While I haven’t been doing a whole lot of work in actual ActionScript code for Fnk in the past few days, I’ve been writing and implementing one of the most needed features in the editor: Fnk lessons.

Fnk lessons are just a sequence of Patches that aim to teach a user about the editor and its language in a brief way. Since this kind of programming paradigm is a bit out of the ordinary, some people might have trouble wrapping their head around it at first; as such, they’re designed to introduce a topic at a time and go from there to more advanced features. They’re available right from the “File” menu (this may change to the “Help” menu in the future).

Fnk (build 3478) - Lessons menu

Lessons won’t go too far – they’ll end around lesson 20 or so (the current build is at lesson #16 now). They’ll introduce the language’s basic concepts and features, but for more advanced topics, users will have the option to learn from sample Patches or to check the reference for each node. That way, instead of forcing the whole content down the user’s throat, Fnk lets the user decide on what he wants to use or learn next once he got the basics understood.

Finally, as of now, lessons are available in English only. I’m thinking on how to implement localization for patch comments so they can be loaded and displayed using the user’s selected language.