Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
Aleksey, I've read over your latest Activities/Library document and it looks good. There is one useful feature that Calibre has that your spec lacks, which is the ability to launch a viewing application once you find the book you're looking for. I would expect this feature to work on texts in the local Journal only, not on texts in someone else's Library. I would also desire it to be intelligent about which viewing application it opens. By this I mean: 1). MIME type of text/plain would be opened by Read Etexts. The Journal makes you choose between Read Etexts and Write for this MIME type. If you just click on the icon the Journal will pick one of these Activities and load it. There is no way to tell the Journal entry which one to use by default or which one to use for a given Journal entry by default. This makes reading Gutenberg etexts much more difficult than it should be. 2). MIME type of application/zip *could* be opened by one of three Activities: * View Slides * Read Etexts * Etoys Again, in the Journal there is no way to specify which one should be used by default for a given Journal entry. You have to remember to choose the correct Activity from a special menu each and every time. So when we're thinking about tags there should be a tag to specify which Activity to use to open one of these Journal entries. After you've specified this you should be able to open any book in your Library with one click. Read Etexts works with text files contained in a Zip file because you cannot use the Browse Activity to create a Journal entry from a plain text file. Browser will simply load the text file as if it was a web page. Browse will let you download a Zip file to the Journal, and this is a format that Guitenberg can provide. View Slides uses Zip files containing multiple image files, which may or may not be be in subdirectories. I have no idea what Etoys does with Zip files, but I suppose there should be a way to indicate that by default a given Journal entry in the Library should be opened with Etoys. 3). MIME type of application/pdf and application/djvu should be opened with Read. 4). Opening with the fbreader Activity should be a choice for everything else. Since you're the one writing this Activity I'll let you decide what version of the Activity would provide this function. I do think it is a necessary feature, because what is the use of a nice, organized, sharable Library if you have to go back to the Journal to read one of the books in it? James Simmons Aleksey Lim wrote: On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 04:12:39PM -0500, James Simmons wrote: Aleksey, It isn't clear to me what a cloud of tags is. Is there a familiar application that does something like this? thanks to Martin, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud I understand that users can tag things to suit themselves, but still I'd want to impose some kind of structure on the views. When I started visiting libraries they had card catalogs for Author, Title, and Subject. It was a good system, and every library used it. You could create a lot of other indexes but they wouldn't get much use. In the Calibre screenshot we had File Size, Publisher, Date, Series, and I could easily do without any of them. Considering that most users of Sugar are going to be children enforcing a minimum structure couldn't hurt. agree, at the end Library's functionality(at least on the paper:) grows I'm thinking about implementing two layers of UI. Another option - using presets of Library object, like * Activities for activities and objects that could be treated like activities(for example .swf files) * Books * All my objects * etc. all these presets could have different sets of default UI elements But anyway, I think its a task for future Library versions. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
Aleksey, I read your Library document and the one linked to it on Unified Objects. This sounds like quite an ambitious project. I would agree with Tomeu that some kind of UI mockup would be a good idea. I've been programming for a living for over 30 years and reading your description I finally have some idea of what my end users must go through. It sure sounds useful, but some mocked up screen shots would help explain the idea and sell it. Even a back of the napkin effort like Tomeu linked to would be better than nothing. James Simmons ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 10:14:06AM -0500, James Simmons wrote: Aleksey, I read your Library document and the one linked to it on Unified Objects. This sounds like quite an ambitious project. I would agree with Tomeu that some kind of UI mockup would be a good idea. I've been programming for a living for over 30 years and reading your description I finally have some idea of what my end users must go through. It sure sounds useful, but some mocked up screen shots would help explain the idea and sell it. Even a back of the napkin effort like Tomeu linked to would be better than nothing. well, for its a very plane and simple idea http://people.sugarlabs.org/~alsroot/library.svg -- Aleksey ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
Sorry for posting the screenshot without text (I was reposting a compacted version of the original screenshot, which our list manager wisely refused to forward). My original post was: I have attached a screenshot of calibre. This is a very useful way to look at books, though I'm sure many improvements could be suggested. (Clicking column headings sorts the grid.) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 09:41:01AM -0700, Carol Farlow Lerche wrote: Sorry for posting the screenshot without text (I was reposting a compacted version of the original screenshot, which our list manager wisely refused to forward). My original post was: I have attached a screenshot of calibre. This is a very useful way to look at books, though I'm sure many improvements could be suggested. (Clicking column headings sorts the grid.) Thanks for screens, Library could have fileformat-backends to parse all these books related properties from files to make calibre-like view more useful. -- Aleksey ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
