HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: mills@athena.lkg.dec.com (George Mills)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
Subject: Re: HELP WANTED installing DOSLOGO, MSWLOGO
Keywords: doslogo, mswlogo
Date: 8 Oct 92 14:31:52 GMT

s911190@yallara.cs.rmit.OZ.AU (Kym R Thompson) writes:

>I am having some problems setting up DOSLOGO and MSWLOGO 2.0.
>They run, BUT:

>DOSLOGO - SET EDITOR=<myeditor> is just ignored !

Works fine for me edlin, DOS 5.0 edit or emacs.
Note that it really should be termed as "edit command".
What ever you put there will be executed as a dos command.
For example if I say "edit foobar" in dos to edit a file,
then my set command would be, SET EDITOR=edit. If my edit command
was "C:\emacs\bin\emacs foobar" from dos then my set command would
be set EDITOR=c:\emacs\bin\emacs" (NOT set EDITOR=emacs). 
Also in logo to edit a file you say *edit "myprog (that's one
double quote and no extention).

>        - new files all end up in the \LOGO directory,
>          rather than in \LOGO\WORK - how do I tell the
>          program where to put them ?

DOS logo uses only the current working directory that you started
logo from.

>        - (presumably related) a message on start-up reports
>          (correctly) that there is no LOGO.INI file -
>          what do I put in this ?

I should explained this. But if your "scroll" area is working correctly
then ignore it. It basically allows you to send "Borland graphics codes"
directly to the borland graphics library in case I messed up on some
monitors. It was needed in early versions for VGA work but it now does the
right thing for CGA/EGA/VGA.

>MSWLOGO - The HELP command produces the message "Help file
>          missing ...", even though it (LOGO.HLP) is there !

Note that it looks in the area the logo.exe is located.
I've never heard anyone have this problem before. logo.exe
and logo.hlp must be in the same directory.

>        - I keep having to reach for the rodent to reactivate
>          the command entry cursor in the "Commander" -
>          is there something I am missing, or is this just
>          the way this system works ?

I do need to clean this up a bit. As someone suggested up/down arrow
keys would make it so that you don't have to leave the input box so
often in the first place (and less need for mouse). I have to be careful
about having the command window "pull" the focus in to strongly or
I'll get opposite complaints.

>        - Once a "Status" window has been displayed, how can 
>          I get rid of it again (other than just dragging it
>          offscreen) ?

Oh come on, try looking at the status button once the status window
is poped up.

>Kym Thompson - s911190@yallara.cs.rmit.oz.au
>Computer Studies, Nth. Metro College of TAFE, Melbourne, Australia
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
From: scafati@thor.med.ge.com (Victor-charles Scafati 4-6784 MR Srv)
Subject: Re: HELP WANTED installing DOSLOGO, MSWLOGO
Keywords: doslogo, mswlogo
Organization: GE Medical Systems
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 92 18:12:27 GMT

In article <mills.718554712@dialup.athena.lkg.dec.com>, mills@athena.lkg.dec.com (George Mills) writes:
|> s911190@yallara.cs.rmit.OZ.AU (Kym R Thompson) writes:
|> 
|> >I am having some problems setting up DOSLOGO and MSWLOGO 2.0.
|> >They run, BUT:
|> 

|> 
|> >MSWLOGO - The HELP command produces the message "Help file
|> >          missing ...", even though it (LOGO.HLP) is there !
|> 
|> Note that it looks in the area the logo.exe is located.
|> I've never heard anyone have this problem before. logo.exe
|> and logo.hlp must be in the same directory.
|> 

I hate to correct the author of the software but...

When I was fooling around with mswlogo, I had this problem, and I solved it by 
adding "set logopath=e:\logo" (which was my logo directory) to my autoexec.bat.
The README file told me to do that if my logo directory was anything but c:\logo.
Why don't you try this Kym?  I think that it will help.


-- 
________________________________________________________________________________
                        |     The views expressed herein do not     |    Fear
 Victor-charles Scafati |   necessarily represent the views of the  |     no 
 scafati@mr.med.ge.com  |  author, let alone his employer or client |    Art!
________________________________________________________________________________
From: smith@sctc.com (Rick Smith)
Subject: Re: um, maybe this is a silly question
Organization: SCTC
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 14:45:44 GMT

I wrote:

>>I suspect the "right" way to teach programming is to start with
>>recursion as the essential iterative technique, and then teach
>>how to convert from recursive to iterative as an engineering task.

