Yeah this would be awesome.

What is also needed is an easy way to upload your changes up to TMB but I guess I'll have to write that.

...and a good back up system.

@ Steve

I know, but I know more Winforms than GTK.

Ok, well see if you can make it WINE compatible. Also, I am intending to do all this online at some point maybe using javascript (dojo) and HTML5. I'm a long ways off that though.

I'll develop on MonoDevelop, all you'll need to do steve is to install Mono.

What's mono?

Mono is a free implementation of the .NET Framework.

Is GTK the same thing?

what is this GTK thing?

Coolio!

GTK is the toolkit used to make the application. The windows equivalent would be winforms. Another you might have heard of is QT. The toolkit has things like close buttons, window border slider bars radio button etc etc.

I'll focus on making a Mono/GTK version first, and then a WinForms port next. Although Windows users could run either of the.

@ Crazy

Also, GTK stands for the GIMP tool kit.

So, it's the GNU's Not UNIX Image Manipulation Program Tool Kit.

so that's what GTK stands for

So I want to know more about programming.
What is the following:
GUI
Net.Framework
Winforms
GNU
Director
QT
C+ AND C#
Text editor
File Browser
Char[]
Javascript(dojo)
Director cast library

I'll describe the ones I mentioned:

GUI: Graphic user interface; it's what you see and interact with on a program, ie, the windows GUI has a start button in bottom left corner

GNU: GNU Not Unix; a recursive acronym. you might want to see http://www.gnu.org/

Director: program for making "movies" AKA games AKA mrelin's revenge...

C+, C#: two similar programming languages; analogous to differences in dialect between Britain and the US.

Text editor: ...best description is by examples... things like MS Word(and openOffice equivalent!) or notepad

File browser: ... ever try save As or Open in a program? hose open File/folder browsers o let you decide where you want to save or open from.

Char[]: a char is a data type, which are letters (more specifically characters, since it includes spaces, '\n'(new line) +,-,(etc). The [] describes that the whole thing is an array(list) of characters.

Director Cast Library: stores Director "Casts" which are files such as images, test files, a piece of code (etc)

What will really help you learn to code is by learning how to do some simple command line programs in C+. I'd find you a good set of tutorials, but I've got other things to do!

@ Crazy

Search for Py-thon Tutorial.

Py-thon (no dash) is another programming language. You need to use the dash on the website because otherwise your comment won't get displayed.

Note,thank you and I understand that you are a very busy person.Immortal_merlin,thank you.

.NET Framework- A way of developing of developing apps. You write code that compiles(turns into) a diferent language that .NET can understand. It manages your program.

JavaScript- a Programming language that is used on the web. No realation to Java.

It's C++, not C+.

QT(pronounced cute)- an alternative to GTK

Winforms(short for Windows Forms)- An alternative to GTK and QT, used mainly on Windows.

Thank you Immortal_merlin.

Dojo is framework that is made from javascript. It is very useful partly because different browsers interpret javascript differently. Most notably, IE.

Dojo takes care of all these differences so that your code will run anywhere.

.NET/Mono does a similar thing across operating systems.

C+ and C++ can be understood as the same thing :P

ok thank you guys

Well, I have a text editor and file browser so far. I can read files, writing can come later.

Cool! That was quick!

Yes,cool indeed.

I say though, GTK is a little strange, though. Mainly, for each widget I Use, I'll search for it's properties and methods as I Go.

What is a widget?

A widget can be a button, a checkbox, a menu, a textbox, and loads others.

A widget is the parts of the GUI (Graphical User Interface).

I totally understand now.

Well, writing is going slowly. Get crashes every now and then.

Here's my save function for any interested.

 

 
	protected virtual void Save_file (object sender, System.EventArgs e)
 
	{
 
		try
 
		{
 
		FileStream file = new FileStream(chooser.Filename,FileMode., FileAccess.Write);
 
		StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(file);
 
		sw.Write(code_editor.Buffer.Text);
 
		sw.Close();
 
		file.Close();
 
		}
 
		catch
 
		{
 
			MessageDialog md = new MessageDialog(this, DialogFlags.Modal, MessageType.Error, ButtonsType.Ok, "Ah!! Something messed up!! The file might not exist, somehow, or you might not have permission to write to the file. If you're sure it's not that, then tell me about it, if you would be so kind");
 
			md.Run();
 
			md.Destroy();
 
		}
 
	}
 

CRAP!!! I messed up the page!!!

