Re: [Sugar-devel] RFC: Kill the delayed menus for good
On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 11:01:30AM +0100, Martin Dengler wrote: On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 06:48:31PM +1100, James Cameron wrote: I'm adding it to my list of patches that improve performance perceptions. Is this list available online somewhere? http://dev.laptop.org/~quozl/802-patches/ is for browsing http://dev.laptop.org/~quozl/802-patches.git/ is for contributors To be used on an XO, the patches must be applied as root, with / as working directory, using patch --strip 1 ... and naturally you'll need patch, but that can be copied into /usr/local/bin/ from another system. -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Zero-calorie bundles?
El Thu, 15-10-2009 a las 19:18 +0200, Martin Langhoff escribió: Ok - that's good. I am familiar with the limitations we are hitting with rpm and dpkg. What I truly wonder about is things like 'autopackage' and klik. See also the 'see also' section in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Install It would be great if someone (Michael?) could approach them and invite them to next Saturday's IRC meeting to confront ideas (i.e.: megaflame). A while ago there was some serious discussion of the issues with these 'non-OS' pkg managers. Here is a tip of the iceberg - http://www.licquia.org/archives/2006/03/11/autopackage-goes-insane/ The discussion was heated, and sprawled across blogs. Good points were made. Before taking on something like z-i... it'd be worth understanding the good, bad and ugly and how it applies to us... I've read through this interesting saga, including the wiki page that triggered it, which has moved here since then: http://trac.autopackage.org/wiki/LinuxProblems My thinking is that Autopackage the folks are trying to solve an unsolvable problem: 100% binary compatibility across different Linux distributions (or different versions of the same distribution). They will FAIL. And even if they'd succeed, they'd FAIL later on as the x86 becomes less and less ubiquitous as x86-64, ARM and maybe MIPS gain market share. It's a slow, but unstoppable process. In a truly open market in which at least 3 or 4 architectures compete on more or less equal ground, one could as well accomodate a few more build variants for each architecture for the sake of the various OSes and their evolutionary needs. Getting the Zero Install folks involved may bring in fresh expertise They'll know about z-i, not about the needs of Sugar or its users... hence the perspective I am mentioning. Agreed, we should also hear from all the others. Well, perhaps not from the Autopackage crowd, since we already know they FAIL. :-))) -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://sugarlabs.org/ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] sugar live cd for windows
Tomeu, It would be great to have the XO-LiveCD perform at par with the other Sugar distributions. I surely have an interest in the performance of all Sugar distributions. Regards, Manu On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 12:47 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 20:13, Manusheel Gupta m...@laptop.org wrote: Tomeu, Thank you for the pointer. Yes, we have tried running SocialCalc on Sugar with SoaS as the Sugar distribution. Works pretty well. We'll look into the other distributions as recommended. Ok, so if performance is better on SoaS than in XO-LiveCD, then we have a clue about where to investigate. Do you have a big interest in using XO-LiveCD ? Regards, Tomeu Regards, Manu On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 12:23 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 19:45, Manusheel Gupta m...@laptop.org wrote: Tomeu, My apologies for the typo. I meant Live CD for running Sugar on Windows. We downloaded it from ftp://www.rohrmoser-engineering.de/pub/XO-LiveCD/XO-LiveCD_090722.iso. I confess not having tried it out, but AFAIK that's a normal linux live image. So you don't run windows when you boot that .iso, just linux. Have you tried other linux live images containing Sugar? There's SoaS, Trisquel, OpenSUSE, etc. See in the wiki for links and instructions. Regards, Tomeu Regards, Manu On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 11:38 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 18:59, Manusheel Gupta m...@laptop.org wrote: Dear all, Wish to ask you for pointers to improve the performance of SocialCalc activity while running it on Sugar Live CD for Windows. SocialCalc works very well on the native installation of Sugar. Please suggest. Hi Manu, can you clarify what do you mean by a Live CD for Windows? Regards, Tomeu Regards, Manu -- Forwarded message -- Manu, I successfully installed Social Calc using the Sugar Live CD. The only issue was that SocialCalc didn't show up in my activity list until I restarted Sugar. The response of Sugar is a bit sluggish (which also affects SocialCalc). It's easier to learn a new system when the system's feedback to actions is fast and time-consistent. I would guess that this is not a problem with a native installation. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) i...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar. What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David Farning -- «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar. What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David Farning -- «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar. What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David Farning ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Memorize 33 is buggy - what should I do?
