Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 6:37 PM, Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 2:03 AM, Jim Gettys [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have always believed we need Sugar. One only has to watch a child struggle with a conventional desktop (Windows, Linux or Mac) to see the need It's a lot more than that . When you contrast the current WIMP UI and generic apps with UIs built for _learning_, it's frustrating to the point of being ridiculous how what we know as conventional UIs get in the way. You and I have seen it, but we need to show it to the rest of the world. Would anybody be interested in doing videos of children at different computers, with commentary on what's happening, or not happening? What is the Constructivist way to teach grown-ups about how children learn? Having constructivist thinking behind the UI makes a huge difference when you are working with kids. It has made moodle what it is (the project lead is a fantastic programmer as well as an educationalist, and he cares a ton about the UI). I would not work in an educational project without a clear UI concept, and Sugar is - in that sense - fantastic. cheers, m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ The best way to predict the future is to invent it.--Alan Kay ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 9:14 PM, Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 6:37 PM, Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 2:03 AM, Jim Gettys [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have always believed we need Sugar. One only has to watch a child struggle with a conventional desktop (Windows, Linux or Mac) to see the need It's a lot more than that . When you contrast the current WIMP UI and generic apps with UIs built for _learning_, it's frustrating to the point of being ridiculous how what we know as conventional UIs get in the way. You and I have seen it, but we need to show it to the rest of the world. Would anybody be interested in doing videos of children at different computers, with commentary on what's happening, or not happening? What is the Constructivist way to teach grown-ups about how children learn? Personally I would hope it includes peer-reviewed research. Does anyone have links to how constructionist teaching methods compare to traditional ones? (sorry if people have posted this before... its been hard to keep up with all the mail) yours, Bobby Powers ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 2:03 AM, Jim Gettys [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have always believed we need Sugar. One only has to watch a child struggle with a conventional desktop (Windows, Linux or Mac) to see the need It's a lot more than that . When you contrast the current WIMP UI and generic apps with UIs built for _learning_, it's frustrating to the point of being ridiculous how what we know as conventional UIs get in the way. Having constructivist thinking behind the UI makes a huge difference when you are working with kids. It has made moodle what it is (the project lead is a fantastic programmer as well as an educationalist, and he cares a ton about the UI). I would not work in an educational project without a clear UI concept, and Sugar is - in that sense - fantastic. cheers, m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
2008/5/9 Alan Kay [EMAIL PROTECTED]: We are now several dimensions off topic ... Cheers, Alan The Research mailing list is available for such discussions. - Original Message From: Carl-Daniel Hailfinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Bert Freudenberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Education [EMAIL PROTECTED]; OLPC Devel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, May 9, 2008 4:59:04 PM Subject: Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model On 10.05.2008 00:13, Bert Freudenberg wrote: On 09.05.2008, at 20:31, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Bert, if you try and say that the entire world is wrong in how it writes software, Actually, that's exactly what I think, and entire world includes yours truly ;) But this isn't the place to talk about that (if you're curious, visit VPRI [*]). No, it's not foremost about how the software is written, but about how it is presented to the user. Unfortunately, interface design is much harder than just writing software. The VPRI stuff is scary because it proposes the equivalent of using assembler code to speed up C programs. Performing model checking against one piece of code, then replacing that piece of code with another one for speed reasons in production is really a horrible plan. It also makes it obvious that the mathematically correct code is expected to be unusably slow. [...] For example, the fastest way for me to retrieve a file is typing it in the system-wide search box on my machine, or into google. It doesn't matter where in the file system hierarchy or on which server it is stored. That is pretty much what the Journal would do, too. Also, the Journal will allow tagging, which is equivalent (but more powerful) to a directory hierarchy. Etc. Actually, tags are just the equivalence of file names and they are more efficient to use than simple searches. If you know exactly what you want and where to find it, searching for it is one of the worst choices possible besides random walking and active avoidance. With Mozilla/Firefox/Seamonkey, typing in the first few letters of the URL takes you faster to an often-used site (due to autocompletion) than using any search engine. In real life, searching is a last resort if direct access is impossible. If you keep your bike at a fixed location you can remember among other bikes in a bike shed, you walk straight to your bike and don't search for it. [*] see http://vpri.org/html/work/ifnct.htm Regards, Carl-Daniel ___ Its.an.education.project mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.lo-res.org/mailman/listinfo/its.an.education.project Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ The best way to predict the future is to invent it.--Alan Kay ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
