was wondering how you are able to handle consecutive, timed key presses in order for the character to do something different. For example, in games like 'Super Smash Bros.' you press one button for a character to punch, and if you press it again, they will do their second punch; pressing it once more will result in a kick. How am I able to program this in Scratch 3.0 (preferrably, but an explanation in another programming language might help)?
By the way, if this helps, I am using a 'state' variable in order to handle other animations such as running; I want the character to be able to animate when the timed key presses occur.
Makey makey (in the extensions) does something similar to that, but if you wanted to make your own from scratch (no pun intended) you could do something like this example that I made: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/382244376/
As stated earlier, makey makey is the only option...
I know, they only have a few selected options
BUT!
try this:
You usually use
when (up right down left v) pressed:
// Do something
Why don't you use
when (join(up up right right left left up down)()) pressed:
// Do Something
Yes, its the join()() block. Fill up the first blank with the combos you want, separated by a space, and leave the 2nd one empty. Drag it into the selectable part of the Makey Makey hat block, and there you go!
The checkbox "Smart Characters" in "Code Completion" section of Settings Browser does (at least) two things:
1) It doubles some characters when typed: ', ", (, [, {
2) It enables that I can select a piece of code, press ( (i.e. Shift+9), and the selected code becomes surrounded by parentheses: (). I also can remove parentheses by pressing ( again. I also can do this with [] by pressing [ and with {} by pressing {, i.e. Shift+[.
I do not like the first of these things so I want to disable it, but I like the second thing and want to keep it. How can I achieve this? Turning off the checkbox will disable both.
P.S. I know that when the checkbox is off, adding/removing parentheses works by Cmd+Shift+9 (which is less convenient than Shift+9) and that Cmd+[ works for [], although I do not know any working shortcut for adding/removing {} when the checkbox is off.
The setting is called "Smart Characters", which should give you a clue as to where to look. Open a Finder, type in smartCharacters, and hit Enter. You should see some partial matches as well as an exact match for NECController and NECPreferences class (and the former just calls the latter). If you investigate the classes involved a bit, you'll see that smartCharacters stores a boolean, and that smartCharactersMapping returns a dictionary mapping some characters to their "counterparts", i.e. $[ to $] and so on. Now look at senders of smartCharactersMapping, and you'll see where it's being called from.
The caller you're most likely interested in would be NECController>>smartCharacterWithEvent. So put a breakpoint in that very ugly method to see what it does. You don't care about the first two cases (the editor having a selection and there not being a smart mapping), since you want to prevent the second matching character from being inserted. So the interesting bit for you is this bit:
self newSmartCharacterInsertionStringForLeft: char right: opposite
The method only has one implementor and that one sender, so it should be safe to comment out the original method and just return the "left" character, i.e.:
newSmartCharacterInsertionStringForLeft: left right: right
^String with: left
In other words, instead of creating a string with the left and right characters, and possibly spaces between them, just return a new string with the single character you typed. Might not be the most elegant way of solving this, but it should work, and should show you how to solve similar problems in the future.
(Ideally, you'll find a better solution, post it here as an alternate answer, and contribute it to the Pharo codebase - Pharo is open source, after all.)
I use \newtheorem and the numbering is done automatically. Sometimes in the text I'll refer to a theorem by this number. I'd like to have a variable equal to this number, so if the theorem number changes, the references will change also.
Yes, it works through the usual \label/\ref-mechanism:
\begin{theorem}\label{thm:foo} ...
That was Theorem~\ref{thm:foo}
(You'll need two runs of LaTeX for the number to settle, you'll get a message about changed references.) Label commands "tack onto" certain things like section headers, captions, items of enumerations and, indeed, theorems and friends.
There are also extensions that can automatically distinguish sections from subsections or figures, for that, see hyperref's \autoref or the cleveref package, but don't worry about it at this point.
You need to put a \label between the \begin{yourtheorem} \end{yourtheorem} and use \ref to refer to it as usual.
