Message #1161

From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] First week in 4D
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 15:25:57 -0700

On 9/17/2010 1:24 PM, Brandon Enright wrote:
> "schuma"<mananself@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Sometimes I build long algorithms based on short algorithms.
>> Unfortunately when I record a macro, it is not allowed to call
>> another macro. Here is what I did. I created an empty log file,
>> performed all the turns in the long algorithm including calling
>> macros, and saved the log file. I went into the log file, copied the
>> sequence of moves, pasted it into the macro file, and added certain
>> information like the name of the new macro and reference stickers. I
>> guess some people also do this. But I haven’t found discussion about
>> it. Maybe that’s because I haven’t read much in the archived mails.
> Hey schuma, I do this too. I haven’t seen any discussions about it
> either. The macro format seems human readable enough that this isn’t
> such a bad practice.
>
> For example, I built some log files to demonstrate a couple 3-cycles
> here:
>
> http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/4D_Cubing/message/1074
>
> The commutated commutator macro was just a quick emacs session.
>
> With MC7D there is essentially a sequence "stack" where you can push
> move sequences onto the stack and then pop them off in their inverted
> form.
>
> So if you are making a commutator can do push S, push X, push Y, pop X,
> pop Y, pop S and get [S, (X,Y) S’].
>
> Andrey mentioned the idea here:
> http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/4D_Cubing/message/915
> and then implemented it an documented it here:
> http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/4D_Cubing/message/927
>
> I think MC4D could benefit from this feature more than macro nesting.
> Both would be useful though. I’ve tried to work on MC4D in the past
> but I never could get Eclipse setup right to build the project. I need
> to bug Roice and Melinda about it in a few weeks when I have more free
> time.
>
> Brandon

Nested macros are definitely in the MC4D wish-list. Hacking the macro
files is a clever workaround. I definitely would have loved this feature
while performing my one and only solution to the 3^4. :-) This is issue
61 <http://code.google.com/p/magiccube4d/issues/detail?id=61> in the
issue tracker. I’ve added some comments there from this thread and
bumped it’s priority to major. We would /love /it if Brandon or any
other programmers in the group would like to help work on the code.
Please message me privately if you need help building the project. Roice
is probably the person to ask about connecting to the project’s source
control system.

-Melinda