Fwd: Snap! v5.4 has been released

[Tiffany Barnes]

We might want to update isnap to get feature number 2

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Moenig, Jens <jens....@sap.com>
Date: Fri, Dec 20, 2019 at 2:05 AM
Subject: Snap! v5.4 has been released
To: Brian Harvey <b...@cs.berkeley.edu>, Dan Garcia <ddga...@berkeley.edu>, Tiffany Barnes <tiffany...@gmail.com>, Huegle, Jadga <jadga....@sap.com>, Bernat Romagosa <tibabenfor...@gmail.com>, Michael Ball <ba...@berkeley.edu>, con...@snap.berkeley.edu <con...@snap.berkeley.edu>, Lauren Mock <lm...@berkeley.edu>, Goldenberg, Paul <epgold...@edc.org>, bfer...@virginia.edu <bfer...@virginia.edu>, Akos Ledeczi <akos.l...@vanderbilt.edu>, Brian Broll <brian...@gmail.com>, gb...@virginia.edu <gb...@virginia.edu>, Kenney Chan <Kenne...@microsoft.com>, Christiane Hagedorn <christian...@hpi.de>, Laemmler, Michaela <michaela...@sap.com>, Link, Clemens <clemen...@sap.com>, Zauke, Eva <eva....@sap.com>, Eckart Modrow <eckart...@mathematik.uni-goettingen.de>, Joachim Wedekind <j.wed...@iwm-tuebingen.de>, Peter Lukacovic <peter_l...@outlook.com>

Folks,

last night we installed Snap! v5.4,

https://github.com/jmoenig/Snap/releases/tag/v5.4.0

featuring 3 noteworthy novelties:

1) Support for handling and exporting pen trails as vector graphics

you can now turn our generative artwork into and SVG to use it on a high-definition poster, plot it on the watercolor bot, manufacture parts on a wire bender or laser cutter, stitch it on an embroidery machine, and even use it as an SVG-costume within Snap! itself. This has long been on our list and I was recently motivated to think about a solution when I attended Joachim's vernissage of wonderful algorithmic art at the Leibnitz Knowledge Lab in Tübingen.

Here's a very short (silent) demo: https://youtu.be/sU1pNsh5IB8

2) An API for embedding Snap! into online learning platforms

there is now a set of public methods for Snap's IDE that allow other programs to interact with Snap! projects embedded into other web sites. You can programmatically send messages to trigger scripts, and you can specify callbacks to write external sequences where each steps waits for all processes of the previous step to complete (same as Snap's "broadcast and wait"). You can also specify multiple message listeners that allow an external program to get notified and react to events triggered within Snap!. And you can programmatically access a project's global variables.

The use case for this API is embedding interactive quizzes, simulations and widgets that are made with Snap! into MOOCs like openSAP/openHPI, edX, UVA's SCALE adaptive learning platform.

This has also long been on our wish list, and I frankly needed the exchange with UVA professors Bill Ferster and Glenn Bull in our Snap! forum to think about it in a different way than I did before. It'll be fun and interesting to see where this beginning leads to.

Here's a link to the API documentation: https://github.com/jmoenig/Snap/blob/master/API.md

3) A new Slovak translation

Don't we love open-source? Peter Lukacovic is a Slovak hacker and wanted to introduce his 9 year nephew Jakob to programming. He decided to use Snap! but found out that a Slovak translation was missing. So he sat down and wrote it as a Christmas present to Jakob! How could I not release this in time for the holidays! :-)

Thank you, all of you who have contributed to this release, and Happy / Snappy holiday to y'all!

Cheers,

Jens

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