Mikus Grinbergs wrote: Frankly, I don't see a logic difference between Negroponte talking about extending the OLPC hardware to Windows (presumably to increase recognition of the OLPC), and those talking about extending Sugar to a standard desktop (presumably to increase recognition of Sugar). I myself wouldn't oppose a Windows port of Sugar. I would never waste my time on it, or encourage anyone to waste their time on it, but it's free software and thus anyone is free to port it to anything they wish. What we contest is not the mere act of porting Sugar to Windows itself. It's: - the technical viability and usefulness of this whole idea. - explicitly endorsing laptops with proprietary software as a proper learning tool for primary schools; and - letting a dangerous enemy of free software acquire control over the platform on which Sugar runs, which is a strategic suicide (ask Borland, Norton, Corel and Lotus about it); - partnering with a dangerous enemy of free software that will demand -- and seems to be already demanding -- that the Linux business be shut down in exchange for their support. -- \___/ _| o | Bernie Innocenti - http://www.codewiz.org/ \|_X_| It's an education project, not a laptop project! ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
Slight correction, I should have said GNU/Linux below. Bernie Innocenti wrote: Mikus Grinbergs wrote: Frankly, I don't see a logic difference between Negroponte talking about extending the OLPC hardware to Windows (presumably to increase recognition of the OLPC), and those talking about extending Sugar to a standard desktop (presumably to increase recognition of Sugar). I myself wouldn't oppose a Windows port of Sugar. I would never waste my time on it, or encourage anyone to waste their time on it, but it's free software and thus anyone is free to port it to anything they wish. What we contest is not the mere act of porting Sugar to Windows itself. It's: - the technical viability and usefulness of this whole idea. - explicitly endorsing laptops with proprietary software as a proper learning tool for primary schools; and - letting a dangerous enemy of free software acquire control over the platform on which Sugar runs, which is a strategic suicide (ask Borland, Norton, Corel and Lotus about it); - partnering with a dangerous enemy of free software that will demand -- and seems to be already demanding -- that the GNU/Linux business be shut down in exchange for their support. -- \___/ _| o | Bernie Innocenti - http://www.codewiz.org/ \|_X_| It's an education project, not a laptop project! ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
Hi David, unfortunately I don't have time right now to enter again in this debate, but I wanted to do one comment: On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 6:31 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: many people have pointed out the limitations of the journal approach, and problems with not naming activites and files. yes it's easier to get started if you don't have to deal with confusing matters like directories, but as more documents are created a flat namespace for them will get overwelmed (be it a time-based journal, or a single layer home directory) you are optimizing for the beginner so much that once they have used the system for a short time it will no longer be suitable for them. dom't make the training wheels for beginners so ridgid that the kids can't remove them as they learn more. For the record, I personally find more efficient to use a tagging interface with good search capabilities rather than a hierarchy of folders. A sizable part of the GMail users may share this opinion. So I don't think we are optimizing for the beginner at all. Indeed, the projected journal is a very good example of an UI that can be at the same time usable from the first time and a powerful tool for users that have dug beneath its surface. Thanks, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