On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 10:38:03PM -0400, Caroline Meeks wrote: I doubt this is a SoaS only problem but I haven't tested it on an XO Tickets - 1055 I'm going to test Memorize in last soas2(12-Oct-2009) #1055 is about pulseaudio issue, maybe in last soas it will be better , 1503 1503 is a total blocker for using Memorize and 1055 is going to give me hell in the field trying to get kids not clear that inviting face. #1503 looks weird, telepathy signals don't work... trying to investigate -- Aleksey ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [Bug 422302] Re: Soas-2-beta: drop-down menu on XO icon incomplete
2009/10/13 Art Hunkins abhun...@uncg.edu: I was mistaken about this. Both SoaS (yes, Strawberry) and the XO-1 act identically: downloaded activities register immediately; *copied* activities (from a USB stick) require a restart to register. I'm not seeing this on XO-1. I plug a USB disk in, go to the journal, click the USB icon, then drag-and-drop the activity I want to install onto the journal icon in the bottom left. The activity is then immediately available from the home screen. Are you using a different process? Daniel ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
[Sugar-devel] themes GUI
Hi, I need to create a new theme to graphic interface for sugar. this them I copy to path: /usr/share/themes/myTheme/... but, How do I apply this theme? or change the configuration to apply this theme? thenks. ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
[Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Release Deducto-1
Activity Homepage: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/addon/4220 Sugar Platform: from 0.82 to 0.86 Download Now: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/downloads/version/29280 Release notes: 1. 10 in-built levels. 2. Design your own game feature. 3. Localization in Hindi. Reviewer comments: This request has been approved. Sugar Labs Activities http://activities.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
[Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Release ColorDeducto-1
Activity Homepage: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/addon/4221 Sugar Platform: from 0.82 to 0.86 Download Now: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/downloads/version/29281 Release notes: 1. 10 in-built levels. 2. Design your own game feature. 3. Localization in Hindi. Reviewer comments: This request has been approved. Sugar Labs Activities http://activities.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Should we care about non readers and kids with motor skill issues? was - Re: RFC: Kill the delayed menus for good
On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 03:28, Caroline Meeks solutiongr...@gmail.com wrote: Perhaps. What would you define as the ailment, yourself? The primary intent was to encourage use of a direct interaction model, in which palettes we're supposed to play a big role. When it turned out that young kids, who didn't read, and who didn't have motor skills for selecting form the palettes, we aimed to reduce accidental invocation of them without entirely eliminating discovery by increasing the delay. Many kids have motor skills, and the ones that don't initially are remarkably good (being kids) at developing motor skills that they don't yet have. Many kids also read. In fact, let's cut into some real deep philosophy stuff here... True. But all kids matter. Including the nonreaders, the ones going to schools that are not taught in their native language, the ones for whom reading is a struggle, the dyslectics. Also I really disagree about the developing motor skills. I think developing motor skills is a developmental thing that goes at different paces. I see kids that can get the concepts of Sugar but who struggle with clicking the blocks together in Turtle Art. I think they are perfectly normal kids who will eventually have perfectly adequate motor skills for normal computing. Providing them with a system that is as easy as possible for them while those motor skills are developing should be one of our missions. The idea that the XO laptop is mainly for kids who can't read is completely bogus. Now, maybe you're thinking of other children when you say this, but I prefer to first consider the main existing userbase. Laptops which have Sugar installed on them are primarily located in schools and are used for education. It is kind of ridiculous to say Well, you don't actually need to know how to read to use the laptops, so we should make the interface not require reading. when the truth is that, for most activities that have any educational merit, you DO need to read and you need to read things significantly more complicated than activity names. Most of the people who use Sugar for most of the time WILL know how to read. I disagree on this too. I think there a host of activities that nonreaders could use in Sugar. Paint, Colors, Jingsaw, Flipsticks, Write (writing a great way to learn to read), speak, many GCompris Games, Calculate, books that are read to you, Browse if you share a favorited website. In fact if you share a started activity then you further expand the number of things a nonreader could do. I agree with this, that's what I think of when I hear low floor, no ceiling. Regards, Tomeu -- «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar. What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David Farning ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] RFC: Kill the delayed menus for good