You can check this link for explanations with some broader context about theorems
I'm using Doxygen to generate documentation for my code. I need to make a PDF version of this and using Doxygen's LaTeX output appears to be the way to do it.
However I've run into a number of annoying problems, and not knowing anything about LaTeX previously haven't really got much of an idea on how to approach them, and the countless references for LaTeX related things are not much help...
I worked out how to create a custom style thing in a sty file and how to get Doxygen to use it. After a lot of searching I found out how to set the page margins etc. through this, and I'm guessing the perhaps this is the file I want for doing the other things I want, but I cant seem to find any commands for doign what I want :(
The table of contents at the start of the document contains a lot of items Id rather it didn't as it makes the contents very long. Is there some way to limit this contents to just say the first two levels, rather than having entries for every single individual function, variable, etc.? Id quite like to keep all the bookmarks however. I did try the "COMPACT_LATEX" option but as well as removing items on the contents pages, it removed the bookmarks and the member lists at the start of each section, which I do really want to keep.
Is there a way to change the order of things, like putting the full class description at the start of the section, rather than after all the members and attributes?
Wow, that's kind of evil of Doxygen.
Okay, to get around the tocdepth counter problem, add the following line to your .sty file:
\AtBeginDocument{\setcounter{tocdepth}{2}}% or whatever level you want
You can set the PDF bookmarks depth to a separate value:
% requires you \usepackage{hyperref} first
\hypersetup{
bookmarksdepth = section, % of whatever level you want
}
Also note that if you have a list of figures/tables, the tocdepth must be at least 2 for them to show up.
I don't see any way of rearranging those items within the LaTeX files---Doxygen just barfs them out there, so we can't do much. You'll have to poke around the Doxygen documentation to see if there's any way to specify the order I guess. (Here's hoping!)
You're so close.
Googling on "latex contents level" brought me to LaTeX - customizing the depth of the table of contents for different parts of the thesis which suggests
\setcounter{tocdepth}{n}
where n starts at zero for only the highest level division. This is presumable defined in all the default styles, but is worth a try in doxygen.
You could write a Perl/Awk script to simply delete the unwanted lines from the table of contents. For the file burble.tex, Latex will generate the file burble.toc, which will contain lines such as:
\contentsline {subsection}{Class F rewrites}{38}
\contentsline {subsection}{Class M rewrites}{39}
\contentsline {section}{\numberline {7}Definition and properties of the translation}{44}
\contentsline {paragraph}{Well-formedness}{54}
Simple regexes will identify which levels each line belongs to, and you can filter the file based on that. Once you have the table of contents the way you want it, insert \nofiles in the appropriate place (the style sheet?), which means that Latex will read the auxiliary files but not overwrite them.
I would really like to see a proportional font IDE, even if I have to build it myself (perhaps as an extension to Visual Studio). What I basically mean is MS Word style editing of code that sort of looks like the typographical style in The C++ Programming Language book.
I want to set tab stops for my indents and lining up function signatures and rows of assignment statements, which could be specified in points instead of fixed character positions. I would also like bold and italics. Various font sizes and even style sheets would be cool.
Has anyone seen anything like this out there or know the best way to start building one?
I'd still like to see a popular editor or IDE implement elastic tabstops.
Thinking with Style suggests to use your favorite text-manipulation software like Word or Writer. Create your programme code in rich XML and extract the compiler-relevant sections with XSLT. The "Office" software will provide all advanced text-manipulation and formatting features.
i expected you'll get down-modded and picked on for that suggestion, but there's some real sense to the idea.
The main advantage of the traditional 'non-proportional' font requirement in code editors is to ease the burden of performing code formatting.
But with all of the interactive automatic formatting that occurs in modern IDE's, it's really possible that a proportional font could improve the readability of the code (rather than hampering it, as i'm sure many purists would expect).
A character called Roedy Green (famous for his 'how to write unmaintainable code' articles) wrote about a theoretical editor/language, based on Java and called Bali. It didn't include non-proportional fonts exactly, but it did include the idea of having non-uniform font-sizes.