On Wed, 7 May 2008, Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote: On Tue, 6 May 2008, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ubuntu takes packages maintaned externally and picks what version of each of those packages to put in the main distro. the versions of these seperate packages are almost entirely independant of each other. they then do a lot of testing and some development of adminitrative tools and ship the result. unfortunantly much of the OLPC development has seemed to be against the idea of having external software run unmodified on sugar, and the resulting work to get anything running will hurt this model. Again: what makes Sugar different from Linux? The ability to interact *everywhere*, and to share *every activity* by default. That interactivity basically defines what an activity *is*. Yes, this severely restricts the amount of software that can run on Sugar. But again: the whole world of FLOSS educational software can run on Linux just fine. If we're just (badly) reinventing a new WM, what's the point? which is why I fail to see the big point of Sugar. you don't have to scrap everything to write activities that can be shared easily. a perfect example was the suggeation to make the sugarized activities use a standard file picker call so that it could go to the journal on the XO machine, or to a normal file selecteor window on other desktops. doing this would also meant that other 'well behaved' software that used that call to the window manager would suddenly just start working right on sugar without requiring modification. unfortunantly the concept was greeted with a reaction similar to yours (i.e. 'NO, we don't want to run the risk of people using the apps on a normal desktop, we need to lock them into using sugar') David Lang ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
On 09.05.2008, at 09:59, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, 7 May 2008, Jim Gettys wrote: On Wed, 2008-05-07 at 09:17 -0400, Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote: On Tue, 6 May 2008, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ubuntu takes packages maintaned externally and picks what version of each of those packages to put in the main distro. the versions of these seperate packages are almost entirely independant of each other. they then do a lot of testing and some development of adminitrative tools and ship the result. unfortunantly much of the OLPC development has seemed to be against the idea of having external software run unmodified on sugar, and the resulting work to get anything running will hurt this model. David, We must fix this Help greatfully appreciated. It isn't very much work to get there from here. at the moment it doesn't seem as if there's agreement yet that this does need to get fixed. until the problem is acknowledged it can't be fixed. unfortunantly my time constraints drasticly limit the code I can work on, so I am mostly a tester and a provider of resources to nearby developers (I just received my two g1g1 machines back from the USC hackathon) There is agreement that unmodified Linux software should run as well as possible in Sugar. There is no agreement that this would imply we do not need Sugar, or that activities written/adapted specifically for Sugar would not provide an order of magnitude better learning experience. That's the whole point of starting this endeavor in the first place. - Bert - ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 9:59 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, 7 May 2008, Jim Gettys wrote: We must fix this Help greatfully appreciated. It isn't very much work to get there from here. at the moment it doesn't seem as if there's agreement yet that this does need to get fixed. until the problem is acknowledged it can't be fixed. What makes you think that the problem is not acknowledged!? Marco ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
On Fri, 9 May 2008, Bert Freudenberg wrote: On 09.05.2008, at 09:59, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, 7 May 2008, Jim Gettys wrote: On Wed, 2008-05-07 at 09:17 -0400, Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote: On Tue, 6 May 2008, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ubuntu takes packages maintaned externally and picks what version of each of those packages to put in the main distro. the versions of these seperate packages are almost entirely independant of each other. they then do a lot of testing and some development of adminitrative tools and ship the result. unfortunantly much of the OLPC development has seemed to be against the idea of having external software run unmodified on sugar, and the resulting work to get anything running will hurt this model. David, We must fix this Help greatfully appreciated. It isn't very much work to get there from here. at the moment it doesn't seem as if there's agreement yet that this does need to get fixed. until the problem is acknowledged it can't be fixed. unfortunantly my time constraints drasticly limit the code I can work on, so I am mostly a tester and a provider of resources to nearby developers (I just received my two g1g1 machines back from the USC hackathon) There is agreement that unmodified Linux software should run as well as possible in Sugar. this is good. I have not received this impression from reading the list. what about Sugar software running as well as possible on normal linux boxes? without having to install the full sugar package and run everything under sugar in one window. this doesn't mean that some libraries won't need to be installed, but like running QT apps on a Gnome desktop, you install the QT libraries, not all of KDE (and similarly running gtk apps on a KDE destop you don't install all of gnome) There is no agreement that this would imply we do not need Sugar, or that activities written/adapted specifically for Sugar would not provide an order of magnitude better learning experience. That's the whole point of starting this endeavor in the first place. I wouldn't expect for this to imply that sugar is not needed or that the software stack you have been working on isn't the best possible for a learning envrionment. but if people are actually willing to seperate the activities from the platform in a meaningful manner, we gain the ability to mix-and-match as needed to find what really is the best. David Lang ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