Oh, and in my Filestream, it should be FileMode.Open

Ahhaa!! I may have just fixed it.

I changed FileMode.Open to FileMode.Truncate.

And just so all know, I am releasing this under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

Thank you:)

Yeah, you messed up big time.

Anyway, atleast it's progress you're making.

Damn it! Now I can't sell a program that might not be much use for third parties anyway!

Ya Merlin is quite far away from the "Make a comment" box.

@ Megaman

Ahem...

Sorry. Blame note. He asked a Free Software Enthusiast.

Could someone tell me something to do on Py-thon.

Make a program that asks for a person's first name, then asks the last name, and after that prints it all coupled with some greeting, if you're done with the 'hello world' syntax.

Or another thing you could do is explain briefly about all the things Immortal_merlin listed.

Megaman4ever could you tell me how to do that?Because all the tutorials that I find really suck.

Then you obviously aren't looking from the right places.

The answer to your question is that I don't know. I never have used Py-thon in my life, and I've barely seen the any code made with it(Wesnoth).

That's all more the reason why you should seek better tutorials. I guess someone on this site will know a good place as well.

You can, however, look up using a search engine, what the stuff listed by Immortal_merlin means and then answer his questions here.

Try blasting through this: http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english2e/

Yeah, that seems pretty standard. Read the whole thing and do some programs of your own on the way using what you have learned, and you will be quite good at programming already.

if you go in a different direction, http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/

or if you want to go towards java (not reccomended as a beginner language) I can provide some assistance.

Ok I will use note's one.

Notes is for C++. And I have done it. Have fun with pointers.

Do mine instead.

Only thing is that mines for a Unix crowd. Crazy, if you need any help, just ask. I've walked this path before. Maybe with help you can do it better than I did.

Trust me. My early py-thon days were not pretty.

And megaman is right about java. Youneed to imeduatly know about objects and methods. In py-thon, you learn stuff when you're ready.

Well, I learned Java from a beginner book, and it didn't make any assumptions, except that you already know how to use DOS or the command prompt(which was pretty standard about 15 years ago, when the book was written, though).

I don't have a clue how Java books are like right now.

No i'm pretty good with py-thon now.I know how to do lists,functions,math,modules,variations,slicing,sequences.

Well, then go back to that one suggestion and answer those questions.

Also, just so you know, a list is also called an array. Took me forever to learn that.

You should probably be referring to "lists" as "arrays". There are many ways to program a list.

next: file I/O, structs, unions, enums, (it might be nice to learn some sorting algorithm)(find a type of sort, perferably not merge sort, and write an implementation of it, say sorting numbers from biggest to smallest, or a bunch of strings alphabetically). If you're feeling pretty confident, you can learn recursion (a word of caution, it may crash your computer), maybe write a program that can find the nth Fibonacci term. (and binary search!)

you should also start looking at 0()(big O runtime/complexity) run times, they come in real handy. basically, they describe the number of computations required to complete a task(as it relates to a variable amount of things to process); say you want to list everything in an array, where you have N objects in it.

int a[N]

for(int i = 0; i < N; i++)
a[i] = i;

/*sets up the array, requires N+1 computations(1 computation to initialise, the another for each time through the loop), however, the +1 is meaningless in comparison to N (depending on the size of N) and so the big O runtime can be rounded to O(N)*/

for(int i = 0; i < N; i++)
out(a[i]\n)
/*prints out the contents of the array, also O(N); altogether, this whole program becomes O(2N), which is also rounded to O(N)*/

the main big O runtimes(from largest to smallest) are 2^N, N^2, N, log(N), and 1

If you can find ways to change 2^N algorithms into anything remotely lower(even N^10), you will likely find yourself to be a very popular person.


quiz: what is the complexity of:
(given an array list[N] filled with random integers)

int tmp;
int indx;
for(int i = 0; i < N - 1; i++)
{
tmp = list[i];
indx = i;
for(int j = i; i < N; j++)
{
if(list[j] >= list[indx])
indx = j;
}
list[i] = list[indx];
list[indx] = tmp;
}

This is probably a very bad quiz since I haven't checked to see if it works, its just a semblance of what I think it should do...

♪ ninja edit: cool, I just approved my own post ;)

Ummm... Note, he's doing Python, not C.

Its close enough...

I don't actually know Py-thon for comparison though.