I wanted to include Christian on this thread since he may also wish to try it out and have some valuable feedback. It seems like this thread is somewhat split between design discussions and process issues. Should it be exclusive to the sugar-devel list? If we want feedback from people other than developers it seems we should have a broader scope. Eben On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 11:19 PM, Eben Eliason e...@laptop.org wrote: On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 10:09 PM, Avi fiendi...@gmail.com wrote: Tomeu wrote: I'm more concerned about developers proposing big user experience changes because they feel it's better. Before I look at the patch I would like to know if there's agreement from people close to our users that this behavior change is desired. How can we get that? How about users (me) proposing big user experience changes by asking a developer (Michael) why the fuck does this UI take so goddamned long to react? Also, define our users. Is it people using Sugar? Is it people using XOs? Is it people other than you? I'll gladly put myself into any of these categories if it makes you happy. I think we'd all agree that the primary audience for Sugar is children of varied age groups and levels of education, and that audience should be considered first in terms of the user experience. I'm not suggesting, of course, that the rest of us aren't also users with valid input and experiences, or that this proposed patch was submitted without the best interests of that audience, or at least a reasonable portion of that audience, in mind. I also don't believe that Tomeu was stating a challenge of any kind, or insinuating that no one other than Michael was likely to have a positive response to the proposed change. The suggestion was that we collect feedback from many people, yourself included, and also from children in our primary audience and the teachers and instructors who work with them daily. In that regard, thank you for your feedback; it would be more constructive, of course, if you could provide it without the profanity and apparent disgust. Eben wrote: The initial design intent was to develop a system which worked in a sufficiently complete manner without needing palettes at all. 1) For whom? What about people who know how to recognize English letters and words better than they remember what an obscure picture means? Because you've failed on that front. For children! And actually, I agree with you. In many cases text is minimized more than I would like it to be. Clearly it's beneficial for those learning to read to see associations of words and icons, and words are naturally useful to those who already can. 2) Good luck. Sincerely. I hope that if that's still your goal that it's actually possible. I'm personally not convinced, but only because I haven't yet seen a demonstration that shows progress on that front. Honestly, I think we've come relatively close. Would you strongly disagree? It's possible to create new activities, resume past activities, join collaborative activities, connect to networks, participate in activities, copy, paste, and stop activities with the use of primary actions only. I'm not suggesting that the full power of the UI is available without the need for seeing any text, but I am suggesting that there are a great many things you can do with Sugar without needing to use the secondary actions and tools available in palettes. If there are basic functions or actions that are frequently needed that aren't exposed as primary actions, it would be useful to identify those areas in order to make improvements. Do you have any suggestions? Finding that many kids were actually waiting for the palette to appear always, instead of, for instance, simply clicking on an activity icon to join it, encouraged us to INcrease the delay on the palettes to help emphasize this as a secondary mechanism for interaction. Jesus, why? Think about what you just said for a moment. Why might someone wait for the palette to appear before clicking? Probably because they want to see what's on the palette! The situation of the palette is that all it I was not precise enough in my statement. Upon observation, many children were waiting for the palette exclusively to select the first option within it, which is the primary action that a click on the object itself would also invoke. They were NOT attempting to access the secondary functionality, but instead, due to the appearance of the palette, assumed that this was the only means of interaction. As Michael correctly points out, the contextual menus are indeed an inferior solution to direct interactions, since they require finer motor skills (and are difficult with poor trackpads, such as those on XOs) and movement away from the object they wish to interact to a secondary target within the menu. The icons are larger targets, easy to click without delay, and would have saved children both time and
Re: [Sugar-devel] [Sugar-desarrollo] themes GUI
Have you restarted Sugar and your changes are still in ?. Rafael Ortiz On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 8:03 AM, Esteban Arias esteban.arias...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I need to create a new theme to graphic interface for sugar. this them I copy to path: /usr/share/themes/myTheme/... but, How do I apply this theme? or change the configuration to apply this theme? thenks. ___ Sugar-Desarrollo mailing list sugar-desarro...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-desarrollo ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [Sugar-desarrollo] themes GUI