On Fri, 9 May 2008, Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote: On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 9:59 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, 7 May 2008, Jim Gettys wrote: We must fix this Help greatfully appreciated. It isn't very much work to get there from here. at the moment it doesn't seem as if there's agreement yet that this does need to get fixed. until the problem is acknowledged it can't be fixed. What makes you think that the problem is not acknowledged!? in part the other response to my message that seemed to have the attitude that 'fixing' the problem would reduce Sugar to 'just another WM' rendering it worthless. there have been other comments along similar lines from developers as well. David Lang ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 11:32 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: what about Sugar software running as well as possible on normal linux boxes? without having to install the full sugar package and run everything under sugar in one window. this doesn't mean that some libraries won't need to be installed, but like running QT apps on a Gnome desktop, you install the QT libraries, not all of KDE (and similarly running gtk apps on a KDE destop you don't install all of gnome) Not possible at the moment but it's on the plan too. Marco ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 11:35 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: in part the other response to my message that seemed to have the attitude that 'fixing' the problem would reduce Sugar to 'just another WM' rendering it worthless. That's not how I read Greg post but anyway... there have been other comments along similar lines from developers as well. This is an open mailing list and everyone express his own opinion. There will never be *full* consensus about complicated matters like compatibility. That's why there are maintainers and team leaders. And those already expressed very clearly that compatibility with desktop application is an important goal. Marco ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
On 09.05.2008, at 09:56, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: which is why I fail to see the big point of Sugar. [...] a perfect example was the suggeation to make the sugarized activities use a standard file picker call so that it could go to the journal on the XO machine, or to a normal file selecteor window on other desktops. Your example indicates that you indeed fail to see the big point of Sugar. The point is to not have a document-centric environment, but an activity-centric one. Verbs rather than nouns. Yes it gets philosophical here. And I'm not the best to explain it. Maybe an analogy helps. Many developers fail to see the big point of object-oriented programming. For them, it's just that structs have function pointers now, so what's the big deal? But that misses the point completely, oo is all about decoupling and encapsulating concepts, it's a philosophy rather than an implementation technique. Or maybe the analogy does not help, depending on which camp one is in. Back to your example: even if all the world thinks applications with file dialogs are normal that does not imply it has to be that way. Don't be misled by the enormous flow of money into bad defacto standards for unsophisticated buyers using poor adaptations of incomplete ideas. -- Alan Kay We do want to create something better than the status-quo. We may fail for a gazillion of reasons, but we're trying anyway. Children deserve the best, our future is in their hands. - Bert - ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
On 5/9/08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, 7 May 2008, Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote: On Tue, 6 May 2008, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ubuntu takes packages maintaned externally and picks what version of each of those packages to put in the main distro. the versions of these seperate packages are almost entirely independant of each other. they then do a lot of testing and some development of adminitrative tools and ship the result. unfortunantly much of the OLPC development has seemed to be against the idea of having external software run unmodified on sugar, and the resulting work to get anything running will hurt this model. Again: what makes Sugar different from Linux? The ability to interact *everywhere*, and to share *every activity* by default. That interactivity basically defines what an activity *is*. Yes, this severely restricts the amount of software that can run on Sugar. But again: the whole world of FLOSS educational software can run on Linux just fine. If we're just (badly) reinventing a new WM, what's the point? which is why I fail to see the big point of Sugar. you don't have to scrap everything to write activities that can be shared easily. a perfect example was the suggeation to make the sugarized activities use a standard file picker call so that it could go to the journal on the XO machine, or to a normal file selecteor window on other desktops. doing this would also meant that other 'well behaved' software that used that call to the window manager would suddenly just start working right on sugar without requiring modification. This standard file picker call exists only for gtk apps. Also, working right on sugar might mean much more than what you think. You are more than welcome to explain a detailed plan of how to use the gtk file picker to access the journal. This is the kind of positive behavior that I expect from all the people I work with (be it in my job hours or in my free time). unfortunantly the concept was greeted with a reaction similar to yours (i.e. 