I’m going to be adding to this post, but I wanted to give you all primary links to the text editors I’ll be using tomorrow (9/3/14) ASAP. I’d like everyone to try and download/get one of these working before next Tuesday’s class (9/9/14).
I’ll go over any issues people are having after we finish our homework discussion on Alan Kay at the beginning of class (again: 9/9).
Atom
Gedit
https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Gedit
Notepad
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/open-notepad#1TC=windows-7
Emacs
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
From Wikipedia article on text editors:
Plain text files vs. word processor files[edit]
There are important differences between plain text files created by a text editor and document files created by word processors such asPages,[importance?] Microsoft Word, and WordPerfect.
- A plain text file uses a simple character set such as ASCII to represent numbers, letters, and a small number of symbols. The onlynon-printing characters in the file that can be used to format the text are newline, tab, and formfeed.
- Word processor documents generally contain formatted text, such as enabling text to appear in boldface and italics, to use multiplefonts, and to be structured into columns and tables. These capabilities were once associated only with desktop publishing, but are now available in the simplest word processor.
- Marked up plain text files contain a combination of human-readable text and markup tags, e.g., web pages are plain text with HTMLtags to achieve formatting.
Word processors were developed to allow formatting of text for presentation on a printed page, while text produced by text editors is generally used for other purposes, such as input data for a computer program.
When both formats are available, the user must select with care. Saving a plain text file in a word-processor format adds formatting information that can make the text unreadable by a program that expects plain text. Conversely, saving a word-processor document as plain text removes any formatting information.
Markdown Tutorial
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HTML Tutorial
http://www.inform.umd.edu/UMS+State/UMD-Projects/MCTP/Technology/handouts/html.html#Graphics
HTML Cheat Sheet
http://www.cheat-sheets.org/saved-copy/html-cheat-sheet.png
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CSS Tutorial
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/CSS/Getting_started
CSS Generator
http://jdstiles.com/java/ssgen.html
I’d like everyone to try using some form of computational syntax to keep track of their project development.
EX: Let’s say you are wanting to take some of your fashion illustration into an image editor, and add some textures to your design. Before you even start messing with the graphics editor it is a good idea to start logging your progress, so when you are turning in your final deliverable you can basically just clean up your log and turn it in.
As we think about the text editor, I also just want us to be thinking about workflow:
Your midterm template will most likely appear on its own page on the blog sometime next week. It will be a downloadable markdown file. At minimum you will need to know how to open a markdown file in a text editor (which is about as easy as it gets)
