Edward Cherlin wrote:
Have you added your hard-won knowledge to the Wiki pages on Sugar and
Sugarizing?
To be truthful, I'm a little leery of editing Wiki pages. I'm afraid
I'm going to mess up somebody else's hard work. We use a Wiki at the
office but there is an implied ownership for each article and nobody
edits anything without discussing it with the original author. I found
that the best information available was in the Pydoc for the Activity
class, which I only stumbled upon. I've done Java for years so I'm
familiar with JavaDoc but I'm new to python. I was toying with the idea
of writing a sort of manual for rank beginners that would cover things
like how to set up a development environment, how to use Eric, how to
learn python, how to write a python program that runs from the terminal,
basic debugging techniques, how to make a python program into an
activity, etc. I could use my Activities as samples. It would be my
own document, but I wouldn't mind being edited.
The thing is, a lot of my hard-won knowledge would seem laughable if it
was inserted into the Wiki.
Well, we are talking about putting TTS and karaoke-style text marking
in Read. Presumably nearly the same code would work in your activity.
Or we could fold your code for handling Zip files and Gutenberg's lack
of formatting into Read. And we have plenty of pedagogues here to
consult.
When I said my Activity was trivial I wasn't kidding. I basically stick
a GTK label in a scrollable window. I set the background color to
white. I read the file from the Journal. If it ends with .zip I unzip
the contents to a temporaray file, otherwise I work with the file
directly. I read the entire file and make a list of pointers, adding
one every 45 lines. I then load the first 45 lines into the label and
listen for keydown events. Arrow keys and gamepad keys are used to page
forward and backward. I save the current page number as meta info so
you can resume the book where you left off. I will support skipping to
a page with the toolbox. I might support text search. I will probably
support copying text to the clipboard, and I might support adjusting the
font size. I will attempt to make it shareable.
None of this code is anything to write home about, but it does make a
handy etext reader. Adding TTS and Karaoke highlighting to what I have
created would be more trouble than its worth.
I might be of use teaching
children to write simple computer programs.
I started a document on the Wiki, Programming for Children
(activities), and another, Programming with Children (tutorials). Your
input would be most welcome. See the OLPC Publications page for more
suggestions and invitations.
I'll definitely check them out.
James Simmons
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