musteguide for beginners

Hei

jatketaan keskustelua aloittelijan oppaasta - eikö Reijon paperista
http://www.survo.fi/muste/publications/sund2011_muste_yearbook.pdf

(kpl 2.3 Working with Muste)  - olisi hyvä lähtökohta.
Ts. aloitusruudun kuva, ja sen osien selittäminen - sitten
fiksuja linkkejä lisäopastuksiin.
Lisää siihen vain vähän nappulatekniikkaa ja yleisiä sääntöjä töiden hallinnasta
yms perusasiaa.


Ehkä kpl 3:n asia CO-OPERATION BETWEEN MUSTE AND R
olisikin  jo sitten toisen guiden paikka -
:JVa

Suurin piirtein noin varmasti olisi hyvä lähteä liikkeelle.
Reijon STS-jutun jälkeen on Musteen ilmiasu muuttunut.
Valikoista on hyvä lähteä liikkeelle, mutta korostaa heti,
että niiden merkitys on lähinnä alussa; "using the real interface"
on varsinainen tavoite, kunhan pääsee alkuun.

Seminaarin ja Kannelmäen kokouksen pohjalta luonnostelin tällaista:

Getting started with Muste
--------------------------

1  Welcome to Muste!

- some basic motivation for a new user
- brief intro: what is Muste, and what is it used for
- editorial environment: working with a text editor,
  combining the input and output efficiently and uniquely,
  documenting the steps of work to be easily repeated
  (even automatically)

1.1 Historical remarks (briefly)

- Survo, S.Mustonen's lifework since the 1960s
- editorial interface (Mustonen 1979), a real innovation
- Muste: an open source R package (Sund 2009-)

1.2 Getting started (from SCRATCH)

- a few simple menus for helping the beginner
  - aim: working with the Muste editor without the menus!
- simple undo (Edit menu): try whatever you like and see what happens

- creating a new job/task/project/work/topic/whatever
- returning to a previous job and continuing with it
  - File menu is helpful for these tasks

- some keys needed for managing the edit field:

COPY (alt-F3) - copying a line
INS_LINE (alt-F9) - insert a new line below the current line
DEL_LINE (alt-F10) - delete the current line
... (not too many, not the trivial ones like arrows etc.)

- learning from examples
  - 10 introductory examples (to be carefully selected!)
  - aim: to learn also from existing ("classic") Survo examples
    (1992 book and many other ones), although some tiny
    differences may exist, especially related to environments
    (Windows/Mac/Linux) - Survo exists only in Windows

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Viikonloppuja ja -alkuja!
- Kimmo

Kevät on mennyt vauhdilla, ja on jo vuosittaisen seminaariristeilyn aika. Dokumentoinnista ei ole paljoa (juuri lainkaan) uutta kerrottavaa - valitettavasti! :-(

Kirjoitin tuon edellisen viestin (jota nyt tällä kommentoin) helmikuussa. Maaliskuussa, lennolla Chicagosta Tukholmaan, en saanut unta, ja luonnostelin yhtäkkiä (kynällä ja paperilla) jonkinlaista aloittelijan oppaan johdantotekstiä. Sain jonkin verran tekstiä aikaan aamuyöstä, kun kone lähestyi Norjan rannikkoa. Lopetin juuri ennen laskeutumista Tukholmaan. Puhtaaksi pääsin kirjoittamaan tekstit junassa matkalla Tampereelle kuukautta myöhemmin, huhtikuussa. Kiireisen kevään koko kuva! :-/

Tässä nuo luonnosmaiset tekstinpätkät nyt tänne, ehkä niistä jotain käyttökelpoista saisi?

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The Muste Editor:

It is like a spreadsheet, but without pre-determined cells. In a way, each character forms its own cell.

You can move anywhere in the edit field, whether there is text or not, and start writing numbers or text.

The same edit field serves for the input and output of various operations.

Any text being output of some operation may serve as the input of some other operation, either as such or edited by the user.

In addition to the text output in the edit field, many operations produce output in external objects like data files, matrix files, graphics files. Also these objects may serve as input to subsequent operations.

The edit field can be considered to have multiple dimensions: the two main dimensions being the horizontal and vertical editing directions. An extra dimension (or layer) formed by the shadow lines, which support each line (and each character) with various special functions. Still another dimension is the most striking feature of the editor: an activation (w. double click or Esc) turns any piece of text to an operation that takes its input from the edit field and produces back some output. One of the simplest examples will demonstrate this extraordinary, intuitive and seamless feature.

Let us assume that we have written some text on some lines in the edit field. As a part of the text we have included an expression of 1+2+3+5+8+13+21+34=    and we would like to know the result of it.

What would You do? Find a calculator? Calculate the sum manually (in your head) and re-checking the result once or twice to make sure that it is correct?

While you are seeking your calculator (on your desktop, either on the computer or in your room), I (as a more experienced Survo user) already have the result written back in the edit field. How come?

Well, I just pressed Esc, and Survo computed the sum for me and wrote it conveniently right after the equal sign: 1+2+3+5+8+13+21+34=87

Note that the expression did not vanish/disappear anywhere, it is still there (exactly in the same place) and can be easily edited, copied or whatever. After the activation that just took place (by the Esc key), the expression and its results are merely a piece of text.

What exactly happened here? PAREMMIN JÄLJEMPÄNÄ: Everything went quickly and suddenly I just had the right result there and I could continue writing, without disturbing my thoughts a bit or wasting timely putting those numbers in a calculator, getting the result and writing it back in the edit field. Besides, typical calculators destroy the expression after calculation and only give the end result, which may easily lead to an error that would go unnoticed and spoil the day later.

Technically speaking, when I activated the expression, Survo took action by reading the immediate environment around the cursor. It noticed the equal sign and concluded that I want to calculate something. Hence it called its calculation subroutine to take care of the task. That routine then read and interpreted the expression and proceeded with the computation. Finally, it wrote the result back in the location pointed by the cursor. All this happened in a fraction of a second. What is remarkable, is that my work flow did not get interrupted. Instead, I got the result immediately and could continue thinking and writing.

The above is a miniature example of the way of working in the Survo editor. As such, it shows the ultimate power and efficiency of the Survo editor and the seamless integration of input and output.

All the operations of Survo work similarly: when activated, they suddenly change the plain text chunks to various forms of input, causing the Survo editor to find suitable means of processing the input and writing back some output according to the needs and directions of the user.

The operations to be activated may consist of various sorts: mathematical expressions (like above), statistical functions, graphical work schemes, edition commands, web links, matrix computations, data managing, job control etc.



Survo keys on different platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux):

[table]


Rules of the game
- border line etc.

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