And matt@volga.Berkeley.EDU (Matt Wright) writes:

>You mean, start with recursion as the essential iterative (and
>non-iterative) technique, and then teach how to do tail-recursion
>elimination when you take a compiler construction class in college.  :-)

Pretty much, but it's not enough just to deal with tail recursion.  If
people are using recursion as casually as Fortran coders use DO, then
they'll be producing lots of functions that don't convert directly
into tail recursion. Thus, they need to learn how to move the stuff
off of the stack (where it goes in recursion) and into data structures
with defined limits. A good example is, in fact, what gets taught in
some compiler classes: how to implement recursive functions for
parsing by using production rules, grammars, and such.

Most problem solving that people routinely do shouldn't require the
level of engineering required to convert recursion into interation.
You only need to do it if you're in a situation where you're worried
about reliability in the face of an uncontrolled range of potential
inputs. People writing computational expressions for spreadsheets, for
example, should do fine just with recursion and good stuff like MAP. I
always wanted to see a good spreadsheet or DBMS with a MAP function.

Rick.

p.s. to the original poster: isn't it great how much commentary the
     "maybe a silly question" produced, and at such a level?
From: omori@ee.fit.edu (Ricardo Omori)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
Subject: Logo sources
Date: 15 Oct 92 23:41:02 GMT
Article-I.D.: yacht.omori.719192462
Organization: Florida Tech, CP/EE Dept.

Does anybody know where I could find (FTP site?)
C or Pascal sources to create a logo-like
environment? Well, actually to compile a logo
editor/screen.

Please send me any info to
omori@ee.fit.edu

Thank you very much,
Ricardo
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
Subject: Re: LOGO riddle/task/thing to think about
From: dkresse@eis.calstate.edu (David Kressen)
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 21:00:08 GMT
Organization: Calif State Univ/Electronic Information Services

Ok, Harvey:  That's what I did, and you are absolutely right!  My nomitor
is 13" RGB; resolution 640 horiz pixels by 480 "vertical lines"  (don't
they call 'em pixels both ways?)  Scaling down to the portion of the
screen used by the turtle, that's 495 X 221 pixels - exactly the same as
turtlesteps, after allowing for your "fencepost" effect.

Thanks for your clear explanation of the 3/2 vs 4/1 fd count!

Dave Kressen
From: stan@edsr.eds.com (Stan Webb)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
Subject: Re: um, maybe this is a silly question
Date: 12 Oct 92 15:55:46 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: EDS Research

In article <1b44g5INNqq1@agate.berkeley.edu>, bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey) writes:
> The answer
> 		make "x 12
> is correct but really only answers part of the question.
> 

[ nice exposition on functional versus procedural programming deleted...]

BUT...

As one of those maligned C programmers (actually, I use C++ almost all the
time these days - hey, maybe he's not talking about me after all... :-),
I'm bothered by the casualness with which most FP people ignore the notion
of "state".

Oh well, never mind.  This discussion doesn't really belong here anyway.

Stan
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
Subject: Re: 2 Questions: express logo ? hebrew on obejct logo ?
From: dkresse@eis.calstate.edu (David Kressen)
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 20:24:33 GMT
Organization: Calif State Univ/Electronic Information Services

Brian,  Do you know if Logo Express has an internet mail connection?  I'd
like to use it, but to reach a wider audience than just other Logo Express
computers.

Thanks,  Dave Kressen

Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
From: smith@sctc.com (Rick Smith)
Subject: Re: um, maybe this is a silly question
Organization: SCTC
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 16:34:21 GMT

Re: iteration vs recursion in C, Scheme, and Logo

In my own humble experience the choice seems to lie on whether the
programmer believes a particluar expressive style "works" in a given
language. That's a function both of training and experience.

It's not enough to know that a particular form of expression (say,
recursive forumlations of algorithms) is supposed to work in a
language, one also has to be familiar with how the behavior manifests
itself, especially at bug/crash time. That's why the guy griped about
needing "1 meg of stack space" in C to allow recursion.

