How to prevent a shared document from downloading more than once?
It looks like my last naive question about collaboration started a discussion so notable that Walter Bender wrote about it in his blog http://walterbender.org/. Let's see what you can do with this one. Both my Activities, Read ETexts and View Slides, have document sharing code mostly copied from the core Read activity. Currently this works just fine in both Activities, with only one problem. Suppose someone shares a document with me, I receive it successfully, then quit, causing the copied document to be saved in my Journal. Now if the original user stops sharing (closes his copy of the Activity) and I resume mine I get my stored copy and all is wonderful. But suppose the original user *doesn't* stop sharing. I resume my copy, see the stored copy on the screen, but I *still* download the document my friend is sharing. I don't want to do that. It wastes bandwidth and time and causes *keep* errors when you close the document. Now the problem is, the sharing code is in the __init__() method, which always runs before anything else, and the read_file() method, which runs when you resume from the Journal, unfortunately *after* the Activity has already decided it needs to download the file. I need a way for the __init__ method to realize that it doesn't need to download the file, or some other way to deal with the problem. Thanks, James Simmons ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: How to prevent a shared document from downloading more than once?
I wrote a brief proposal a few weeks ago for an improvement to the collab API that might help this problem. The discussion is in http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/428. Aleksey Lim wrote an example implementation of this Cartoon Builder. The idea is that rather than having overlapping entry points for intializing activity instances: __init__ (new instance but all the others also), read_file (resume instance), shared_cb (join, share instance) we have a new set of callbacks which are invoked *after* __init__. new_instance resume_instance share_instance(is_initiator) - could be split into join_instance and share_instance? save_instance alsroot's implementation is below, and it calls the old interfaces when they are not present. http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/cartoon-builder/repos/mainline/blobs/master/shared.py Perhaps these new callbacks could be integrated into Sugar 0.86? But in the meantime, you can always just add Aleksey's shared.py into your activity. Cheers, Wade On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 11:29 AM, James Simmons jim.simm...@walgreens.com wrote: It looks like my last naive question about collaboration started a discussion so notable that Walter Bender wrote about it in his blog http://walterbender.org/. Let's see what you can do with this one. Both my Activities, Read ETexts and View Slides, have document sharing code mostly copied from the core Read activity. Currently this works just fine in both Activities, with only one problem. Suppose someone shares a document with me, I receive it successfully, then quit, causing the copied document to be saved in my Journal. Now if the original user stops sharing (closes his copy of the Activity) and I resume mine I get my stored copy and all is wonderful. But suppose the original user *doesn't* stop sharing. I resume my copy, see the stored copy on the screen, but I *still* download the document my friend is sharing. I don't want to do that. It wastes bandwidth and time and causes *keep* errors when you close the document. Now the problem is, the sharing code is in the __init__() method, which always runs before anything else, and the read_file() method, which runs when you resume from the Journal, unfortunately *after* the Activity has already decided it needs to download the file. I need a way for the __init__ method to realize that it doesn't need to download the file, or some other way to deal with the problem. Thanks, James Simmons ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: How to prevent a shared document from downloading more than once?
Great, once again I'm going to be indebted to Aleksey Lim. I'll give shared.py a try as soon as I can. James Simmons Wade Brainerd wrote: I wrote a brief proposal a few weeks ago for an improvement to the collab API that might help this problem. The discussion is in http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/428. Aleksey Lim wrote an example implementation of this Cartoon Builder. The idea is that rather than having overlapping entry points for intializing activity instances: __init__ (new instance but all the others also), read_file (resume instance), shared_cb (join, share instance) we have a new set of callbacks which are invoked *after* __init__. new_instance resume_instance share_instance(is_initiator) - could be split into join_instance and share_instance? save_instance alsroot's implementation is below, and it calls the old interfaces when they are not present. http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/cartoon-builder/repos/mainline/blobs/master/shared.py Perhaps these new callbacks could be integrated into Sugar 0.86? But in the meantime, you can always just add Aleksey's shared.py into your activity. Cheers, Wade On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 11:29 AM, James Simmons jim.simm...@walgreens.com wrote: It looks like my last naive question about collaboration started a discussion so notable that Walter Bender wrote about it in his blog http://walterbender.org/. Let's see what you can do with this one. Both my Activities, Read ETexts and View Slides, have document sharing code mostly copied from the core Read activity. Currently this works just fine in both Activities, with only one problem. Suppose someone shares a document with me, I receive it successfully, then quit, causing the copied document to be saved in my Journal. Now if the original user stops sharing (closes his copy of the Activity) and I resume mine I get my stored copy and all is wonderful. But suppose the original user *doesn't* stop sharing. I resume my copy, see the stored copy on the screen, but I *still* download the document my friend is sharing. I don't want to do that. It wastes bandwidth and time and causes *keep* errors when you close the document. Now the problem is, the sharing code is in the __init__() method, which always runs before anything else, and the read_file() method, which runs when you resume from the Journal, unfortunately *after* the Activity has already decided it needs to download the file. I need a way for the __init__ method to realize that it doesn't need to download the file, or some other way to deal with the problem. Thanks, James Simmons ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: How to prevent a shared document from downloading more than once?
