On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 3:19 AM, Jameson Quinn <[email protected]> wrote: > I will link to this thread (in IAEP) on the GSoC project ideas page. This > page is the primary location where prospective GSoC students will come to > learn about out project, and so I want them to get a feel for our community > discussion of priorities. So please, in this thread, try to be a little bit > more explicit and foot-noted than you would be otherwise, so they can > understand what we're talking about. > > The primary purpose of GSoC, as others have pointed out, is NOT to do the > things we're too busy to get around to. It is primarily a community-building > exercise: to get students engaged in helping Sugar, and get mentors engaged > in passing on knowledge to new community members. If somebody develops an > educational game that only blind 3-year-olds use, but FINISHES it, has a > great time doing it, and becomes a long-term contributing community member, > then that would be a total GSoC success. However, that being said, we'd > still prefer projects that help acheive our highest priorities for Sugar. > > There is no absolute ordering of Sugarlabs' priorities. Different members > will not agree perfectly on what steps will do more to help our educational > mission. So the list below is just my version. Community: Please respond > with your thoughts. Students: I'll link what I can in the list, but I can't > find good links, or even any links, for everything. If one of these ideas > intrigues you, please, come ask in IRC (#sugar on freenode) - we'd love to > try to point you in the right direction, and help you cut your ideas down to > a reasonable GSoC size. > > My first priority is things that will have a strong effect on the long-term > rate of development of Sugar. I'd put just 2 things in that category: easier > sugarizing (primarily from AJAX, Flash, and legacy Linux); and a structure > for sugar unit tests (IMO we will never get good enough software quality for > wide adoption, running on multiple distribution without automated testing). > > My second priority is things that will improve on sugar's key promises. An > easier and better way to handle files: versioned datastore, improvements in > creating and using tags for the journal, file picker dialogs, and home view. > A simpler and safer security model: getting Rainbow into the Sugar platform > and improving it's coverage of the Bitfrost ideals. A simple and > discoverable, yet powerful, UI overall: improved accessibility, discoverable > keyboard shortcuts. Ubiquitous connectivity and collaboration: multi-pointer > sharing, auto-collaborating data structures, viral/peer-to-peer activity > distribution, shared journals. Useful in the classroom: a one-click workflow > for getting AND turning in homework. > > My third priority is activities to better cover the core functions. Reading: > an improved Read, which handles true ebook formats. (PDF is made for > printing, and deployments have asked for this.)
Regarding support for more Ebook formats, in case it is relevant, I am working on a sugarized FBReader[1] activity at the moment. I should be able to do a preliminary release by tomorrow. (I was planning a release tonight, but my main workstation seems to be incredibly messed up, and won't boot, so I need to fix that first) Screenshot at http://dev.laptop.org/~sayamindu/fbreader_sugar_v2.png Thanks, Sayamindu [1] http://www.fbreader.org/ -- Sayamindu Dasgupta [http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings] _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