Having spent most of my professional life switching randomly between
recursive and iterative formulations, I tend to lean towards recursion
when I need to express something clearly and concisely. I really think
recursion is easier to use than iteration when trying to frame a problem
solution. 

However, recursion has pretty nasty boundary behavior, i.e., when you
reach the limits of your machinery, recursive solutions suffer stack
overflow. It's hard to write code that can self diagnose the problem
that caused the stack overflow (which action or user expression really
caused it?) and recover in a clean manner. Thus, production programs that
get used by others generally must use recursion very, very carefully
if at all.

I think recursion is a terrific teaching and reasoning tool. It
encourages the sort of problem abstraction that leads to modular
programming style.  It lets you solve more problems with fewer
variables.  The only 'problem' with it is that it's not taught at a
sufficiently introductory level, with a few notable exceptions. It's
going to take a few educational generations for that to change, if it
ever does.

I suspect the "right" way to teach programming is to start with
recursion as the essential iterative technique, and then teach
how to convert from recursive to iterative as an engineering task.

Rick.
smith@sctc.com          arden hills, minnesota
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
From: A4422DAB@vm.univie.ac.at (Erich Neuwirth)
Subject: Re: um, maybe this is a silly question
Organization: University of Vienna
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 19:49:32 GMT


>/0st problem solving that people routinely do shouldn't require the
>level of engineering required to convert recursion into interation.
>You only need to do it if you're in a situation where you're worried
>about reliability in the face of an uncontrolled range of potential
>inputs. People writing computational expressions for spreadsheets, for
>example, should do fine just with recursion and good stuff like MAP. I
>lways wanted to see a good spreadsheet or DBMS with a MAP function.

EXCEL has array formulas, and that essetially means formulas can be
used in a MAP way.
From: ergo@netcom.com (Isaac Rabinovitch)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
Subject: Re: um, maybe this is a silly question
Date: 11 Oct 92 19:21:28 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: UESPA


Hey Ocie, that wasn't such a silly question after all!

In <1b44g5INNqq1@agate.berkeley.edu> bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey) writes:

>The answer
>		make "x 12
>is correct but really only answers part of the question.

>In languages like BASIC and C, there is a heavy emphasis on the style of
>programming in which instructions are executed in sequence, and most of
>those instructions change the values of variables.  (In BASIC this is
>because the language is not capable of any alternative; in C, it's because
>the can't-teach-an-old-dog programmers aren't.)

>In Logo it's not very common to use MAKE at all, or to change the value
>of a variable in any other way.  Instead, Logo emphasizes functional
>programming, in which the computation progresses when a function calls
>another function.  (The function can call itself; that's recursion, which
>Logo uses instead of conventional looping structures like WHILE.)

>Example: Euclid's GCD algorithm, both ways:
>.....

This raises two questions:  First, Why does your book (*Computer Science 
Logo Style*) spend so much time on make and on "instruction sequence"
programs?  Second, how do you justify the abolition of assignment and
iteration to someone who is used to using them?  I don't mean the
fancy doctrines about denotational elegance and all that.  Few
programmers are interested in that stuff, assuming they can understand
it.  What are the *practical* advantages?

Incidentally, you probably should make it clear that you're talking
about a specific kind of recursion, namely tail recursion.  Most C
programmers will look at your Euclid's example, scratch their heads,
and say, "Gee, that's OK if you can set aside a meg for the stack.
These list guys sure don't know how to program in the real world...."
-- 

	ergo@netcom.com 			Isaac Rabinovitch
        {apple,amdahl,claris}!netcom!ergo	Santa Cruz, CA
	
	You will be assimilated.  Resistance is futile.
From: bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
Subject: Re: 2 Questions: express logo ? hebrew on obejct logo ?
Date: 15 Oct 1992 22:05:33 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: anarres.cs.berkeley.edu

dkresse@eis.calstate.edu (David Kressen) writes:
>Brian,  Do you know if Logo Express has an internet mail connection?  I'd
>like to use it, but to reach a wider audience than just other Logo Express
>computers.