'NO, we don't want to run the risk of people using the apps on a normal desktop, we need to lock them into using sugar') Are you sure about the existence of that statement? I don't think so. Thanks, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 11:37 AM, Marco Pesenti Gritti [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 11:32 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: what about Sugar software running as well as possible on normal linux boxes? without having to install the full sugar package and run everything under sugar in one window. this doesn't mean that some libraries won't need to be installed, but like running QT apps on a Gnome desktop, you install the QT libraries, not all of KDE (and similarly running gtk apps on a KDE destop you don't install all of gnome) Not possible at the moment but it's on the plan too. The way I see it it is somewhat of a two way street. Personally, if I'm going to run Sugar apps in Gnome I would prefer them to integrate nicely with my other apps, just as I would prefer apps running in Sugar to be 'sugary'. In this case the burdon falls on the shoulders of the activity developers. From what I understand (and please correct me if I'm wrong!) Abiword is a good example - the text editor canvas is encapsolated as its own widget, and both the Gnome Abiword and the sugar activity use it in their respective user interfaces. So nice modular UI code should make maintaing a Gnome and a Sugar version of a program relatively painless. Again, please correct me if I'm wrong - I've been planning out what I want to do with a new activity and this is what I seem to have arrived at, if peoples experiences are different it could save me some headache... As for the sharing stuff, I know you can download and use the telepathy libs, but would you also need a presence service running? Could this be automatically started when an app wants to collaborate, or is it something that would have to be running in the background beforehand? yours, Bobby ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
2008/5/9 Bobby Powers [EMAIL PROTECTED]: As for the sharing stuff, I know you can download and use the telepathy libs, but would you also need a presence service running? Could this be automatically started when an app wants to collaborate, or is it something that would have to be running in the background beforehand? Presence Service is a layer between Sugar (and activities) and Telepathy. It provides the presence information that drives the Mesh View. Without Presence Service, you cannot join a shared activity - so there wouldn't be much point in trying to have it not running, if you are interested in collaboration. Presence Service is started on demand using D-Bus service activation. Sugar's Mesh View requires it immediately... Morgan ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
Bobby Powers wrote: On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 11:37 AM, Marco Pesenti Gritti [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 11:32 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: what about Sugar software running as well as possible on normal linux boxes? without having to install the full sugar package and run everything under sugar in one window. this doesn't mean that some libraries won't need to be installed, but like running QT apps on a Gnome desktop, you install the QT libraries, not all of KDE (and similarly running gtk apps on a KDE destop you don't install all of gnome) Not possible at the moment but it's on the plan too. The way I see it it is somewhat of a two way street. Personally, if I'm going to run Sugar apps in Gnome I would prefer them to integrate nicely with my other apps, just as I would prefer apps running in Sugar to be 'sugary'. In this case the burdon falls on the shoulders of the activity developers. From what I understand (and please correct me if I'm wrong!) Abiword is a good example - the text editor canvas is encapsolated as its own widget, and both the Gnome Abiword and the sugar activity use it in their respective user interfaces. So nice modular UI code should make maintaing a Gnome and a Sugar version of a program relatively painless. Again, please correct me if I'm wrong - I've been planning out what I want to do with a new activity and this is what I seem to have arrived at, if peoples experiences are different it could save me some headache... I think *platform* integration is great from the user point of view. And I think designing the code so that it's easy to provide optimized UI for a certain platform is also a good idea. *But* I also think it should be possible to run a Sugar activity on a standard desktop and a desktop application in the Sugar shell. Integration is great and we should encourage it, but we can't assume it will always happen. And in the cases it doesn't happen, not-integrated is better than nothing. Also keeping the compatibility barrier low between the two platforms will make porting and cross pollination of technologies and ideas easier. Marco ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