If I was learning Python, and saw that, I'd be really confused. In Python, you don't need to type or declare variables. You can just say

a=5
x="Hello"

I noticed you didn't say you know how to do loops. Do that before doing anything Note asked.

If you feel to do something different, here are standard application writing exercises from that beginner book I mentioned:

Ex. 15) Make a program that askes any number of numbers the user wants to list(perhaps by having the user input text ends the listing part), saves them into an array, and calculates the average from them and after that, prints the average.

For extra challenge, you can also make the program calculate the median and print that too on the screen.

Ex. 21) A car has the possible directions of -179,-178,...,180 degrees, and a speed of -40 to 248 km/h. The program asks the user for possible changes in these pieces of information, then prints relevant info, then asks for more changes until the user gives an exit command.
The car starts from the position (0,0), and after the user gives any info, you should print the car's speed, direction and position on the x-y coordinate system.

For extra challenge you could also make the program count the amount of fuel the car has left, and maybe give the coordinates for a refill point. When the car is stopped close to the refill point, the fuel goes back to the maximum. Of course, the amount of fuel used is relative to the speed of the car.

Meh, I accidentally pressed submit.
Well, you could post your creations here to be verified so that they work well. You may need to learn new things to figure how to get those programs work, but hey, that's what you're trying to do - learn new things.

Anyway, still a bit more(for these you definitely need to learn new things):

Ex. 3.2) Make a program that reads an external text file from anywhere in the system the user specifies from, then makes a copy of that file so that every vowel is changed to the letter 'i' and every word 'shit' is changed into four characters which are randomly picked from a list(like '!@#£¤$%&').

Ex. 3.8) There are 20 participants in a competition. Each can get style points from 0 to 50, and skill points from 0 to 50. Make a program which randomly generates the names of the participants and their points. Print a list of the participants in alphabetical order and in point order(sum the points to get the final score). Make both in one program. Make checks so that there are never two same names. If two people get the same points, they are then ordered alphabetically.

Ex. 4.9) Create a program which builds a part of the pascal triangle. The user inputs a number, and the program prints the numbers on that row, then the user may ask a new number and so on.
Remember to only build the triangle to the point where the user asked to know at once - you can build more if the user asks for an even lower row. This is to make the program faster, and to prevent an infinite loop from trying to build the whole triengle. Remember also to prevent illegal rows - for example returning an error message if row -124 was wanted, but don't make it crash or close the program, just force the user to give a new row number. Remember to make some sort of exit command.

And then a lot tougher:

One style of teaching is drilling. Make a program which asks for pairs of words, like words from two languages, mathematical calculations, elements and their chemical symbols... etc. in the way of the program first printing one word from a large list, then having the user input a pair for that(example - the program prints 'hello', the correct answer would be '¡hola', or the program prints '5+4=', the correct answer would be '9').

Make the program to ask the words randomly, but so that it can ask the same thing again, so that it asks those which the user got wrong with a higher chance and those which were right on first try much less, so that if you got a question wrong alot, then got it right, it still will keep on asking it, just with a smaller chance, and if you want, you could implement a score system or such - have some sort of 'prize' for answering correctly.

Ex 6.2) Make a GUI and implementation of a board game for multiple players, like poker, solitaire, mastermind, a memory game, trivial pursuit... etc.

For extra challenge, you could make a competetive or unbeatable AI(you can be unbeatable at games like mastermind, for example), or you could make a very difficult game like chess, checkers or go. I suggest not starting an AI from scratch to those, though.

There is a very good excersice, but it's quite long to describe, so I'll tell of that later once you've done atleast the ones in the first post, and one or maybe two form this one.

Sounds complicated but I can do it.

Well then, do it.

Where can I send a beta of this, Steve?

You can email to me and I'll put it up on the site.

Hehe, I forgot it.
[email hidden] right?

Oh, and I'd really appreciate I if someone could draw an Icon for me.

I did the stuff.

Post it up. We need to see. Good job though!!

Write a comment and the reply will come from my email address. Thanks for trying to post it up on the website so all the robots can see it and send me spam!

Whoops! Sawhee.

*sends contact message*

Just edit the comment.

Good idea Hobbes.

I'd find it funny if all the tasks megaman4ever are giving were actually assignments he has or something. Though who'd have such assignments at this time of year I don't know.

Anyway, I pretty much started learning programming with Java, and I found objects & methods simple to understand. Perhaps slightly harder to get working the first time I tried using them (program didn't work *at all*, got it okay the second time though), but still.
I'm kinda tempted to have a go at some of these in java, which'd be interesting; I reinstalled windows very recently and I've not got around to redownloading java yet, so I'd not be able to test anything I wrote.

