[comp.lang.misc] Definition of Logo

ng@pur-phy (Nicholas J. Giordano) (07/26/88)

I have been getting interested in Logo, and would like to find a good
reference on the language.  Pointers to ANY good book would be much
appreciated, but I am especially interested in finding a "definition"
of the language, much as K&R provides "the" specification of C (at least
prior to the ANSI standard).

Many thanks in advance.

Nick

ken@aiva.ed.ac.uk (Ken Johnson) (07/29/88)

In article <1321@pur-phy> ng@newton.physics.purdue.edu.UUCP (Nicholas J. Giordano) writes:
>
>I have been getting interested in Logo, and would like to find a good
>reference on the language.  Pointers to ANY good book would be much
>appreciated, but I am especially interested in finding a "definition"
>of the language, much as K&R provides "the" specification of C (at least
>prior to the ANSI standard).
>
>Many thanks in advance.
>
>Nick


There is no `standard' for Logo, and Seymour Papert, who has the
copyright of the name, is quite happy for Logo to grow organically, with
various different syntaxes available from various different
manufacturers.  However, since the manufacturer with the largest sale is
LCSI, you could try a book like `Logo for the Apple 2' for a summary of
their syntax.  I happen to think RM Nimbus Logo's syntax is better, but
that's because I wrote it. 

I think the best tests on the language and its use are the `Computer
science Logo style' series by Brian Harvey, published by MIT Press. 
Harold Abelson and Andrea di Sessa's `Turtle geometry' is a close second
and also superb reading. 

Logo is most widely used in schools, and there is an excellent
literature on using Logo in schools.  Two books that stand out are Allan
Martin's `Learning and teaching with Logo' (publ.  Croom Helm) and
Ronnie Goldstein's `Making Logo work' (Basil Blackwell).  There are also
a lot of crappy books which never get beyond simple Turtle geometry and
whose authors couldn't write a decent program to save their skins. 

There are two active user's groups, one in the U.S., the National Logo
Exchange, run by people at the University of Oregon, and the other is
the British Logo User Group, run by people in Walsall, UK. 

I don't know of any other Logo user groups in the E.E.C; I'd be
interested to hear of any. 

-- 
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Address: AI Applications Institute, The University, EDINBURGH
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Email:   k.johnson@ed.ac.uk