On Fri, 2008-05-09 at 15:30 +0200, Bobby Powers wrote: The way I see it it is somewhat of a two way street. Personally, if I'm going to run Sugar apps in Gnome I would prefer them to integrate nicely with my other apps, just as I would prefer apps running in Sugar to be 'sugary'. In this case the burdon falls on the shoulders of the activity developers. No, not in the X architecture. Most of this can/should/will be hidden in Sugar's libraries and window managers. From what I understand (and please correct me if I'm wrong!) Abiword is a good example - the text editor canvas is encapsolated as its own widget, and both the Gnome Abiword and the sugar activity use it in their respective user interfaces. So nice modular UI code should make maintaing a Gnome and a Sugar version of a program relatively painless. Again, please correct me if I'm wrong - I've been planning out what I want to do with a new activity and this is what I seem to have arrived at, if peoples experiences are different it could save me some headache... As for the sharing stuff, I know you can download and use the telepathy libs, but would you also need a presence service running? Could this be automatically started when an app wants to collaborate, or is it something that would have to be running in the background beforehand? Either is possible. - Jim -- Jim Gettys [EMAIL PROTECTED] One Laptop Per Child ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
On Fri, 9 May 2008, Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote: Bobby Powers wrote: On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 11:37 AM, Marco Pesenti Gritti [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 11:32 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: what about Sugar software running as well as possible on normal linux boxes? without having to install the full sugar package and run everything under sugar in one window. this doesn't mean that some libraries won't need to be installed, but like running QT apps on a Gnome desktop, you install the QT libraries, not all of KDE (and similarly running gtk apps on a KDE destop you don't install all of gnome) Not possible at the moment but it's on the plan too. The way I see it it is somewhat of a two way street. Personally, if I'm going to run Sugar apps in Gnome I would prefer them to integrate nicely with my other apps, just as I would prefer apps running in Sugar to be 'sugary'. In this case the burdon falls on the shoulders of the activity developers. From what I understand (and please correct me if I'm wrong!) Abiword is a good example - the text editor canvas is encapsolated as its own widget, and both the Gnome Abiword and the sugar activity use it in their respective user interfaces. So nice modular UI code should make maintaing a Gnome and a Sugar version of a program relatively painless. Again, please correct me if I'm wrong - I've been planning out what I want to do with a new activity and this is what I seem to have arrived at, if peoples experiences are different it could save me some headache... I think *platform* integration is great from the user point of view. And I think designing the code so that it's easy to provide optimized UI for a certain platform is also a good idea. *But* I also think it should be possible to run a Sugar activity on a standard desktop and a desktop application in the Sugar shell. Integration is great and we should encourage it, but we can't assume it will always happen. And in the cases it doesn't happen, not-integrated is better than nothing. Also keeping the compatibility barrier low between the two platforms will make porting and cross pollination of technologies and ideas easier. thank you, this is exactly what I am hoping for. David Lang ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
On Fri, 9 May 2008, Bert Freudenberg wrote: On 09.05.2008, at 09:56, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: which is why I fail to see the big point of Sugar. [...] a perfect example was the suggeation to make the sugarized activities use a standard file picker call so that it could go to the journal on the XO machine, or to a normal file selecteor window on other desktops. Your example indicates that you indeed fail to see the big point of Sugar. The point is to not have a document-centric environment, but an activity-centric one. Verbs rather than nouns. Yes it gets philosophical here. And I'm not the best to explain it. Maybe an analogy helps. Many developers fail to see the big point of object-oriented programming. For them, it's just that structs have function pointers now, so what's the big deal? But that misses the point completely, oo is all about decoupling and encapsulating concepts, it's a philosophy rather than an implementation technique. Or maybe the analogy does not help, depending on which camp one is in. Back to your example: even if all the world thinks applications with file dialogs are normal that does not imply it has to be that way. Don't be misled by the enormous flow of money into bad defacto standards