The screenshots help the discussion a great deal. Thinking in terms of how you sort and change views is useful, since there are a few very different use cases that could all rely on what Aleksey is describing [local calibre, active filesharing, global persistent file hosting and bundle creation/publishing among them] SJ On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 1:23 PM, Aleksey Lim alsr...@member.fsf.org wrote: On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 09:41:01AM -0700, Carol Farlow Lerche wrote: Sorry for posting the screenshot without text (I was reposting a compacted version of the original screenshot, which our list manager wisely refused to forward). My original post was: I have attached a screenshot of calibre. This is a very useful way to look at books, though I'm sure many improvements could be suggested. (Clicking column headings sorts the grid.) Thanks for screens, Library could have fileformat-backends to parse all these books related properties from files to make calibre-like view more useful. -- Aleksey ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
Here is a screenshot from Goodreads.com of the beginning of my Economics collection. I have to go around the house and find the rest, put them on a physical shelf together (I recently added three new bookcases), and add them to my list. People occasionally ask me where to get a particular book, or comment when I list one of their favorites. On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 11:33 AM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: On 5 May 2009, at 18:23, Aleksey Lim wrote: On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 09:41:01AM -0700, Carol Farlow Lerche wrote: I have attached a screenshot of calibre. This is a very useful way to look at books, though I'm sure many improvements could be suggested. (Clicking column headings sorts the grid.) Thanks for screens, Library could have fileformat-backends to parse all these books related properties from files to make calibre-like view more useful. Just for a more tangible UI reference. Here's how the lovely Delicious Library presents objects, not just books, but music, dvds, tools, gadgets, clothes, anything you care to give it really. You can then share and browse the library meta-data with friends so you know what items you each have (or are willing) to share. It's more aimed at tracking physical objects, rather than distributing virtual objects, so you would use it to track who's has got what if you were running say, an physical XO hardware lending library. But virtual objects would work just as well in the UI. --Gary -- Aleksey -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin) attachment: Goodreads.png___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
All, The last few emails on the Library Activity suggest that people are looking at Library as a way of organizing their various Journal content just as much if not more than as a way to share said content. As far as organizing content goes, I like what Calibre does better than the tree view you seem to be proposing. What I would like is a tabular format where you can sort ascending or descending on any column, and filter on any column. Both Calibre and iTunes have a view like this and for me it works. I would have columns for Title, Author, Subject, and Type, where Author and Subject are optional. A tree structure is good for hiding stuff you don't want to look at. If you want to browse through everything (expand the entire tree) it wastes vertical space. James Simmons Samuel Klein wrote: The screenshots help the discussion a great deal. Thinking in terms of how you sort and change views is useful, since there are a few very different use cases that could all rely on what Aleksey is describing [local calibre, active filesharing, global persistent file hosting and bundle creation/publishing among them] SJ On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 1:23 PM, Aleksey Lim alsr...@member.fsf.org wrote: On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 09:41:01AM -0700, Carol Farlow Lerche wrote: Sorry for posting the screenshot without text (I was reposting a compacted version of the original screenshot, which our list manager wisely refused to forward). My original post was: I have attached a screenshot of calibre. This is a very useful way to look at books, though I'm sure many improvements could be suggested. (Clicking column headings sorts the grid.) Thanks for screens, Library could have fileformat-backends to parse all these books related properties from files to make calibre-like view more useful. -- Aleksey ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
To the extent that Title, Author, etc. are simply labels for two tags that many ebook items have, and that one could establish others, it is a good generalization of calibre's useful but fixed view. A lot of programs (including the dreaded Windows) allow selection of which columns to display, optimizing screen real estate for personal preferences. And some types of displays work much better for small sets of items as opposed to large ones. The fisheye view in my last post is not at all useful for a large collection, but it works well for a search result with a few to about a hundred items. On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:33 PM, James Simmons jim.simm...