Logo Express is just a communication program.  It doesn't determine which
machines you communicate with; that depends, as always, on what machines you
have access to.  If you have an Internet account then you could use Logo
Express to call up the machine on which you have your account.  Or you can
call some commercial service such as Compuserve that provides an Internet
mail gateway.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
From: quigley@acs.ucalgary.ca (Martyn Thomas Quigley)
Subject: Re: um, maybe this is a silly question
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 92 03:23:27 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: The University of Calgary, Alberta

smith@sctc.com (Rick Smith) writes:

>Most problem solving that people routinely do shouldn't require the
>level of engineering required to convert recursion into interation.

Don't Lisp compilers routinely convert tail recursion source into 
iterative code?  I always thought so, but...should we do it ourselves?

Martyn
From: bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
Subject: Re: 2 Questions: express logo ? hebrew on obejct logo ?
Date: 15 Oct 1992 04:10:00 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: anarres.cs.berkeley.edu

1.  Logo Express is an extension of LogoWriter with telecommunications
software.  It can be used to call other Logo Express computers or
mainframes.  It's from LCSI.

	Logo Computer Systems, Inc.
        3300 Cote Vertu Road, Suite 201
        Montreal, Quebec, Canada H4R 2B7

        514 331-7090
	800 321-LOGO

2.  I don't know about the Hebrew font problem, but I do know that
Object Logo uses a special font for its Listener window to achieve
the lightface/boldface combination without font switching.  That
might possibly be relevant.  Anyway, you should ask Paradigm.

	Paradigm Software, Inc
	P.O. Box 2995
	Cambridge, MA  02238

	617 576-7675
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
From: kahn@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Ken Kahn)
Subject: Re: um, maybe this is a silly question
Organization: Stanford University CSLI
 <1bf1qlINNgj5@agate.berkeley.edu><92Oct14.033708.24102@acs.ucalgary.ca><1992Oct14.175140.12286@cbfsb.cb.att.com> <MAX.92Oct15085643@Kolmogorov.gac.edu>
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 15:59:21 GMT

I enjoyed your "loud thinking".  When I read

  Ok, so now I want to write a procedure that could solve any problem of
  this form.  What specifics do I have to give it to tell it which
  problem of this form to solve?  Well, I could give it the numbers to
  multiply together. ...  No, that's silly, there could be arbitrarily
  many of them.  I certainly don't want to say that the way to compute
  100!  is by multiplying together 100 times 99 times ... all day.

I thought that it wasn't so "silly".  To my way of thinking it is perhaps the
most natural of the bunch.  Namely, write or use something that will generate
a list of numbers and then multiply them together.  This is the APL-style of
doing factorial.  I think there is something to be said for programming by
combining generic components.  In this case routines to "generate a list from
1 to n [by inc]" and "apply function to each element in the list" are good
candidates.  I think the primary reason this style of programming (combining
generic elements) is not wide-spread is that, without very sophisticated
compilers, it leads to slow programs.

 -ken
From: quigley@acs.ucalgary.ca (Martyn Thomas Quigley)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
Subject: Re: um, maybe this is a silly question
Date: 14 Oct 92 03:37:08 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: The University of Calgary, Alberta

bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey) writes:

>                                                The original problem is to
>compute n! and instead of getting CLOSER to the solution by computing (n-1)!
>you get FARTHER AWAY by computing x*n! instead.  This turns out to be helpful
>but it's a total rabbit-from-hat.

I've never been comfortable with this, but for a different reason.  Children
invariably start from 1 and work up, they simply do not start from n and
work down.  Ask them.

Martyn
From: bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
Subject: Re: um, maybe this is a silly question
Date: 15 Oct 1992 18:04:46 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: anarres.cs.berkeley.edu

kahn@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Ken Kahn) writes:
>I'd like to understand this better.  My feeling is that the good stuff in
>Computer Science is like the "Total Turtle Trip Theorem".  General/abstract
>knowledge that can be profitably applied when trying to build a program.
>I'll admit that much of CS is concerned with efficiency -- algorithms and
>understanding how interpreters/compilers/operating systems, etc. work -- and
>maybe most of the things kids do (and want to do?) are not constrained by
>execution speed or memory usage.  I dunno.

