New GlowScript forum

[Bruce Sherwood]

It became necessary to change the GlowScript forum to this Google group. The old one, still readable at forum.glowscript.org but no longer in use, did not serve the needs of the community because email notification of new posts was unreliable. It did have the advantage of absolute privacy with respect to your email address, etc., whereas in Google groups you may choose to expose your Google identity.

I've recently had very fruitful discussions of technical matters in various Google groups, which are widely used by technical professionals. In particular, the integration of a Google forum and gmail is seamless. You can for example respond to a post either in the forum or in email if the forum post has been sent to you as a notification.

I hope that this forum better serves the growing community of GlowScript users. I thank Danny Caballero for setting this up.

Bruce Sherwood

[Bruce Sherwood]

For technical reasons, the old forum will be deleted within a few weeks. Below I've copied the notes worth saving, especially those that trace the development history up to the present, or because they include issues of general interest.

New GlowScript version 0.5, October 2011

Now available: GlowScript 0.5, which includes major changes to the graphing machinery and many minor bug fixes. See the Help for the new graphing capabilities.

Programs that start with "GlowScript 0.3" or "GlowScript 0.4" continue to work because packages for those versions are maintained. However, we encourage you to change the first line of older programs to say "GlowScript 0.5". Unless you included graphs in your program, it's likely that you won't have to change anything else.

Added in December 2011: 

Important additions to GlowScript 0.5:

attach_trail lets you specify with a single statement that a trail should be automatically added to a moving object.

attach_arrow lets you specify with a single statement that an arrow should be automatically added to a moving object.

scene.camera.follow lets you specify with a single statement that the camera should follow a moving object (documentation in the Canvases section of the Help).

The Help now includes documentation on these new features and also documents how to add buttons, sliders, and drop-down menus to your program.

scene.mouse.pick() introduced.

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0.6 - new curve object, December 2011

The GlowScript 0.5 Help warned that the curve object would be changed. GlowScript 0.6 has a new curve object that can be conveniently manipulated to add, remove, insert, and clear the points. See the new GlowScript 0.6 Help at glowscript.org for details. Programs that start with "GlowScript 0.5" with the old curve syntax will continue to work, but you're encouraged to upgrade to 0.6.

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LaTeX math displays in 0.6, January 5, 2012

You can now use LaTeX to generate math displays on a GlowScript web page. See the "LaTeX Math Displays" section of the Help.

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Keyboard events, February 9, 2012

Keyboard events have now been implemented in GlowScript 0.7. I was wrong about the possibility of simply using jquery to get such events, because they were being swallowed by GlowScript (in order to watch for ctrl for rotating the camera and alt for zoom). See the Help section on Mouse/Keyboard Events for how to deal with keyboard events.

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Textures in GlowScript 0.7, January 30, 2012

Support of textures has been added to GlowScript. To see what's new, go to glowscript.org and click Help in the upper right corner and on the second pull-down menu choose Textures. There you'll find a description of the new machinery, with links to a couple demo programs.

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Opacity/transparency added to GlowScript 0.7, March 27, 2012

You can now specify the opacity of an object (other than curve, ring, and helix). The following statement creates a cyan-colored box that has low opacity (high transparency):

box( {color.cyan, opacity:0.3 } )

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GlowScript 1.0 - major enhancements, May 30, 2012

GlowScript version 1.0 implements the following:

triangles and quads, based on vertex objects, which make it possible to design your own objects and even change their shape dynamically. Here is an example program.

compound - a group of objects that can be manipulated as though they were one object.

clone - make a copy of an existing object, including a compound.

David Scherer made major contributions to the design of these new features. 

Also, the curve object now permits rapid change of position, size, and orientation, and the array scene.objects now includes label objects.

There has been a small change in how you invoke CoffeeScript, the alternative to JavaScript. You just add "CoffeeScript" to the header line, like this:

GlowScript 1.0 CoffeeScript

You don't need to capitalize. You can just say GlowScript 1.0 coffeescript.

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Graphics card problems, July 6, 2012

Now I'm back. I got a cheap graphics card, MSI R5450 MDIGH. I'm using Tiny Core Linux, a distribution intended to be minimal and modular -- you add what you need. In the last six months they made it relatively easy to add the support for AMD Radeon, and they made it relatively easy to switch to xorg. In less than 2 days of effort I got it all working and GlowScript runs for me!

GlowScript uses WebGL. Various browsers have a WebGL blacklist for some graphics cards, 

http://www.khronos.org/webgl/wiki/BlacklistsAndWhitelists

It appears Chrome on Linux does not allow any Intel or AMD/ATI card. Firefox on Linux disallows a collection of cards but the blacklist can be overridden. The WebGL site says my browser support with Firefox is "experimental" and I might see issues with content. 

http://get.webgl.org/

So far it has worked fine.

[Henri Girard]

My first graphs (after few days of cries ! lol) :

from vpython import *
from numpy import *
scene.width=50
scene.height=50
f1 = gcurve(color=color.cyan)
for x in arange(0, 8.05, 0.1):
    f1.plot(pos=(x,5*cos(2*x)))

[Bruce Sherwood]

The program you have posted isn't a GlowScript VPython program, it's a Jupyter VPython program. As such, it probably makes more sense at present to post Jupyter-related issues to the regular VPython forum. Eventually, when Jupyter VPython becomes mature, it will probably make sense to merge the two forums.

[Henri Girard]

Ah... ok sorry...
I mainly use vpython getting code from gs.

Le vendredi 27 juillet 2012 17:54:43 UTC+2, Bruce Sherwood a écrit :

[dilly...@gmail.com]

Bruce,

I have been a fan of Vpython for a while now and have used many of your examples.

Question: I have a few GlowScripts I would offer to the Examples page.. Could I submit them for consideration ?

Thanks 3Phaseee.com

[Bruce Sherwood]

I would be happy to see your examples.

Bruce

[rexra...@gmail.com]

ok

[rexra...@gmail.com]

HI can you give me some programs to do because i have already done the ball in the box one and balls hitting each other

On Friday, 27 July 2012 21:24:43 UTC+5:30, Bruce Sherwood wrote:

[Bruce Sherwood]

You might study the many examples available at glowscript.org by clicking "Help". 

Bruce