@walgreens.comwrote: All, The last few emails on the Library Activity suggest that people are looking at Library as a way of organizing their various Journal content just as much if not more than as a way to share said content. As far as organizing content goes, I like what Calibre does better than the tree view you seem to be proposing. What I would like is a tabular format where you can sort ascending or descending on any column, and filter on any column. Both Calibre and iTunes have a view like this and for me it works. I would have columns for Title, Author, Subject, and Type, where Author and Subject are optional. A tree structure is good for hiding stuff you don't want to look at. If you want to browse through everything (expand the entire tree) it wastes vertical space. James Simmons Samuel Klein wrote: The screenshots help the discussion a great deal. Thinking in terms of how you sort and change views is useful, since there are a few very different use cases that could all rely on what Aleksey is describing [local calibre, active filesharing, global persistent file hosting and bundle creation/publishing among them] SJ On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 1:23 PM, Aleksey Lim alsr...@member.fsf.org wrote: On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 09:41:01AM -0700, Carol Farlow Lerche wrote: Sorry for posting the screenshot without text (I was reposting a compacted version of the original screenshot, which our list manager wisely refused to forward). My original post was: I have attached a screenshot of calibre. This is a very useful way to look at books, though I'm sure many improvements could be suggested. (Clicking column headings sorts the grid.) Thanks for screens, Library could have fileformat-backends to parse all these books related properties from files to make calibre-like view more useful. -- Aleksey ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
Here is fisheye. On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Carol Farlow Lerche c...@msbit.com wrote: To the extent that Title, Author, etc. are simply labels for two tags that many ebook items have, and that one could establish others, it is a good generalization of calibre's useful but fixed view. A lot of programs (including the dreaded Windows) allow selection of which columns to display, optimizing screen real estate for personal preferences. And some types of displays work much better for small sets of items as opposed to large ones. The fisheye view in my last post is not at all useful for a large collection, but it works well for a search result with a few to about a hundred items. On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:33 PM, James Simmons jim.simm...@walgreens.comwrote: All, The last few emails on the Library Activity suggest that people are looking at Library as a way of organizing their various Journal content just as much if not more than as a way to share said content. As far as organizing content goes, I like what Calibre does better than the tree view you seem to be proposing. What I would like is a tabular format where you can sort ascending or descending on any column, and filter on any column. Both Calibre and iTunes have a view like this and for me it works. I would have columns for Title, Author, Subject, and Type, where Author and Subject are optional. A tree structure is good for hiding stuff you don't want to look at. If you want to browse through everything (expand the entire tree) it wastes vertical space. James Simmons Samuel Klein wrote: The screenshots help the discussion a great deal. Thinking in terms of how you sort and change views is useful, since there are a few very different use cases that could all rely on what Aleksey is describing [local calibre, active filesharing, global persistent file hosting and bundle creation/publishing among them] SJ On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 1:23 PM, Aleksey Lim alsr...@member.fsf.org wrote: On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 09:41:01AM -0700, Carol Farlow Lerche wrote: Sorry for posting the screenshot without text (I was reposting a compacted version of the original screenshot, which our list manager wisely refused to forward). My original post was: I have attached a screenshot of calibre. This is a very useful way to look at books, though I'm sure many improvements could be suggested. (Clicking column headings sorts the grid.) Thanks for screens, Library could have fileformat-backends to parse all these books related properties from files to make calibre-like view more useful. -- Aleksey ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep attachment: fisheye.gif___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 02:33:30PM -0500, James Simmons wrote: All, The last few emails on the Library Activity suggest that people are looking at Library as a way of organizing their various Journal content just as much if not more than as a way to share said content. As far as organizing content goes, I like what Calibre does better than the tree view you seem to be proposing. What I would like is a tabular format where you can sort ascending or descending on any column, and filter on any column. Both Calibre and iTunes have a view like this and for me it works. I would have columns for Title, Author, Subject, and Type, where Author and Subject are optional. A tree structure is good for hiding stuff you don't want to look at. If you want to browse through everything (expand the entire tree) it wastes vertical space. Well, in my mind the best solution is let user choose the right way :) So Library will have several tags views * cloud of tags * tree of tags * plane list of objects i.e. w/o any tags -- Aleksey ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 12:46:56PM -0700, Carol Farlow Lerche wrote: To the extent that Title, Author, etc. are simply labels for two tags that many ebook items have, and that one could establish others, it is a good generalization of calibre's useful but fixed view. a great idea!.. Instead of having Search by column option(which should complicate (not)a bit UI, for example original Journal has only on Search field) we could treat object's properties in the way of another source of tags values. For example if we have 100 books by 2 authors, user should scroll all 100 items to reveal this fact, but now he can find this information in tags sidebar(which should contain only 2 items). Though, in the case of 100 books by 100 authors it doesn't work, but it could be suppressed by using composite tag Author(or so) I've added this feature to Library features list. -- Aleksey ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
