Strype has a new way of inserting frames: typing for frame insertion.

Frame-based editing has been around for some years, and was first implemented in the Stride language, within the Greenfoot environment. Strype inherited most of the semantics of user interaction for the insertion and manipulation of frames from that system.

The latest release of Strype, however, introduces a significant departure in how frames are inserted. There are now three ways to create a new frame at the location of the frame cursor: clicking with the mouse, using a shortcut key sequence, or just typing the frame keyword.

The second option – which was achieved by just typing a shortcut key previously – now requires a key sequence. Where a user typed [i] for an if-statement before, they now type the sequence [space]-[i] ([TAB] will work as well as the space key).

The most interesting option is the third: Users can now just start typing “if “ and the text will be recognised and automatically be converted into an if-frame.

Look out for discussion of this new feature in the forum discussions. More detail will be available there.