[taos-glug] Progress in fits and starts: picture language


I finally finished the section on the so-called
"picture language" (starting on page 126).

I remain critical of the authors.   They make things
harder than I think is necessary.

My specific gripe about this section is that they say that there is
only one kind of element, the so-called "painter."  (See page 127.)

That's not really right.   There are "frames" too.

Furthermore, the term "painter" is not grammatically parallel to the two
instances of painters, namely "wave" and "rogers."

I say they should have named them "painter" and "waver" (or "painter" and
"rogers'er", so to speak).   Or maybe the term "brush" or "template" or "stamp"
might have been used instead of "painter".

Another gripe:  on page 133, they have "(right-split wave 4)" under an
image.   But that function call won't produce that image.   (You
have to include a frame argument, such as "((right-split wave 4) my-frame)".)

Nor did they mention the meaning of "->" in "segments->painter.

It's just annoying that they keep throwing all these little curves at you.

Furthermore, I doubt that this series of functions really deserves the
designation "language."  Is it not just a library of
related functions?

Having said all that, I'm glad I persevered and got these routines working.

But I had to go over the text VERY carefully several
times.   The authors' approach is "top-down".   That seemed
backwards to me.   I'm still thinking about whether, or when, their
approach might have advantages.

Since Freelists doesn't allow email attachments, I
uploaded one of the images I created to
http://www.taosnet.com/ar/taos-glug/wave.html

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