A new release of Kojo is out. Here are the highlights:
- Minor enhancements to the Pictures feature, in the form of the following new transformations:
- axes – turns on local coordinate axes for a picture. This helps while assembling a composite picture out of smaller pictures.
- rotp – rotate’s a picuture about a given point (as opposed to the origin of the local coordinate system for the picture).
- flipX, flipY – flips a picture over around the (local) X or Y axis.
- Support for two additional unit lengths – Centimeters and Inches. You get this going by putting the following lines at the top of your script:
setUnitLength(Cm) // or setUnitLength(Inch).
// setUnitLength(Pixel) is the default
clear()
Note that actual lengths on the screen might be a little bit off, depending on the accuracy of the screen DPI (Dots per inch) information available to Kojo. Regardless of that, this feature (along with Pictures) should give kids good practice in working with fractional lengths, and rational numbers and their decimal representations.
I’ll have an article out soon – describing how to use these features to make a non-trivial shape…
As always, the new version is available from the Kojo Download Page. Enjoy!
The Kojo Learning Environment 