Office of Digital Humanities

Computers & the Humanities 210

Fundamentals Exam Review

The exam is worth 100 points and will cover Revolution fundamentals, as taught in class to this point in the semester. It will consist of a stack which you must edit/modify to specifications section, as well as address a few select questions. For this examination you are welcome to use any resources provided within the Rev environment, but no external notes, and of course, no consulting other students.

Note: This review is neither intended nor designed to be comprehensive. Rather, it is provided as stimulus to further study. You may benefit by reviewing quizzes and readings, as well as your own notes. In the readings, pay particular attention to the Objectives at the beginning of each lesson. It would be a good idea to spend some time with Revolution to make sure you know the interface well, and that you are becoming comfortable using it.

Useful Review Topics:

Basic programming concepts:

• Know what these concepts mean and why they are important in programming:
• Sequence of commands
• Conditional statements/if then structures
• Looping or repeat structures
• What is pseudocode?

Basic Revolution environment definitions to know:

• Palette
• Toolbar
• Menu Bar
• Stack
• Card
• Control Object (field, button, graphic, image, etc.)
• Property
• Group

Basic scripting definitions/keywords to know:

• Script
• Message Handler
• Event/Message
• Common Scripting Commands and Keywords
  • go
  • put
  • get/set
  • hide/show
  • enable/disable
  • target/me

Authoring Environment

• What are the common tools and their functions? What are the basic objects?
• What is the tool to view an object's properties? Name three ways to access this tool.
• What are the shortcut keys for navigating among cards? What about for creating a new card?

Objects

• How do you create/move/copy/delete an object?
• What are some common properties that most/all objects share? What kinds of properties are unique to certain objects?
• How are properties changed?
• How do you align objects?
• How do you group objects, and why would this be desirable?
  • What is a "background" group? (See the "Behave like a background" checkbox in the group property inspector.)

Scripts/RevTalk

• How do you access a script? What shortcuts can help you quickly access a script?
• What's the relationship between a script and a handler?
• What is the basic form of a handler?
• Name some common events/messages that can be handled. See here also.
• Functions: date, time, etc.
  (What's the time and what's the long time?)
• What is the proper utilization of a visual effect? How do you invoke it?

Hierarchy

• How does inheritance work in creating objects? What properties are inherited, and how is that to your advantage?
• How does event hierarchy work? What happens if an object doesn't have a handler for a message?

Revolution Best Practices

• Be familiar with number 1 through 6. Part of the exam is to follow best practices in naming and labeling objects, etc.

Revolution Shortcuts (Knowing these can speed up your work process.)

General Advice

It would be to your benefit to study the readings and the lecture notes that are linked to the schedule (though much pertinent information presented in the lectures themselves is not found in its entirety in the readings). Ensure that you are familiar with what was required in the assignments and how to accomplish the tasks described. Much of the exam is an extrapolation of some of the principles covered in class and the assignments.