Turtle Art

Introduction

Turtle Art is an activity with a Logo-inspired graphical "turtle" that draws colorful art based on snap-together visual programming elements.

Turtle Art is intended to be a stepping stone to the Logo programming language, but there are many restrictions compared to Logo. (Only numeric global variables and stack items are available, no lists or other data-structures. The conditionals and some of the functions only take constants or variables, not expressions. Limited screen real-estate makes building large programs unfeasible.) However, you can export your Turtle Art creations to Berkley Logo. The sensor-enabled version of Turtle Art also has a facility for sensor input, so, for example, you can move the Turtle based upon sound volume or pitch.

Turtle Art is in the same tradition as Etoys, Scratch, Lego Mindstorms™, and Lego Microworlds™.

Turtle Art is used extensively in Sugar deployments and numerous materials for support in the classroom have been developed. Of course, since Turtle Art is a Logo derivative, many of the classic Logo exercises are well suited for engaging students in Turtle Art. For example, Bill Kerr has been blogging about the experiences of his students trying to tackle Barry Newell worksheet of 40 geometric shapes to be rendered using turtle graphics.

More Info:

Turtle Art Sugar Activity homepage
Turtle Art gallery (See [1])
Turtle Art Manual (See [2])
Turtle Art teacher guides from Uruguay (See [3])
Turtle Art teacher guides from Peru (See [4])
Turtle Art student guide (See [5])
Tony Forster blog on Turtle Art (See [6])
Bill Kerr blog on Turtle Art (See [7])
Barry Newell worksheet (See [8])

What is new for users

The most visible change is the incorporation of the new Sugar Toolbar design.

Turtle Art v65 with the 0.86 toolbar design has the project buttons: Hide Palette, Hide Blocks, Erase, Run, Step, Debug, and Stop Buttons, and four submenus

The activity toolbar contains the Keep Button, Snapshot Button, Save to HTML Button, Save to Logo Button, Save as Image Button, and Load Python Code Button

The edit toolbar contains the Copy and Paste Buttons

The view toolbar contains the Fullscreen Button

The help toolbar includes the Sample-Projects Button and hover help

File sharing of Turtle Art projects from the Journal works between Sugar "buddies"; but only through a local connection, i.e., Salut (See Development_Team/Release/Releases/Sucrose/0.84#File_transfer)

Minor bugs and feature changes include:

68

made case consistent on tool tips
fixed bug re i18n in debug panel
new artwork for es and fr
fixed some problems with svg factory
fixed bug in Export HTML
fixed naming problem with all save_as functions
fixed bug in Export Logo in regard to start block

67

added mime-type icon
changed keyboard shortcuts to use Ctrl instead of Alt as per guidelines
fixed bug re wait time (now in seconds)
fixed problem with fractional wait times
fixed i18n problem with labels in hover help
reorganization of extras palette
fixed problem of empty file with "Save as HTML" (saving screen capture)

66

fixed bug preventing launch on (0.82-0.84)
work around Rainbow problem with Save as image
fixed bug re activate Stop Button on launch (thanks to rgs)
added open from journal button (with rgs)
fixed bug re Erase Button (hides status blocks)
cleaned up some broken sample code

65

fixed problem with View Toolbar
moved Samples button to Help Toolbar

64

major refactoring for new toolbar design
stop sign turns off after execution is finished
added preliminary support for mg and ta
moved hover help to help toolbar
adjusted artwork on Turtle palette

63

more sample programs
consolidated samples into one directory
fixed mask bug that prevented palette hiding

62

first pass at hover help support (thanks Raul)
put samples button, keep button on project toolbar
fixed journal icons associated with html, python, logo
improved compatibility with old Sugar builds
images centered under turtle
text vertically centered under turtle
pop blocks snap into boxes
improved masks for fewer block-selection errors

61

fixed es translation
fixed problem with save/load on old systems

60

fixed sharing bug
began work on 701 backward compatibility
added more debugging code

59

fixed leading bug for OLPC XO portfolio
enabled box to hold strings and journal objects

58

fixed unicode string compare in equal block
fixed journal description bug introduced in v55
fixed misaligned myfunc block problem

57

lots of artwork clean up
elimination of lock block
more dead key clean ups
truncated strings

56

more dead key cleanup
empty (undefined) box error message

55

dead key workaround

54

debug button
no more decimals by default for print

53

es updates

52

first attempt at fixing the mimetypes
default behavior of tamyblock.py is to draw a dotted line

51

caught ISO_Level3_Shift problem on OLPC XO keyboard

50

fixed some problems with taexportlogo
cleaned up save/load icons
print uses title for Journal objects
cleaned up movie window destroy code
more consistent template management internally
support of a sort for show in taexporthtml

49

fixed character input bug

48

reworking of media blocks
json cleanup

What is new for developers

The good news is that contributions are coming in from multiple sources. In particular, many thanks to Raúl Gutiérrez Segalés, who has contributed many patches. Raúl and I are working on a roadmap for a major refactoring for 0.88 which will include a block factory--a more object-oriented approach that should facilitate a more decentralized development approach.

Internationalization (i18n) and Localization (l10n)

We now have support for:

mg
ta

Note: The artwork will be reworked once the translation team completes its work.

Compatibility

Compatible with all versions of Sugar although some functionality is lost with pre-0.82 versions.

Detailed changes

Version 65

#893 Show multimedia tile to support text formats
#490 Turtle Art should close video window properly
#343 Turtle Art doesn't start on amd64 due to 32bit alsaaudio.so in bundle
#389 Turtle Art with sensors needs special alsaaudio.so on XO
#451 Rainbow problem copying module from Journal to dta directory
#590 Turtle Art user-defined block feedback
#672 Export picture as pdf or png
#774 Keep Error: json.encode() does not exist
#883 TAPortfolio fails to keep the current project
#894 Set scale is done in the object chooser tile should be in show tile?
#1054 TA Text input brick, text should be right aligned (or keep cursor in view)
#1056 TA showing Journal object (image) should be centered and rotated
#1084 Usability enhancements for Turtle Art
#1186 turtle art variables are not being saved
#1205 Turtle Art not starting
#1269 Strings in turtleart-activity.po in Fructose 0.84 need to have comments/notations for terms that should not be translated
#1290 Turtle Art is using <Ctrl><Shift>+Q for Quit, should be <Ctrl>+Q
#1331 Rainbow problem with Turtle Art save image
#127 Turtle Art: Demo images not centered when first loaded
#241 [portfolio] slide titles, stack labels and variable names do not truncate
#549 Turtle Art, implement canvas scrollbars
#1288 Key accelerators are all <Alt>, HIG specifies <Ctrl> is the default modifier
#1073 Units of wait brick smaller than seconds

Open tickets

#472 Remove unexpected 'save/load' tab from toolbar
#489 TurtleArt text entry should use Entry widget
#673 Logo program should be displayable in the document ViewSource
#1057 TA feature to add support for "pages"
#1188 load samples from turtleart.org
#1203 rebase Turtle Art graphics on Cairo
#155 TurtleArtwithSensors has different requirements for non-XO hardware
#491 TurtleArt sharing needs new logic
#548 Turtle Art:: read and write to text file
#552 Turtle art, reinstate sensor input

Credits

Walter Bender and Raúl Gutiérrez Segalés
Especially helpful community feedback from Tony Forster and Bill Kerr

0.86/Turtle Art

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