for unsophisticated buyers using poor adaptations of incomplete ideas. -- Alan Kay We do want to create something better than the status-quo. We may fail for a gazillion of reasons, but we're trying anyway. Children deserve the best, our future is in their hands. Bert, if you try and say that the entire world is wrong in how it writes software, and only software specificly written for the Sugar environment should be available to the children, you are doing them a great dis-service. it's fine to produce an alternate approach, but to bet-the-business on that approach with no fallback is betting that you know better then the rest of the world. it's possible that you are right, but not very likly. however if you allow for compatibility you have a fallback. many people have pointed out the limitations of the journal approach, and problems with not naming activites and files. yes it's easier to get started if you don't have to deal with confusing matters like directories, but as more documents are created a flat namespace for them will get overwelmed (be it a time-based journal, or a single layer home directory) you are optimizing for the beginner so much that once they have used the system for a short time it will no longer be suitable for them. dom't make the training wheels for beginners so ridgid that the kids can't remove them as they learn more. As for your arguments about object oriented programming vs functional programming, opject orientation has it's place, but there have been a lot of evils foisted on us over the years under the banner of Object Orientation. just becouse an idea has merit doesn't meant that any implementation of that idea is automaticaly good. David Lang ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
On Fri, 9 May 2008, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 9 May 2008, Bert Freudenberg wrote: On 09.05.2008, at 09:56, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: which is why I fail to see the big point of Sugar. [...] a perfect example was the suggeation to make the sugarized activities use a standard file picker call so that it could go to the journal on the XO machine, or to a normal file selecteor window on other desktops. Your example indicates that you indeed fail to see the big point of Sugar. The point is to not have a document-centric environment, but an activity-centric one. Verbs rather than nouns. Yes it gets philosophical here. And I'm not the best to explain it. Maybe an analogy helps. Many developers fail to see the big point of object-oriented programming. For them, it's just that structs have function pointers now, so what's the big deal? But that misses the point completely, oo is all about decoupling and encapsulating concepts, it's a philosophy rather than an implementation technique. Or maybe the analogy does not help, depending on which camp one is in. Back to your example: even if all the world thinks applications with file dialogs are normal that does not imply it has to be that way. Don't be misled by the enormous flow of money into bad defacto standards for unsophisticated buyers using poor adaptations of incomplete ideas. -- Alan Kay We do want to create something better than the status-quo. We may fail for a gazillion of reasons, but we're trying anyway. Children deserve the best, our future is in their hands. Bert, if you try and say that the entire world is wrong in how it writes software, and only software specifically written for the Sugar environment should be available to the children, you are doing them a great dis-service. Not at all. The fact is that *lots* of software is *already* available to many children, in all kinds of different forms. There can and will be other efforts around low-cost laptops. Many of these can and will rely upon open source to one degree or another. There are certainly enough applications in the world to come up with a respectable children's computer that isn't half bad. But the goal of Sugar isn't not half bad. The goal of Sugar is fundamental change of a 30-year-old computing metaphor, to take advantage of connectedness that simply did not exist when Windows first came to be. Some of these changes might be easily retrofit to existing applications. Many of them won't be. But the focus must be on creating the right interface experience, or the whole exercise is pointless. it's fine to produce an alternate approach, but to bet-the-business on that approach with no fallback is betting that you know better then the rest of the world. it's possible that you are right, but not very likely. The very nature of the Sugar idea *requires* a bet-the-business approach. Some changes can be evolutionary. Others must be revolutionary. In order for Sugar to have any point at all, it must represent a revolutionary change. Which is fine. If it fails, it fails. There are *plenty* of people working on evolving the current Linux desktop towards education. It's not an either/or proposition. Again, my $0.02, nothing more. --g -- Greg DeKoenigsberg Community Development Manager Red Hat, Inc. :: 1-919-754-4255 To whomsoever much hath been given... ...from him much shall be asked ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
