Re: [Sugar-devel] updates and testing SocialCalc on the Sugar Live CD
Edward, Thank you for your feedback on SocialCalc. Appreciate it. On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 8:17 AM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks. I believe that you are right in your comments below, that the Open Document spec, manuals for other software, and your video will enable us to create an excellent manual at FLOSSManuals.net. Would you like to join us when we do the Book Sprint? Could you please let us know about the date of the Book Sprint. Would ask our team members to participate in it. I am thinking about what we might add to the Help in SocialCalc, allowing for the tradeoff between space and completeness. Adding links to existing documentation will provide a sufficient backstop, but I think that there are several places where just a few words will make all the difference for beginning SocialCalc users, particularly for harried teachers. I don't want to make them learn too much themselves, or to have to tell children to rely too much on external resources. I'm sure that we can find a suitable balance on these questions. Yes. It would be great if we could arrive at a list where we get this feeling. (I think there is a reported issue that SocialCalc's IF function only takes the 3 argument form, not the 2 argument form. It also evaluated all arguments unlike many other IF functions.) The toolbar buttons, including the two types of move and swap colors, as well as the sheet settings, names, and more are explained in a video I created. The 54 minute Flash video, created with Camtasia, goes over many of the features of the main SocialCalc engine that the Sugar version of SocialCalc is built upon. (For example, that version does not have the Sugar-specific graphing tab.) You can view the video at: http://www.peapodcast.com/sgi/socialtext/sctraining1/ Perfect. I'll report on that soon. Thank you. Regards, Manu Edward Cherlin wrote: I ran through all of the basic functions of SocialCalc, including every icon on every tab. I have tested some but not all of the 109 functions provided, with good results so far. Although there are functions I could wish for, the only real deficiency I have found is in the documentation. I have created a page for elements of Sugar that children are not likely to discover on their own, http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/The_undiscoverable. I recommend it to developers who want to think about whether more of Sugar can be made discoverable, or whether we need to write lesson plans for the features that cannot be made obvious to the novice. I will put in a section for SocialCalc. These are not bugs in the sense of incorrect behavior or missing explanations, so I omit them here. Here is a summary of the other issues I have encountered. o The database functions are severely underdocumented. What database? What are databaserange, fieldname, criteriarange? o Where does Paste Formats get its formats from? o What does Swap Colors do? o The financial and statistical function definitions in the Help might be clear to one who uses other spreadsheets a lot, but certainly are not to a beginner. o More explanation is needed on angles in degrees and radians. o I understand Move From and Move Paste, but not Move Insert. o I see how to set names, but not what to use them for or how. o I don't see the Sheet setting control on the Format tab that the Help refers to. o I found the OK and Sort... buttons on the Sort tab confusing. It has since become clear to me. Perhaps OK should be renamed Set Range. Not bad for a beta. On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 12:16 PM, Manusheel Guptam...@laptop.org wrote: Dear community members, We are preparing for the next release of SocialCalc on Sugar. Localization infrastructure, canonicalization of the save format and collaboration will be the key features available in the next release. We are also looking forward to develop interoperability between SocialCalc format and a number of other spreadsheet formats like .wk3/.wk4/csv/excel/open office spreadsheet. We have recently received a number of requests on developing interoperability between SocialCalc and .wk3/.wk4 format, which has been a challenging problem to work on. Hope to get this feature ready before the next release. Lately, I have been testing SocialCalc on the Sugar Live CD, and have run into issues. I can't seem to get SocialCalc to start. I fired up the Sugar LiveCD, and opened up the USB icon in my journal. I can see the file SocialCalc.xo on my USB stick. When I click on it, I get a start button, but then nothing happens. Below is a gears image, which starts something that looks like a developer interface. Not sure, where I have been going wrong. Any help on this issue is highly appreciated. Please visit the SocialCalc on Sugar page at
Re: [Sugar-devel] updates and testing SocialCalc on the Sugar Live CD
On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 3:45 PM, Manusheel Gupta m...@laptop.org wrote: Edward, Thank you for your feedback on SocialCalc. Appreciate it. On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 8:17 AM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks. I believe that you are right in your comments below, that the Open Document spec, manuals for other software, and your video will enable us to create an excellent manual at FLOSSManuals.net. Would you like to join us when we do the Book Sprint? Could you please let us know about the date of the Book Sprint. Would ask our team members to participate in it. Just noticed that the events have already begun. Will have a word with our team, and get back to you soon. Regards, Manu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] updates and testing SocialCalc on the Sugar Live CD