Also, this short Joel Spolsky post posts to a solution, elastic tab stops (as mentioned by another commentor) that would help with the support of non-proportional (and variable sized) fonts.
#Thomas Owens
I don't find code formatted like that easier to read.
That's fine, it is just a personal preference and we can disagree. Format it the way you think is best and I'll respect it. I frequently ask myself 'how should I format this or that thing?' My answer is always to format it to improve readability, which I admit can be subjective.
Regarding your sample, I just like having that nicely aligned column on the right hand side, its sort of a quick "index" into the code on the left. Having said that, I would probably avoid commenting every line like that anyway because the code itself shouldn't need that much explanation. And if it does I tend to write a paragraph above the code.
But consider this example from the original poster. Its easier to spot the comments in the second one in my opinion.
for (size-type i = 0; i<v.size(); i++) { // rehash:
size-type ii = has(v[i].key)%b.size9); // hash
v[i].next = b[ii]; // link
b[ii] = &v[i];
}
for (size-type i = 0; i<v.size(); i++) { // rehash:
size-type ii = has(v[i].key)%b.size9); // hash
v[i].next = b[ii]; // link
b[ii] = &v[i];
}
#Thomas Owens
But do people really line comments up
like that? ... I never try to
line up declarations or comments or
anything, and the only place I've ever
seen that is in textbooks.
Yes people do line up comments and declarations and all sorts of things. Consistently well formatted code is easier to read and code that is easier to read is easier to maintain.
I wonder why nobody actually answers your question, and why the accepted answer doesn't really have anything to do with your question. But anyway...
a proportional font IDE
In Eclipse you can cchoose any font on your system.
set tab stops for my indents
In Eclipse you can configure the automatic indentation, including setting it to "tabs only".
lining up function signatures and rows of assignment statements
In Eclipse, automatic indentation does that.
which could be specified in points instead of fixed character positions.
Sorry, I don't think Eclipse can help you there. But it is open source. ;-)
bold and italics
Eclipse has that.
Various font sizes and even style sheets would be cool
I think Eclipse only uses one font and font-size for each file type (for example Java source file), but you can have different "style sheets" for different file types.
When I last looked at Eclipse (some time ago now!) it allowed you to choose any installed font to work in. Not so sure whether it supported the notion of indenting using tab stops.
It looked cool, but the code was definitely harder to read...
Soeren: That's kind of neat, IMO. But do people really line comments up like that? For my end of line comments, I always use a single space then // or /* or equivalent, depending on language I'm using. I never try to line up declarations or comments or anything, and the only place I've ever seen that is in textbooks.
#Brian Ensink: I don't find code formatted like that easier to read.
int var1 = 1 //Comment
int longerVar = 2 //Comment
int anotherVar = 4 //Command
versus
int var2 = 1 //Comment
int longerVar = 2 //Comment
int anotherVar = 4 //Comment
I find the first lines easier to read than the second lines, personally.
The indentation part of your question is being done today in a real product, though possibly to even a greater level of automation than you imagined, the product I mention is an XSLT IDE, but the same formatting principles would work with most (but not all) conventional code syntaxes.
This really has to be seen in video to get the sense of it all (sorry about the music back-track). There's also a light XML editor spin-off product, XMLQuire, that serves as a technology demonstrator.
The screenshot below shows XML formatted with quite complex formatting rules in this XSLT IDE, where all indentation is performed word-processor style, using the left margin - not space or tab characters.
To emphasise this formatting concept, all characters have been highlighted to show where the left-margin extends to keep indentation. I use the term Virtual Formatting to describe this - it's not like elastic tab stops, because there simply are no tabs, just margin information which is part of the 'paragraph' formatting (RTF codes are used here). The parser reformats continuously, in the same pass as syntax coloring.
A proportional font hasn't been used here, but it could have been quite easily - because the indentation is set in TWIPS. The editing experience is quite compelling because, as you refactor the code (XML in this case), perhaps through drag and drop, or by extending the length of an attribute value, the indentation just re-flows itself to fit - there's no tab-key or 'reformat' button to press.