Aleksey, It isn't clear to me what a cloud of tags is. Is there a familiar application that does something like this? I understand that users can tag things to suit themselves, but still I'd want to impose some kind of structure on the views. When I started visiting libraries they had card catalogs for Author, Title, and Subject. It was a good system, and every library used it. You could create a lot of other indexes but they wouldn't get much use. In the Calibre screenshot we had File Size, Publisher, Date, Series, and I could easily do without any of them. Considering that most users of Sugar are going to be children enforcing a minimum structure couldn't hurt. James Simmons Aleksey Lim wrote: Well, in my mind the best solution is let user choose the right way :) So Library will have several tags views * cloud of tags * tree of tags * plane list of objects i.e. w/o any tags ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 04:12:39PM -0500, James Simmons wrote: Aleksey, It isn't clear to me what a cloud of tags is. Is there a familiar application that does something like this? Perhaps he means http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud James Simmons Martin pgpVfrSC2AFqA.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
Jim, children are great collectors. I just think it is wise to try interfaces with varying numbers of items before concluding that one or another mode is too complicated. If you'd like to try an interface that has tunable complexity, you might like to get a copy of the readerware trial. I can supply a database with around a thousand books as a sample (my daughter's old elementary school was incredibly generous with a book drive!). On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 2:12 PM, James Simmons jim.simm...@walgreens.comwrote: Aleksey, It isn't clear to me what a cloud of tags is. Is there a familiar application that does something like this? I understand that users can tag things to suit themselves, but still I'd want to impose some kind of structure on the views. When I started visiting libraries they had card catalogs for Author, Title, and Subject. It was a good system, and every library used it. You could create a lot of other indexes but they wouldn't get much use. In the Calibre screenshot we had File Size, Publisher, Date, Series, and I could easily do without any of them. Considering that most users of Sugar are going to be children enforcing a minimum structure couldn't hurt. James Simmons Aleksey Lim wrote: Well, in my mind the best solution is let user choose the right way :) So Library will have several tags views * cloud of tags * tree of tags * plane list of objects i.e. w/o any tags ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 04:12:39PM -0500, James Simmons wrote: Aleksey, It isn't clear to me what a cloud of tags is. Is there a familiar application that does something like this? thanks to Martin, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud I understand that users can tag things to suit themselves, but still I'd want to impose some kind of structure on the views. When I started visiting libraries they had card catalogs for Author, Title, and Subject. It was a good system, and every library used it. You could create a lot of other indexes but they wouldn't get much use. In the Calibre screenshot we had File Size, Publisher, Date, Series, and I could easily do without any of them. Considering that most users of Sugar are going to be children enforcing a minimum structure couldn't hurt. agree, at the end Library's functionality(at least on the paper:) grows I'm thinking about implementing two layers of UI. Another option - using presets of Library object, like * Activities for activities and objects that could be treated like activities(for example .swf files) * Books * All my objects * etc. all these presets could have different sets of default UI elements But anyway, I think its a task for future Library versions. -- Aleksey ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:56 PM, Aleksey Lim alsr...@member.fsf.org wrote: On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 02:33:30PM -0500, James Simmons wrote: All, The last few emails on the Library Activity suggest that people are looking at Library as a way of organizing their various Journal content just as much if not more than as a way to share said content. As far as organizing content goes, I like what Calibre does better than the tree view you seem to be proposing. What I would like is a tabular format where you can sort ascending or descending on any column, and filter on any column. Both Calibre and iTunes have a view like this and for me it works. I would have columns for Title, Author, Subject, and Type, where Author and Subject are optional. A tree structure is good for hiding stuff you don't want to look at. If you want to browse through everything (expand the entire tree) it wastes vertical space. Well, in my mind the best solution is let user choose the right way :) So Library will have several tags views * cloud of tags * tree of tags * plane list of objects i.e. w/o any tags A Mind Map view might be a useful option. Let users create links between books, and automatically create links from books to others that they refer to, or that refer to them. (The reverse citations index is one of the most powerful ways that academics use to find the latest research in their field. Just look up one of the foundational works, and see who has mentioned it lately, and in what context.) -- Aleksey ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 2:12 PM, James Simmons jim.simm...