On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 14:03, Esteban Arias esteban.arias...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I need to create a new theme to graphic interface for sugar. this them I copy to path: /usr/share/themes/myTheme/... but, How do I apply this theme? or change the configuration to apply this theme? Hi, once you have your theme in /usr/share/themes, you can tell Sugar to use it by editing /usr/share/sugar/data/sugar-100.gtkrc In that file there are also set some other values on which you may be interested as well. Regards, Tomeu thenks. ___ Sugar-Desarrollo mailing list sugar-desarro...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-desarrollo -- «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar. What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David Farning ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
[Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Release Food Force II-1
Activity Homepage: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/addon/4219 Sugar Platform: from 0.82 to 0.86 Download Now: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/downloads/version/29274 Release notes: Reviewer comments: This request has been approved. Sugar Labs Activities http://activities.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
[Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Release SocialCalcActivity-1
Activity Homepage: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/addon/4084 Sugar Platform: from 0.82 to 0.86 Download Now: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/downloads/version/29215 Release notes: Reviewer comments: This request has been approved. Sugar Labs Activities http://activities.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
[Sugar-devel] Alpha release - Deducto and Color Deducto activity
Dear all, I am delighted to announce the alpha release of the Deducto and Color Deducto activities. Please visit - 1. *Deducto home page* - http://seeta.in/j/products-and-services/deducto.html 2. *Color Deducto home page* - http://seeta.in/j/products-and-services/color-deducto.html 3. *User guide for Deducto* - http://seeta.in/wiki/index.php?title=Deducto_User%E2%80%99s_Section 4. *User guide for Color Deducto* - http://seeta.in/wiki/index.php?title=Color_Deducto_User%E2%80%99s_Section 5. *Download pages* - the alpha version of these activities along with their source code can be downloaded from http://seeta.in/j/downloads.html or from activities.sugarlabs.org ( http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4220 and http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4221). Many thanks to the developers Ashita Dadlani and Anisha Arora for their dedication and consistency during all the stages of the development; Satyajeet Singh, Assim Deodia, Swarandeep Singh and Vijit Singh for their support in training, development, localization and QA activities. Wish to express my gratitude to Walter Bender and Samuel J. Klein for their wonderful support and encouragement as always. We look forward to hearing your feedback and experience with Deducto and Color Deducto activities. If you would like to put in a feature request, please do so at http://testtrack.seeta.in. Hope you enjoy working with Deducto and Color Deducto activities. Wishing you a very Happy Diwali. Regards, Manu ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] RFC: Kill the delayed menus for good
For us noobs in patching, could someone make a screencast of Sugar running with this patch? Eduardo 2009/10/16 Eben Eliason e...@laptop.org: I wanted to include Christian on this thread since he may also wish to try it out and have some valuable feedback. It seems like this thread is somewhat split between design discussions and process issues. Should it be exclusive to the sugar-devel list? If we want feedback from people other than developers it seems we should have a broader scope. Eben On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 11:19 PM, Eben Eliason e...@laptop.org wrote: On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 10:09 PM, Avi fiendi...@gmail.com wrote: Tomeu wrote: I'm more concerned about developers proposing big user experience changes because they feel it's better. Before I look at the patch I would like to know if there's agreement from people close to our users that this behavior change is desired. How can we get that? How about users (me) proposing big user experience changes by asking a developer (Michael) why the fuck does this UI take so goddamned long to react? Also, define our users. Is it people using Sugar? Is it people using XOs? Is it people other than you? I'll gladly put myself into any of these categories if it makes you happy. I think we'd all agree that the primary audience for Sugar is children of varied age groups and levels of education, and that audience should be considered first in terms of the user experience. I'm not suggesting, of course, that the rest of us aren't also users with valid input and experiences, or that this proposed patch was submitted without the best interests of that audience, or at least a reasonable portion of that audience, in mind. I also don't believe that Tomeu was stating a challenge of any kind, or insinuating that no one other than Michael was likely to have a positive response to the proposed change. The suggestion was that we collect feedback from many people, yourself included, and also from children in our primary audience and the teachers and instructors who work with them daily. In that regard, thank you for your feedback; it would be more constructive, of course, if you could provide it without the profanity and apparent disgust. Eben wrote: The initial design intent was to develop a system which worked in a sufficiently complete manner without needing palettes at all. 1) For whom? What about people who know how to recognize English letters and words better than they remember what an obscure picture means? Because you've failed on that front. For children! And actually, I agree with you. In many cases text is minimized more than I would like it to be. Clearly it's beneficial for those learning to read to see associations of words and icons, and words are