The Snap! Reference Manual

Read at docs.snap.berkeley.edu (Original PDF)

The reference manual for the Snap! programming language. (GitHub)

Note

The web manual is a "translation" of the original PDF, which was last largely updated for Snap! 8. We're first working on the making the web version readable, then we'll update the content to match recent Snap! releases.

Citing Snap! and the Snap! Manual

To cite the manual specifically:

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16892852

Harvey, B., & Mönig, J. (2022). Snap! Reference Manual. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16892852

@book{harvey_2022_16892853,
  author       = {Harvey, Brian and
                  Mönig, Jens},
  title        = {Snap! Reference Manual},
  publisher    = {Zenodo},
  year         = 2022,
  month        = aug,
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.16892852},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16892852},
}

To cite Snap! in general, please use the following citation:

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15460068

Mönig, J., & Harvey, B. (2025). Snap! (latest). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15460068

@software{monig_2025_15460069,
  author       = {Mönig, Jens and
                  Harvey, Brian},
  title        = {Snap!},
  month        = may,
  year         = 2025,
  publisher    = {Zenodo},
  version      = {latest},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.15460068},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15460068},
}

These DOI's always point to the latest version of the manual and Snap! software, respectively. You can visit Zenodo to cite a specific version if you need to.

Authors

Brian Harvey, Jens Mönig, Michael Ball, Jadge Hügle, Victoria Phelps, Mary Fries

Quarto

This version of the Snap! manual is built using Quarto.

Brief installation guide

You need:

• Quarto
• Pandoc
• LaTeX

macOS:

brew install quarto
brew install pandoc
brew install mactex-no-gui

It is also recommended to install the Quarto VSCode extension.

Building the book

While writing content:

quarto preview

This will automatically build the web version and display it in the browser. Your webpage will automatically refresh as you save changes to files.

To compile the PDF and final version:

quarto render [--to pdf | --to html]

Writing Style

Please read STYLEGUIDE.md

VSCode and Editing

• Use the GitHub Codespace link to edit the book in the browser. https://quarto.org/docs/visual-editor/vscode/

Document Conversion

If you are making large updates to the md structure, it may be worth working on the script to convert the Word document to markdown. The script assumes you have pandoc installed and available in your path.

cd _support/conversion
ruby convert-word-doc.rb

This conversion script dumps content into conversion/chapters/ and then copies it into the content/ folder. These have been moved to the top of the repo so the URLs in the compiled site are nicer.

Published Book

The website is hosted on GitHub pages, compiled by the quarto.yml workflow.

License

AGPL, CC-BY-NC-SA