@walgreens.com wrote: Aleksey, ... In the Calibre screenshot we had File Size, Publisher, Date, Series, and I could easily do without any of them. Whereas I would use each of them frequently. o File Size is particularly useful for deciding what to dump when you are running out of space, considering also whether you can download it again at need, or perhaps should back it up first. o I am researching textbook publishers, and would find it incredibly useful to have their catalogs in such a system with appropriate tagging. o Date is extremely helpful in navigating Series, and looking at the development of a subject. o Series is particularly useful for collections by multiple authors and even multiple publishers, such as the 40+ canonical Oz books and the 100+ titles since, not all of them for children. Considering that most users of Sugar are going to be children enforcing a minimum structure couldn't hurt. I don't like enforcement, but I do approve of useful defaults. I recommend having a way to store several sets of settings for different purposes. I also suggest some level of integration with Browse, so that bookmarking a URL for a document file can automatically add it to the book list for easy downloading. James Simmons Aleksey Lim wrote: Well, in my mind the best solution is let user choose the right way :) +1 So Library will have several tags views * cloud of tags * tree of tags * plane list of objects i.e. w/o any tags ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
Carol, I meant no insult to children. I just thought they could benefit from a basic structure which they could then add to. Not everyone is good at designing hierarchies. It's something you have to learn. My own mother has not really mastered the idea of hierarchical file systems. (Dad leaves the computing to Mom). My wife, when asked where walnuts could be found in the supermarket, answered In the Nut Section. The answer I was looking for would have been In the Baking aisle. James Simmons Carol Farlow Lerche wrote: Jim, children are great collectors. I just think it is wise to try interfaces with varying numbers of items before concluding that one or another mode is too complicated. If you'd like to try an interface that has tunable complexity, you might like to get a copy of the readerware trial. I can supply a database with around a thousand books as a sample (my daughter's old elementary school was incredibly generous with a book drive!). ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
Aleksey, I, too would be interested in what this will look like. From your description it sounds like a way of grouping things (including texts) in such a way that you can share them with others without actually having them open, as long as the Library activity itself is open. I would guess that if I had a collection of books on my XO that I could make the whole collection available for download even if I wasn't reading any of them. Since you brought this up in response (more or less) to Caroline asking if there would ever be something like Calibre on the XO I was wondering if you planned to have features like Calibre has included in it? What I was thinking of is a grid that lists book information. You would have columns for Author, Title, Subject (or keywords), and you could sort or search the grid by any of these columns. This would give you a way to organize a large collection of texts, something the Journal is ill suited to do. The other Calibre-like thing you could do is to keep track of what format the text was in and open the correct Viewing activity when someone clicks a View button and the book's row is selected. This is another thing that the Journal doesn't do very well. Calibre uses Qt but I see that pygtk has a TreeView component that could be used to make the sortable grid. Caroline mentioned having a collection of over 100 etexts in her copy of Calibre. If you had that many texts on your XO the Journal would just list them in sequence by most recently added or read. You could search on the title string but that's it. It would be a mess to deal with. The reason I ask is that I'm thinking I might try to write such an Activity myself, since it would try to address problems I've had with using the Journal since I got my XO. If the Library activity would do much the same thing I wouldn't do it. James Simmons Tomeu Vizoso wrote: On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 15:51, Aleksey Lim alsr...@member.fsf.org wrote: On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 10:39:52PM -0400, Caroline Meeks wrote: Yes! In theory there are thousands of free books. We need people to be able to experience that there are books available for Sugar when they try Sugar. I like the idea of hooking the readers to a library. I don't know how much work that is or who is available to do it now. Does anyone know where we are in terms of books on the activities portal? I've just initiated Library activity. The major ideas were: Seems like this activity has a lot of functionality. Do you have already a mockup of how the UI would look like? Something as basic as this would be enough: http://expressionflow.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/paper-mock-up.png Thanks, Tomeu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