naturally useful to those who already can. 2) Good luck. Sincerely. I hope that if that's still your goal that it's actually possible. I'm personally not convinced, but only because I haven't yet seen a demonstration that shows progress on that front. Honestly, I think we've come relatively close. Would you strongly disagree? It's possible to create new activities, resume past activities, join collaborative activities, connect to networks, participate in activities, copy, paste, and stop activities with the use of primary actions only. I'm not suggesting that the full power of the UI is available without the need for seeing any text, but I am suggesting that there are a great many things you can do with Sugar without needing to use the secondary actions and tools available in palettes. If there are basic functions or actions that are frequently needed that aren't exposed as primary actions, it would be useful to identify those areas in order to make improvements. Do you have any suggestions? Finding that many kids were actually waiting for the palette to appear always, instead of, for instance, simply clicking on an activity icon to join it, encouraged us to INcrease the delay on the palettes to help emphasize this as a secondary mechanism for interaction. Jesus, why? Think about what you just said for a moment. Why might someone wait for the palette to appear before clicking? Probably because they want to see what's on the palette! The situation of the palette is that all it I was not precise enough in my statement. Upon observation, many children were waiting for the palette exclusively to select the first option within it, which is the primary action that a click on the object itself would also invoke. They were NOT attempting to access the secondary functionality, but instead, due to the appearance of the palette, assumed that this was the only means of interaction. As Michael correctly points out, the contextual menus are indeed an inferior solution to direct interactions, since they require finer motor skills (and are difficult with poor trackpads, such as those on XOs) and movement away from the object they wish to
[Sugar-devel] FOSS.in 2009, Bangalore
Hi all, The CFP for foss.in[1] is out[2]. I'll probably be submitting a talk about the work I have been doing on ebooks. We also have the opportunity to hold workouts/hackfests/bofs as well. People from India (and from outside India as well ) may want to submit proposals - just keep in mind that the last date is 26th October. Thanks, Sayamindu [1] http://foss.in/ [2] http://foss.in/news/fossincfp-2009.html -- Sayamindu Dasgupta [http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings] ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] FOSS.in 2009, Bangalore
On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 4:13 AM, Sayamindu Dasgupta sayami...@gmail.com wrote: The CFP for foss.in[1] is out[2]. I'll probably be submitting a talk about the work I have been doing on ebooks. We also have the opportunity to hold workouts/hackfests/bofs as well. People from India (and from outside India as well ) may want to submit proposals - just keep in mind that the last date is 26th October. Are you considering submitting some proposal around l10n as well ? I was alluding to your recent article at LWN around l10n tools and infrastructure and, it would make for an interesting second talk. -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog Sent from Pune, MH, India ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Should we care about non readers and kids with motor skill issues? was - Re: RFC: Kill the delayed menus for good
as someone who grew up dyslexic before computers, I have to say, XOs should be for EveryOne, readers, people with difficulty reading, those young and not reading, and dyslexics, plus those with motor issues. you could check the prevalance numbers, but with deployments of 300k or so, you are going to get a large segment of people, i.e. high numbers (thousands, to tens of thousands?) who need to be included... and that is without autism, and other physical issues like muscular dystrophy, deafness, blind, etc... emotional and cognitive issues probably abound as well, and a computer is sometimes a good way to go, even special ed might agree with that... as a kid, and some continuing, my handwritting is really bad, and was able to use a typewritter in class. in today's classrooms, having a computer, that has built in keyboard + memory and ability on screen to change fonts, character sizes, etc, may make reading a possiblity, not to mention some interactivity options and more patience than your average teacher, student teacher, class assistant, and parent probably possess... plus dysgraphia, like dyslexia but graphics, (think picasa on a bad day), and stick figures would be the best to be expected, whereas programming something to draw for one might not be an issue, turtle art, programming graphics, etc. On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 10:02 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 03:28, Caroline Meeks solutiongr...