So, the indentation is there, but the font work is a more complex problem. I've experimented with this, but found that if fonts are re-selected as you type, the horizontal shifting of the code is too distracting - there would need to be a user-initiated 'format fonts' command probably. The product also has Ink/Handwriting technology built-in for annotating code, but I've yet to exploit this in the live release.
Folks are all complaining about comments not lining up.
Seems to me that there's a very simple solution: Define the unit space as the widest character in the font. Now, proportionally space all characters except the space. the space takes up as much room so as to line up the next character where it would be if all preceeding characters on the line were the widest in the font.
ie:
iiii_space_Foo
xxxx_space_Foo
would line up the "Foo", with the space after the "i" being much wider than after the "x".
So call it elastic spaces. rather than tab-stops.
If you're a smart editor, treat comments specially, but that's just gravy
Let me recall arguments about using the 'var' keyword in C#. People hated it, and thought it would make code less clear. For example, you couldn't know the type in something like:
var x = GetResults("Main");
foreach(var y in x)
{
WriteResult(x);
}
Their argument was, that you couln't see if x was an array, an List or any other IEnumerable. Or what the type of y was. In my opinion the unclearity did not arise from using var, but from picking unclear variable names. Why not just type:
var electionResults = GetRegionalElactionResults("Main");
foreach(var result in electionResults)
{
Write(result); // you can see what you're writing!!
}
"But you still cannot see the type of electionResults!" - does it really matter? If you want to change the return type of GetRegionalElectionResults, you can do so. Any IEnumerable will do.
Fast forward to now. People want to align comments en similar code:
int var2 = 1; //The number of days since startup, including the first
int longerVar = 2; //The number of free days per week
int anotherVar = 38; //The number of working hours per week
So without the comment everything is unclear. And if you don't align the values, you cannot seperate them from the variales. But do you? What about this (ignore the bullets please)
int daysSinceStartup = 1; // including first
int freeDaysPerWeek = 2;
int workingHoursPerWeek = 38;
If you need a comment on EVERY LINE, you're doing something wrong. "But you still need to align the VALUES" - do you? what does 38 have to do with 2?
In C# Most code blocks can easily be aligned using only tabs (or acually, multiples of four spaces):
var regionsWithIncrease =
from result in GetRegionalElectionResults()
where result.TotalCount > result > PreviousTotalCount &&
result.PreviousTotalCount > 0 // just new regions
select result.Region;
foreach (var region in regionsWithIncrease)
{
Write(region);
}
You should never use line-to-line comments and you should rarely need to vertically align things. Rarely, not never. So I understand if some of you guys prefer a monospaced font. I prefer the readibility of font Noto Sans or Source Sans Pro. These fonts are available freely from Google, and resemble Calibri, but are designed for programming and thus have all the neccesary characteristics:
Big : ; . , so you can clearly see the difference
Clearly distinct 0Oo and distinct Il|
The major problem with proportional fonts is they destroy the vertical alignment of the code and this is a fairly major loss when it comes to writing code.
The vertical alignment makes it possible to manipulate rectangular blocks of code that span multiple lines by allowing block operations like cut, copy, paste, delete and indent, unindent etc to be easily performed.
As an example consider this snippet of code:
a1 = a111;
B2 = aaaa;
c3 = AAAA;
w4 = wwWW;
W4 = WWWW;
In a mono-spaced font the = and the ; all line up.
Now if this text is loded into Word and display using a proportional font the text effectively turns into this:
NOTE: Extra white space added to show how the = and ; no longer line up:
a1 = a1 1 1;
B2 = aaaa;
c3 = A A A A;
w4 = w w W W;
W4 = W W W W;
With the vertical alignment gone those nice blocks of code effectively disappear.
Also because the cursor is no longer guaranteed to move vertically (i.e. the column number is not always constant from one line to the next) it makes it more difficult to write throw away macro scripts designed to manipulated similar looking lines.