New Tutorials

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ColorMeImpressed
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue May 05, 2009 5:07 pm

New Tutorials

Post by ColorMeImpressed »

So, I'm going to start making some tutorials for the CF3 syntax and all the new features that come with it, but I'm lacking any specific direction besides working off the model used in the Make magazine tutorial way back when. If you guys have suggestions for me, please reply and let me know. Thanks!

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kipling
Posts: 91
Joined: Wed Jun 18, 2008 2:36 am

Re: New Tutorials

Post by kipling »

My preference for this sort of things is to engage in some social engineering!

By this I mean providing good illustrative examples of the type of thing that context free is good at, and was originally designed around. There are other languages & interpreters around that can do graphics well, but to me Context Free is about how a few simple rules can have complex outcomes, usually through recursion.

This message is easily lost with CF3 being more like a general purpose programming language than CF2. Many of us (me included) have experimented with how far this can be pushed, by including a lot of calculations (e.g. Mandelbrot sets) or a lot of data (anything tagged "maximal") in a way that might make a nice picture, or a nice intellectual challenge (how can I get a picture of Alan Turing into a phinary spiral) but if it was reduced back to an equivalent CF2 bit of code would just be something like a single rule with a long sequence of "put this pixel here" commands.

So yes, the loops and functions of CF3 do have a role, but a tutorial, particularly an introductory tutorial, should focus on what CF can do surprisingly well if you don't try to control every pixel.

If you want some draft CF2 tutorial pages that I started a long time ago, have a look at http://www.contextfreeart.org/mediawiki ... er:Kipling There are also some templates there that make the inclusion of gallery examples easy.

Saotex
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Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2019 9:11 am

Re: New Tutorials

Post by Saotex »

Can you help me with the mandelbrot Set, I don't know how to realise it in Context Free. If you could send me your version I would be really happy. Thanks.

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MtnViewJohn
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Re: New Tutorials

Post by MtnViewJohn »

Here are three.

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