On Tue, 6 May 2008, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ubuntu takes packages maintaned externally and picks what version of each of those packages to put in the main distro. the versions of these seperate packages are almost entirely independant of each other. they then do a lot of testing and some development of adminitrative tools and ship the result. unfortunantly much of the OLPC development has seemed to be against the idea of having external software run unmodified on sugar, and the resulting work to get anything running will hurt this model. Again: what makes Sugar different from Linux? The ability to interact *everywhere*, and to share *every activity* by default. That interactivity basically defines what an activity *is*. Yes, this severely restricts the amount of software that can run on Sugar. But again: the whole world of FLOSS educational software can run on Linux just fine. If we're just (badly) reinventing a new WM, what's the point? --g -- Greg DeKoenigsberg Community Development Manager Red Hat, Inc. :: 1-919-754-4255 To whomsoever much hath been given... ...from him much shall be asked ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
On Wed, 2008-05-07 at 09:17 -0400, Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote: On Tue, 6 May 2008, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ubuntu takes packages maintaned externally and picks what version of each of those packages to put in the main distro. the versions of these seperate packages are almost entirely independant of each other. they then do a lot of testing and some development of adminitrative tools and ship the result. unfortunantly much of the OLPC development has seemed to be against the idea of having external software run unmodified on sugar, and the resulting work to get anything running will hurt this model. David, We must fix this Help greatfully appreciated. It isn't very much work to get there from here. - Jim ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 3:04 PM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 4:22 PM, Bert Freudenberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 07.05.2008, at 22:11, C. Scott Ananian wrote: And it's certainly no coincidence that the list of activities in olpc3 is what Kim wanted in ticket 6598. You certainly remember the discussions. You're on crack, Bert. *None* of the activities listed in 6598 are in the core build. Maybe I am hallucinating this: http://pilgrim.laptop.org/~pilgrim/olpc/streams/olpc3/build9/devel_jffs2/build.log That's not the core build. That's Dennis' private playground. Didn't we go over that already? --scott This is something I remember coming up a lot back when Red Hat first started putting out Rawhide. We would get lots of tickets from people who would install it and expect it to a) work and b) be supported. This was an item that had to be said over and over again until it became a mantra from technical support to the president of the company... If you use Rawhide, don't expect it to work, don't expect your system to even work ever again... but thankyou for testing So you will say this quite a bit is my guess. -- Stephen J Smoogen. -- How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. The Merchant of Venice ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 5:30 PM, Stephen John Smoogen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is something I remember coming up a lot back when Red Hat first started putting out Rawhide. We would get lots of tickets from people who would install it and expect it to a) work and b) be supported. This was an item that had to be said over and over again until it became a mantra from technical support to the president of the company... If you use Rawhide, don't expect it to work, don't expect your system to even work ever again... but thankyou for testing Then it is critical to get the developers on board with that message, too. In other words, when asked how something works, assume the asker is running the latest release until confirmed otherwise. Case in point, it bugs me when the wiki documents features of versions which haven't been released yet, or declares a problem fixed because some later, as yet unreleased version no longer shows the problem. It ain't fixed if, in order to get the fix, you need to ...don't expect it to work, don't expect your system to even work ever again... but thankyou for testing... -- Steve Holton [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model
2008/5/7 Steve Holton [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Case in point, it bugs me when the wiki documents features of versions which haven't been released yet, or declares a problem fixed because some later, as yet unreleased version no longer shows the problem. Well, it's correct to document features of unstable builds; just not to conflate that with a bug being fixed in a stable update to the last official release. This is why stable branches continue development in parallel with the latest [unstable] trunk. It ain't fixed if, in order to get the fix, you need to ...don't expect it to work, don't expect your system to even work ever again... but thankyou for testing... Agreed in general. In specific, our system is built such that you /should/ expect everything to work if you upgrade specific activities to new ones. New entire builds which are experimental are places where you shouldn't expect anything to work -- if any docs suggest that there is a fix which requires installing an unstable build, that should certainly be swiftly removed. SJ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