@gmail.com wrote: Perhaps. What would you define as the ailment, yourself? The primary intent was to encourage use of a direct interaction model, in which palettes we're supposed to play a big role. When it turned out that young kids, who didn't read, and who didn't have motor skills for selecting form the palettes, we aimed to reduce accidental invocation of them without entirely eliminating discovery by increasing the delay. Many kids have motor skills, and the ones that don't initially are remarkably good (being kids) at developing motor skills that they don't yet have. Many kids also read. In fact, let's cut into some real deep philosophy stuff here... True. But all kids matter. Including the nonreaders, the ones going to schools that are not taught in their native language, the ones for whom reading is a struggle, the dyslectics. Also I really disagree about the developing motor skills. I think developing motor skills is a developmental thing that goes at different paces. I see kids that can get the concepts of Sugar but who struggle with clicking the blocks together in Turtle Art. I think they are perfectly normal kids who will eventually have perfectly adequate motor skills for normal computing. Providing them with a system that is as easy as possible for them while those motor skills are developing should be one of our missions. The idea that the XO laptop is mainly for kids who can't read is completely bogus. Now, maybe you're thinking of other children when you say this, but I prefer to first consider the main existing userbase. Laptops which have Sugar installed on them are primarily located in schools and are used for education. It is kind of ridiculous to say Well, you don't actually need to know how to read to use the laptops, so we should make the interface not require reading. when the truth is that, for most activities that have any educational merit, you DO need to read and you need to read things significantly more complicated than activity names. Most of the people who use Sugar for most of the time WILL know how to read. I disagree on this too. I think there a host of activities that nonreaders could use in Sugar. Paint, Colors, Jingsaw, Flipsticks, Write (writing a great way to learn to read), speak, many GCompris Games, Calculate, books that are read to you, Browse if you share a favorited website. In fact if you share a started activity then you further expand the number of things a nonreader could do. I agree with this, that's what I think of when I hear low floor, no ceiling. Regards, Tomeu -- «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar. What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David Farning ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- DancesWithCars leave the wolves behind ;-) ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Activity version compatibility
On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 6:15 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: On 13 Oct 2009, at 15:29, Tomeu Vizoso wrote: On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 05:35, Wade Brainerd wad...@gmail.com wrote: BTW, we should still answer the question of the activity.info field... Seems like there 3 options to me: 1) Deprecate host_version in the activity.info spec. Activity developers write code to test for presence non-BC APIs and provide fallbacks (or else let activities fail to launch/work). FWIW 1) is the one I've been following (testing for available features, providing fallbacks, accept failure to launch reports as bugs to fix). It seems to just be a small number of current Sucrose activities that are genuinely backwards incompatible with previous Sugar releases. 2) Keep host_version as an incrementing number, make activityfactory respect it, and bump the Sugar number from 1 to 2 in 0.86.1 to reflect the toolbar changes. 3) Deprecate host_version, introduce sugar_version which is set to the oldest Sugar version number the activity is compatible with. I'd not object to 3) if someone really has a bee in their bonnet ;-b but I'd be unlikely to use it, and don't see it helping in many real user cases (it just provides an opportunity to show a prettier error message). Sugar platform releases seem pretty far down the scale of reasons for most launch failures, 95% of such cases will be covered by a smarter pulsing-window launcher for when an Activity fails (bad distro installs, latest architecture flavour of the week, missing platform dependancies, new changes in Sugar that break old code, un-anticipitated security permissions, actual bugs, users hacking on and breaking code). Regards, --Gary I'm also in favor of 1) as a starting point. I will submit a patch to remove all references to host_version and remove it from the documentation. If in the future we realize we need something better, we could talk about 3) again. Totally agree w.r.t. most activity failures. -Wade ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [Bug 422302] Re: Soas-2-beta: drop-down menu on XO icon incomplete
Alt-Ctrl-Backspace is supposed to make X stop, not restart. It's the XO that has a bug. (an ill-considered feature) If you screw up your laptop such that X dies or hangs at start-up, the current XO behavior will cause you pain. You'll find yourself in a restart loop, unable to repair or debug the problem. Without a developer key, the only way out is a full data-losing reinstall. ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] sugar live cd for windows
On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 11:53:03AM -0400, Kevin Cole wrote: A Live CD doesn't run on anything, generally speaking. It implies a CD which you boot the entire operating system from. To the best of my knowledge there are no Live Windows Sugar CD's. This users' perspective is not unusual ... if a user believes they have Microsoft Windows on their computer, and you give them a CD and ask them to restart their computer ... afterward nothing seems to have changed. Since running the CD doesn't *remove* Microsoft Windows their computer remains Microsoft Windows based. Only users who know what an operating system is and where it exists (on disk permanently vs in memory temporarily) can fully appreciate the complexity. It would be technically possible to have a Microsoft Windows Live CD, but last I heard the copyright owner and licensor don't permit this method of deployment. I'm no expert in that product. -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