Nope. I've already blasted through those programming courses.

But it would be funny.

Hey! I've got a full semester of courses next summer! :(

Here we are. Just note that GTK must be installed. The source is all there, in C#. The binary is in Cast Editor/bin/Release. It should run in any competent CLR. Mono is fine. On linux, after saving a file, the need to reload the folder, (the bread crumb trail works great for this). On windows, it's fine. But, on KDE, I had some errors in loading files. May have been a freak thing. I put it handlers for permissons and a few other things. You can edit it, change the UI, and lots other from the text files, but the .sln file with MonoDevelop is much easier. Windows users can get GTK# at: http://ftp.novell.com/pub/mono/gtk-sharp/gtk-sharp-2.12.9-2.win32.msi . Oh, and currently, the browser starts in the folder it's launched in, so it'd be best to put it in the casts directory and symlink a launcher somewhere else. Well, I think that's everything. Just post any bugs in the Suggestion DB.


Cast Editor beta: http://www.mediafire.com/?nom42w1nbjy

There is still quite alot for me to do with py-thon.Oh and guys which language should I do next,C? Javascipt?

First, show us what you know in python,.

I like C#. Beatiful language. But, you could try C or C++ if you're daring.

But show us some of your python,.

Java is nice for object orientation.

You should really become a pretty good programmer in one language before learning others though.

C# has just as good OOP.

OOP?What's that?

Object Oriented Programming.

If you really know python, then I shouldn't need to explain.

...You really seem like you don't know much about Py-thon. Believe us, it's much better to read Py-thon for a few months or so at least, and then ask about some more difficult, more usable language.

Of course, if you show you do know Py-thon well by posting an example of your work, then, yes, cool.

Even if that work sucks, don't be ashamed - it's critical to know what you know so that we can assist you to be better. Just one of the aforementioned programming excersices I wrote will be fine. Any one. If you need any easier ones, ask, I doubt you need anything harder though, but I have that too. I believe they are pretty much in order of easiest to hardest, but again, it varies. You should try to do them in the listed order though.

Oh, and guys, you can say python, as long as you put a comma, period, or other letter behind it.

Like:
Python.
Python,
Python()
Python/
Python~

Hmm, yes.

Pythoon
pythonn
Pyython
Pythn

Ya I am not really finished with python.Hopefully I will finish sometime soon.

Finish? It would take years to truly master a programming language. I'd say: learn everything which even sort of applies to other languages(there is alot in common) and some pythhon specific stuff, then move on.

With intensive around-five-hours-a-day work I managed to do that Java course with the book in three weeks, and I already had programming experience back then. I'd expect you to take half a year maybe from starting before being able to finish those excersices, probably more. I don't also know how much you study.

Crazy, please, instead of telling us your progress, Show Us.

Yeah - be it anything at all, post it here.

In other news, I have new release. I'd consider this to be version 0.3. The main new feature is the inclusion of a app.config file.

Once again, before you run this:
1. Install GTK# if you haven't already from here: http://ftp.novell.com/pub/mono/gtk-sharp/gtk-sharp-2.12.9-2.win32.msi
2. Unzip the zip file and copy the 2 files in the bin/release/ to your mr_open directory. It doesn't actually matter where, as long as they stay together.
3. Open the Cast Editor.exe.config file in notepad or any other text editor. Where it says Path to mr_open casts folder, replace it with the path to it.
4. That's it! It *should* start it the folder you specified. Happy editing!

Cast Editor 0.3: http://www.mediafire.com/?yj3e5kjxw3y

Again, come here for help/bugs.

Whoops. Also, make sure you have the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or higher installed.

For Unix guys, make sure you have the latest version of Mono.

Wow, I finally just opened it. Its exactly what I was wanting!

Well Immortal_Merlin is a pro. :)

->did not save my work. Is there any special procedure I need to follow rather than hit the save button and close the program?

Well that is what I do. Save and close.
When you close it, does it say, "Would you like to save changes to (file) ?"

Negatory.

Hmmmm...well then I don't know what to do. :(

Oh, btw, how's the programming going?

Oh fine. Great.

Dear Super_merlin,
you should roadmap this.
Sincerely, ♪

Roadmapped. I need to work on this thing again.

Been busy taking a C class.

Was the Merlin in the green box before?

yup.