Calibre makes a sqlite3 database which is the basis for its display. It seems to have a reasonable schema. (An easy way to examine it is with the Sqlite Manger, an excellent Firefox add-on if you haven't already discovered it). On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 11:54 AM, James Simmons jim.simm...@walgreens.comwrote: Aleksey, I, too would be interested in what this will look like. From your description it sounds like a way of grouping things (including texts) in such a way that you can share them with others without actually having them open, as long as the Library activity itself is open. I would guess that if I had a collection of books on my XO that I could make the whole collection available for download even if I wasn't reading any of them. Since you brought this up in response (more or less) to Caroline asking if there would ever be something like Calibre on the XO I was wondering if you planned to have features like Calibre has included in it? What I was thinking of is a grid that lists book information. You would have columns for Author, Title, Subject (or keywords), and you could sort or search the grid by any of these columns. This would give you a way to organize a large collection of texts, something the Journal is ill suited to do. The other Calibre-like thing you could do is to keep track of what format the text was in and open the correct Viewing activity when someone clicks a View button and the book's row is selected. This is another thing that the Journal doesn't do very well. Calibre uses Qt but I see that pygtk has a TreeView component that could be used to make the sortable grid. Caroline mentioned having a collection of over 100 etexts in her copy of Calibre. If you had that many texts on your XO the Journal would just list them in sequence by most recently added or read. You could search on the title string but that's it. It would be a mess to deal with. The reason I ask is that I'm thinking I might try to write such an Activity myself, since it would try to address problems I've had with using the Journal since I got my XO. If the Library activity would do much the same thing I wouldn't do it. James Simmons Tomeu Vizoso wrote: On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 15:51, Aleksey Lim alsr...@member.fsf.org alsr...@member.fsf.org wrote: On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 10:39:52PM -0400, Caroline Meeks wrote: Yes! In theory there are thousands of free books. We need people to be able to experience that there are books available for Sugar when they try Sugar. I like the idea of hooking the readers to a library. I don't know how much work that is or who is available to do it now. Does anyone know where we are in terms of books on the activities portal? I've just initiated Library activity. The major ideas were: Seems like this activity has a lot of functionality. Do you have already a mockup of how the UI would look like? Something as basic as this would be enough: http://expressionflow.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/paper-mock-up.png Thanks, Tomeu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
Carol, I would not use sqllite 3. The metadata for several hundred books could easily fit in memory. It would basically be a good sized spreadsheet. Python has a pickling feature which can save a bunch of objects in memory in a single file that can be easily reloaded into memory. I could store the pickle file as a Journal entry. I would not try to recreate ALL of Calibre, just the parts I would find the most useful. That way the Activity could be entirely self contained. James Simmons Carol Farlow Lerche wrote: Calibre makes a sqlite3 database which is the basis for its display. It seems to have a reasonable schema. (An easy way to examine it is with the Sqlite Manger, an excellent Firefox add-on if you haven't already discovered it). ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
You would need to reinvent ACID updates if you shared the catalog. On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 12:34 PM, James Simmons jim.simm...@walgreens.comwrote: Carol, I would not use sqllite 3. The metadata for several hundred books could easily fit in memory. It would basically be a good sized spreadsheet. Python has a pickling feature which can save a bunch of objects in memory in a single file that can be easily reloaded into memory. I could store the pickle file as a Journal entry. I would not try to recreate ALL of Calibre, just the parts I would find the most useful. That way the Activity could be entirely self contained. James Simmons Carol Farlow Lerche wrote: Calibre makes a sqlite3 database which is the basis for its display. It seems to have a reasonable schema. (An easy way to examine it is with the Sqlite Manger, an excellent Firefox add-on if you haven't already discovered it). ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
Carol, I see sharing the catalog as a read-only thing. I don't know what Aleksey has in mind for Library. Even if that wasn't true, a database is not necessary. There is a framework called Prevayler that handles in-memory databases in such a way that you can lose power without losing updates. I've used that framework in Java and I believe there is an implementation for Python as well. I doubt I would need it though. I think of this as being an electronic card catalog for one's personal library. I'm not doing airline reservations, or dealing with more data than will easily fit in memory. If someone's battery dies while they're adding cards to the catalog they'll lose their work but the old directory entry should survive. As a user I would not want to need external software to make my Activity work. I have experienced this with Read Etexts and the speech function. Read Etexts has supported TTS with highlighting for months, but getting the needed external (outside the Activity bundle) software on everyone's XO is a whole other problem, that will take a lot longer to solve. If there was a way to avoid that I would have. James Simmons Carol Farlow Lerche wrote: You would need to reinvent ACID updates if you shared the catalog. On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 12:34 PM, James Simmons jim.simm...@walgreens.com mailto:jim.simm...@walgreens.com wrote: Carol, I would not use sqllite 3. The metadata for several hundred books could easily fit in memory. It would basically be a good sized spreadsheet. Python has a pickling feature which can save a bunch of objects in memory in a single file that can be easily reloaded into memory. I could store the pickle file as a Journal entry. I would not try to recreate ALL of Calibre, just the parts I would find the most useful. That way the Activity could be entirely self contained. James Simmons Carol Farlow Lerche wrote: Calibre makes a sqlite3 database which is the basis for its display. It seems to have a reasonable schema. (An easy way to examine it is with the Sqlite Manger, an excellent Firefox add-on if you haven't already discovered it). ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