My concern is not with whether one fact is better than another, e.g., whether
the TTTT is better than loop invariants.  My concern is that the whole idea of
curriculum gets in the way of learning.  Let's not forget that the name of the
TTTT is in part a joke, using a fancy word like "theorem" about something that
kids often notice while drawing turtle pictures.  I don't think any kid or any
teacher ever actually *proves* it!  (But it's not entirely a joke either; part
of the point is precisely that kids can learn the virtue of abstracting a general
proposition from specific cases, so that you can use the general proposition to
create more specific cases later.)

If a teacher walks into class with the idea that today everyone is going to
learn the TTTT, that doesn't feel very "Logo-like" to me.  If a kid is trying
to draw a hexagon and figures out how in a generalizable way, that's great!
(And it's also fine if that kid tells other kids.)

Similarly, if the idea of loop invariants happens to come up because of something
some kid is trying to do, fine.  But if a teacher has in mind to teach loop
invariants, and therefore turns an easy problem (like factorial) into a hard
problem in order to teach The Curriculum, that's a drag.  (Yes, I acknowledge
Max's argument that it isn't really so hard.  But for the sake of argument,
let's suppose we think it is hard.)

I feel this especially strongly about computer programming, because kids just
naturally find so much to *do* with computers, without any need for adults to
impose a curriculum.  When the curriculum people come along, that gets ruined.

One of my standard stories is about one of the high school computer labs I
visited while writing my PhD thesis.  They had recently started teaching the
A.P. Pascal course.  At one point I asked about kids hanging out in the lab
after school, and the teacher proudly (!!) replied that no, kids used to hang
out in the lab, but since they started teaching Computer Science the kids have
learned that programming is unimportant in itself and merely a means to the
end of learning Computer Science.  Gack!
From: bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
Subject: Re: um, maybe this is a silly question
Date: 13 Oct 1992 17:42:45 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: anarres.cs.berkeley.edu

Max Hailperin <max@nic.gac.edu> writes:
|int factorial_product(int x, int n){ /* computes x * n! */
|   if (n == 0)
|     return x;  /* because x * 0! = x * 1 = x */
|   else
|     return factorial_product(x*n, n-1);
|       /* because x * n! = x * (n * (n-1)!) = (x*n) * (n-1)! */
|   }
|
|int Factorial(int n) {
|   return factorial_product(1, n); /* because n! = 1 * n! */
|   }


I agree that this is a debuggable program.  My problem with it is that it's
not something anyone would naturally think of.  The original problem is to
compute n! and instead of getting CLOSER to the solution by computing (n-1)!
you get FARTHER AWAY by computing x*n! instead.  This turns out to be helpful
but it's a total rabbit-from-hat.

Again, if your interest is in loop invariants rather than in factorials,
this is a fine example.  But I think it would be a terrible thing to teach
loop invariants to high school kids.  That's an example of what I call
"turning computer programming into trigonometry" -- making it boring and
confusing and full of facts to memorize, instead of an immediate source
of power.  [Now I'm going to hear from all the irate trig teachers!  :-)]
Newsgroups: comp.lang.logo
From: quigley@acs.ucalgary.ca (Martyn Thomas Quigley)
Subject: Re: um, maybe this is a silly question
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 92 04:25:38 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: The University of Calgary, Alberta

bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey) writes:
>                         But I think it would be a terrible thing to teach
>loop invariants to high school kids.  That's an example of what I call
>"turning computer programming into trigonometry" -- making it boring and
>confusing and full of facts to memorize, instead of an immediate source
>of power.  [Now I'm going to hear from all the irate trig teachers!  :-)]

Bloody right you are.  Your perception of trigonometry may be "boring
and confusing and full of facts to memorize"; if so, that's very sad.
Seems to me that you have missed something important.  You're also
implying your perception is a common perception.  I hope it isn't.
 
But then again, whenever mathematics becomes "boring and confusing 
and full of facts to memorize, instead of an immediate source of 
power" we've all lost, don't you think?  I've spent all my working life
trying to show the opposite.  Have I wasted all that effort, beaten
by a plaititude?

Martyn