On 16 Mar 2009, at 15:29, James Simmons wrote: It looks like my last naive question about collaboration started a discussion so notable that Walter Bender wrote about it in his blog http://walterbender.org/. Let's see what you can do with this one. Both my Activities, Read ETexts and View Slides, have document sharing code mostly copied from the core Read activity. Currently this works just fine in both Activities, with only one problem. Suppose someone shares a document with me, I receive it successfully, then quit, causing the copied document to be saved in my Journal. Now if the original user stops sharing (closes his copy of the Activity) and I resume mine I get my stored copy and all is wonderful. But suppose the original user *doesn't* stop sharing. I resume my copy, see the stored copy on the screen, but I *still* download the document my friend is sharing. I don't want to do that. It wastes bandwidth and time and causes *keep* errors when you close the document. Now the problem is, the sharing code is in the __init__() method, which always runs before anything else, and the read_file() method, which runs when you resume from the Journal, unfortunately *after* the Activity has already decided it needs to download the file. I need a way for the __init__ method to realize that it doesn't need to download the file, or some other way to deal with the problem. Sorry, I'm likely missing something obvious here, but could the __init__() check to see if it was resumed from journal, and use that as a cue to read the local file? If the file is incomplete/corrupt you'd need back out and get the file remotely: if handle.object_id == None: # Launched from home. ... ... else: # Journal resume, don't download, use local file. ... ... Regards, --Gary P.S. This coming from a man who hasn't implemented collaboration in any of his activities yet. Thanks, James Simmons ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: How to prevent a shared document from downloading more than once?
Gary, I'm going to try your suggestion first, since it seems like something I could do with just a couple of lines. I'm remembering another problem I have with my stuff, which is how to give a shared document the correct name in the Journal that receives it. In the Read activity it seems it is getting the title of the document from metadata in the PDF file itself, which I cannot do because my documents are just Zip files or text files. So my Journal entry reads Read EText Activity or View Slides Activity. This is what I want to happen: 1). Someone has a document to share, say the book Jack and the Giants, which is a zip file containing scanned in images. He goes to the neighborhood view and sees his friend Billy is there, and he invites Billy to share the book. 2). Billy goes into his own neighborhood view and sees the View Slides icon, indicating that someone has a slide collection to share. He mouses over the icon and sees that the collection is named Jack and the Giants. Sounds cool. He clicks on the icon and starts receiving the book. When it is fully downloaded he reads it a bit, then exits the View Slides Activity. 3). The next time he goes to the Journal he sees an entry with the View Slides icon named Jack and the Giants. I know how to update the Journal title from Python. The missing piece is how do I find out the name of the shared document? It shows the name when we invite Billy to share it, so how do I get that name? James Simmons Gary C Martin wrote: On 16 Mar 2009, at 15:29, James Simmons wrote: It looks like my last naive question about collaboration started a discussion so notable that Walter Bender wrote about it in his blog http://walterbender.org/. Let's see what you can do with this one. Both my Activities, Read ETexts and View Slides, have document sharing code mostly copied from the core Read activity. Currently this works just fine in both Activities, with only one problem. Suppose someone shares a document with me, I receive it successfully, then quit, causing the copied document to be saved in my Journal. Now if the original user stops sharing (closes his copy of the Activity) and I resume mine I get my stored copy and all is wonderful. But suppose the original user *doesn't* stop sharing. I resume my copy, see the stored copy on the screen, but I *still* download the document my friend is sharing. I don't want to do that. It wastes bandwidth and time and causes *keep* errors when you close the document. Now the problem is, the sharing code is in the __init__() method, which always runs before anything else, and the read_file() method, which runs when you resume from the Journal, unfortunately *after* the Activity has already decided it needs to download the file. I need a way for the __init__ method to realize that it doesn't need to download the file, or some other way to deal with the problem. Sorry, I'm likely missing something obvious here, but could the __init__() check to see if it was resumed from journal, and use that as a cue to read the local file? If the file is incomplete/corrupt you'd need back out and get the file remotely: if handle.object_id == None: # Launched from home. ... ... else: # Journal resume, don't download, use local file. ... ... Regards, --Gary P.S. This coming from a man who hasn't implemented collaboration in any of his activities yet. Thanks, James Simmons ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