Eben Eliason wrote: Something we have talked about in the past is a way for individuals to share content they've created with others, and an obvious means of accomplishing this task is to provide functionality of a View Alice's Journal nature, by which Bob could view Alice's shared content. One exciting approach to implementation is to publish this content as an RSS feed, thus allowing anyone (including non-sugar users) with the right URL to take advantage of it. My favorite publishing standard for this purpose is WebDAV[1]. WebDAV is essentially a lightly specialized form of HTTP, designed specifically for the purpose of allowing users to share files. It's supported directly by Gnome[2][3], KDE[4], Windows (since Win98!)[5], and Mac OS X[6]. Since it's little more than a plain HTTP server, it's also accessible to anyone with a browser, if they have the right URL. WebDAV is also potentially much more capable than plain HTTP. DAV stands for Distributed Authoring and Versioning. WebDAV can be configured as a true Read+Write protocol, and it can even expose the Journal's versioning correctly. There is also an IETF standard for searching a WebDAV share.[7] WebDAV includes per-file metadata, so tagging, and searching based on those tags, is supported. I do not see a need for RSS, if the user can publish files through WebDAV. However, because WebDAV is built around HTTP, such an RSS feed could be created just as with a basic HTTP server. --Ben [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebDAV [2] http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-user-share/2.26/gnome-user-share.html [3] http://www.webdavsystem.com/server/access/gnome_nautilus [4] http://manual.intl.indoglobal.com/apbs02.html [5] http://www.hss.caltech.edu/help/web/webdav/accessing/windowsxp [6] http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Performance/Conceptual/FileSystem/Articles/MacOSXAndFiles.html [7] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5323 signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
WebDAV is very nice at a first look, but its implementations are so radically different, that using it across OSes is often hopeless (from my limited experience). 2009/5/5 Benjamin M. Schwartz bmsch...@fas.harvard.edu: Eben Eliason wrote: Something we have talked about in the past is a way for individuals to share content they've created with others, and an obvious means of accomplishing this task is to provide functionality of a View Alice's Journal nature, by which Bob could view Alice's shared content. One exciting approach to implementation is to publish this content as an RSS feed, thus allowing anyone (including non-sugar users) with the right URL to take advantage of it. My favorite publishing standard for this purpose is WebDAV[1]. WebDAV is essentially a lightly specialized form of HTTP, designed specifically for the purpose of allowing users to share files. It's supported directly by Gnome[2][3], KDE[4], Windows (since Win98!)[5], and Mac OS X[6]. Since it's little more than a plain HTTP server, it's also accessible to anyone with a browser, if they have the right URL. WebDAV is also potentially much more capable than plain HTTP. DAV stands for Distributed Authoring and Versioning. WebDAV can be configured as a true Read+Write protocol, and it can even expose the Journal's versioning correctly. There is also an IETF standard for searching a WebDAV share.[7] WebDAV includes per-file metadata, so tagging, and searching based on those tags, is supported. I do not see a need for RSS, if the user can publish files through WebDAV. However, because WebDAV is built around HTTP, such an RSS feed could be created just as with a basic HTTP server. --Ben [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebDAV [2] http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-user-share/2.26/gnome-user-share.html [3] http://www.webdavsystem.com/server/access/gnome_nautilus [4] http://manual.intl.indoglobal.com/apbs02.html [5] http://www.hss.caltech.edu/help/web/webdav/accessing/windowsxp [6] http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Performance/Conceptual/FileSystem/Articles/MacOSXAndFiles.html [7] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5323 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Lucian Branescu wrote: WebDAV is very nice at a first look, but its implementations are so radically different, that using it across OSes is often hopeless (from my limited experience). - From what I've read, Windows's built-in WebDAV support isn't great. Everyone else's seems to be very good. However, there are two more important points here: 1. It only has to work perfectly when used within our ecosystem. If it falls back to read-only for Windows machines, that's fine. 2. There are good free WebDAV clients for Windows, like Novell NetDrive[1]. - --Ben [1] http://www.theblog.ca/novell-netdrive -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.11 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkn/nxYACgkQUJT6e6HFtqROewCcCI//s6otbQRNzhBMVaceobD7 PCoAnRZ0i2wrJ5UBfZkcahnXXdeReDhN =OQz+ -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