Edward, Thanks for doing the testing. Here are some answers to some of the questions you asked or things you found undocumented. The database functions, like all of the functions, are pretty much the same as the functions by the same name in Excel and many other spreadsheets (many going back to Lotus 1-2-3 and even sometimes VisiCalc). They are defined in the Open Document Format specification. The same is true of all of the financial functions. (There used to be an Open Formula specification, which I think got moved into Open Document Format. I coded the functions looking to the Open Formula specification.) The built-in SocialCalc doc does not provide more than the simple explanation for all functions to save space and since they are well documented with other spreadsheets. Most of the SocialCalc documentation is about what is special to SocialCalc. Also, the code itself documents what it does, including, with the financial functions, a reference to the Wikipedia entry that helped in their specification. I assumed that others can read that to produce appropriate written documentation. (I think there is a reported issue that SocialCalc's IF function only takes the 3 argument form, not the 2 argument form. It also evaluated all arguments unlike many other IF functions.) The toolbar buttons, including the two types of move and swap colors, as well as the sheet settings, names, and more are explained in a video I created. The 54 minute Flash video, created with Camtasia, goes over many of the features of the main SocialCalc engine that the Sugar version of SocialCalc is built upon. (For example, that version does not have the Sugar-specific graphing tab.) You can view the video at: http://www.peapodcast.com/sgi/socialtext/sctraining1/ Note that the value format specification language, used to define numeric formatting, is similar to that used in most spreadsheets, including Excel. You can learn much of it by looking at the samples already built into the product (set a format and the choose Custom to see the definition). This can be used when customizing the product for other locales to, for example, have different currency symbols and placement. Custom formats are demonstrated in the video. Thanks again for taking time to work with SocialCalc so we can help provide this functionality around the world through this platform. -DanB Edward Cherlin wrote: I ran through all of the basic functions of SocialCalc, including every icon on every tab. I have tested some but not all of the 109 functions provided, with good results so far. Although there are functions I could wish for, the only real deficiency I have found is in the documentation. I have created a page for elements of Sugar that children are not likely to discover on their own, http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/The_undiscoverable. I recommend it to developers who want to think about whether more of Sugar can be made discoverable, or whether we need to write lesson plans for the features that cannot be made obvious to the novice. I will put in a section for SocialCalc. These are not bugs in the sense of incorrect behavior or missing explanations, so I omit them here. Here is a summary of the other issues I have encountered. o The database functions are severely underdocumented. What database? What are databaserange, fieldname, criteriarange? o Where does Paste Formats get its formats from? o What does Swap Colors do? o The financial and statistical function definitions in the Help might be clear to one who uses other spreadsheets a lot, but certainly are not to a beginner. o More explanation is needed on angles in degrees and radians. o I understand Move From and Move Paste, but not Move Insert. o I see how to set names, but not what to use them for or how. o I don't see the Sheet setting control on the Format tab that the Help refers to. o I found the OK and Sort... buttons on the Sort tab confusing. It has since become clear to me. Perhaps OK should be renamed Set Range. Not bad for a beta. On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 12:16 PM, Manusheel Guptam...@laptop.org wrote: Dear community members, We are preparing for the next release of SocialCalc on Sugar. Localization infrastructure, canonicalization of the save format and collaboration will be the key features available in the next release. We are also looking forward to develop interoperability between SocialCalc format and a number of other spreadsheet formats like .wk3/.wk4/csv/excel/open office spreadsheet. We have recently received a number of requests on developing interoperability between SocialCalc and .wk3/.wk4 format, which has been a challenging problem to work on. Hope to get this feature ready before the next release. Lately, I have been testing SocialCalc on the Sugar Live CD, and have run into issues. I can't seem to get SocialCalc to start. I fired up the Sugar LiveCD, and opened up the USB icon in my journal. I can see the file
