Caryl, I would agree with the others that Python is your best choice. Most Activities use at least some Python, and all three of mine are entirely in Python. You might look at the source for View Slides, Read Etexts and Get Internet Archive Books as examples of what can be done entirely in Python (but not as examples of Python programming excellence, necessarily. I am a self taught Python programmer and am fairly new at it). Python Activities have the best chance of working on different versions of Sugar and you can also make versions of Activities that will run outside of Sugar. Other languages may need to be compiled specifically for the platforms they will run on, which limits portability.
Now the second question, can you do everything on the XO? Perhaps you could, and the Activity Develop is intended as a step in that direction. I'd have to say that at this time you'd be better off developing the Activities on a normal desktop rather than attempting to use the XO for that. On a normal desktop you can use the IDE Eric, which has tools to make Python programming easier. I use Fedora 11 with the included Sugar desktop and recommend that. Others use an emulated Sugar environment running on top of Windows or the Macintosh. I haven't tried that, but I would say that if you go that route you're going to need a fairly powerful PC. Going the Linux route an older computer, Pentium III or IV, should be fine. Another advantage of developing with a Sugar environment on a normal desktop is that you can run more than one on the same box to test collaboration. This would not be possible on an XO. Again, look at my code and the articles in the Sugar Almanac to learn how to make and package Activities. James Simmons > Date: Sat, 26 Sep 2009 07:25:37 -0700 > From: Caryl Bigenho <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] Which Language? > To: Community Support Volunteers -- who help respond t > <[email protected]>, IAEP SugarLabs > <[email protected]> > Message-ID: <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > > OK, the consensus is Python so far. Can he do that strictly on XOs? How does > he package it to share as an Activity? Can he do it on a Mac or PC and then > package it for Sugar? I think he would really like to do it all on the XO. > Is this possible? How does it get from terminal mode to being a regular > Activity? > > Thanks > Caryl _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