On Mon, May 04, 2009 at 01:54:30PM -0500, James Simmons wrote: Aleksey, I, too would be interested in what this will look like. From your description it sounds like a way of grouping things (including texts) in such a way that you can share them with others without actually having them open, as long as the Library activity itself is open. I would guess that if I had a collection of books on my XO that I could make the whole collection available for download even if I wasn't reading any of them. exactly Since you brought this up in response (more or less) to Caroline asking if there would ever be something like Calibre on the XO I was wondering if you planned to have features like Calibre has included in it? What I was thinking of is a grid that lists book information. You would have columns for Author, Title, Subject (or keywords), and you could sort or search the grid by any of these columns. at the end Library activity is targeted on the whoole verity of objects so Library objects will have ASLO's properties but I'm also planing to parse objects(like .ogg properties) and fill RO properties(if they are non-ASLO) This would give you a way to organize a large collection of texts, something the Journal is ill suited to do. The other Calibre-like thing you could do is to keep track of what format the text was in and open the correct Viewing activity when someone clicks a View button and the book's row is selected. This is another thing that the Journal doesn't do very well. good idea, thanks Calibre uses Qt but I see that pygtk has a TreeView component that could be used to make the sortable grid. yup, gtk should have power tree view widget Caroline mentioned having a collection of over 100 etexts in her copy of Calibre. If you had that many texts on your XO the Journal would just list them in sequence by most recently added or read. You could search on the title string but that's it. It would be a mess to deal with. I'm going to use tags(and composite tags) The reason I ask is that I'm thinking I might try to write such an Activity myself, since it would try to address problems I've had with using the Journal since I got my XO. If the Library activity would do much the same thing I wouldn't do it. well, Library activity is in my TODO :) http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Library#Roadmap James Simmons Tomeu Vizoso wrote: On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 15:51, Aleksey Lim alsr...@member.fsf.org wrote: On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 10:39:52PM -0400, Caroline Meeks wrote: Yes! In theory there are thousands of free books. We need people to be able to experience that there are books available for Sugar when they try Sugar. I like the idea of hooking the readers to a library. I don't know how much work that is or who is available to do it now. Does anyone know where we are in terms of books on the activities portal? I've just initiated Library activity. The major ideas were: Seems like this activity has a lot of functionality. Do you have already a mockup of how the UI would look like? Something as basic as this would be enough: http://expressionflow.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/paper-mock-up.png Thanks, Tomeu -- Aleksey ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
In case of Library activity I'm going to follow simple rules: * use local datastore API to search/filter objects * use remote datastore API(in some way) to search/filter objects from remote users(sources) * use telepathy tubes for notifying users about changes * sync shared objects while opening Library activity or manually So, dirty objects is not a huge problem for Library On Mon, May 04, 2009 at 03:15:41PM -0500, James Simmons wrote: Carol, I see sharing the catalog as a read-only thing. I don't know what Aleksey has in mind for Library. Even if that wasn't true, a database is not necessary. There is a framework called Prevayler that handles in-memory databases in such a way that you can lose power without losing updates. I've used that framework in Java and I believe there is an implementation for Python as well. I doubt I would need it though. I think of this as being an electronic card catalog for one's personal library. I'm not doing airline reservations, or dealing with more data than will easily fit in memory. If someone's battery dies while they're adding cards to the catalog they'll lose their work but the old directory entry should survive. As a user I would not want to need external software to make my Activity work. I have experienced this with Read Etexts and the speech function. Read Etexts has supported TTS with highlighting for months, but getting the needed external (outside the Activity bundle) software on everyone's XO is a whole other problem, that will take a lot longer to solve. If there was a way to avoid that I would have. James Simmons Carol Farlow Lerche wrote: You would need to reinvent ACID updates if you shared the catalog. On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 12:34 PM, James Simmons jim.simm...@walgreens.com mailto:jim.simm...@walgreens.com wrote: Carol, I would not use sqllite 3. The metadata for several hundred books could easily fit in memory. It would basically be a good sized spreadsheet. Python has a pickling feature which can save a bunch of objects in memory in a single file that can be easily reloaded into memory. I could store the pickle file as a Journal entry. I would not try to recreate ALL of Calibre, just the parts I would find the most useful. That way the Activity could be entirely self contained. James Simmons Carol Farlow Lerche wrote: Calibre makes a sqlite3 database which is the basis for its display. It seems to have a reasonable schema. (An easy way to examine it is with the Sqlite Manger, an excellent Firefox add-on if you haven't already discovered it). -- Aleksey ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
