from:"Edward Cherlin"

Raspberry Pi (was Fwd: [Sur] linux system por $25)

2011-05-22 Thread Edward Cherlin

FYI. Anybody who would like to port Sugar to a $25 computer (requiring
only monitor, mouse, and keyboard) should contact Eben, and let us
know too.

-- Forwarded message --
From: Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com
Date: Sat, May 21, 2011 at 22:10
Subject: Re: [Sur] linux system por $25
To: Eben Upton eben.up...@gmail.com

On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 12:22, Eben Upton eben.up...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hi Edward
 Thanks for your mail, and apologies for the delay in replying. The
 devices should be available to the general public later in the year;
 I'll add you to our mailing list, and will keep you posted as we get
 closer to launch.

Thank you.

 We've heard of Sugar, but need to find out more about it. Do you think
 it's suitable for a machine with limited processing power and only
 256MB of RAM?

That's what it was designed for.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_specifications
AMD Geode 433 Mhz processor
256M RAM
Fedora Linux

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Getting_Started
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities

 Cheers
 Eben Upton
 Director, Raspberry Pi Foundation

 Follow us @Raspberry_Pi on Twitter

 On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 5:07 PM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com wrote:
 Your Web site asks

 Do you have open-source educational software we can use?

 The answer is Yes. Sugar education software runs on a variety of Linux
 distributions, including Ubuntu. It is currently in the hands of more
 than 2 million children.

 We plan to develop, manufacture and distribute an ultra-low-cost computer,
 for use in teaching computer programming to children.

 Sugar includes Python and Smalltalk (Etoys). One Laptop Per Child XO
 computers also run Open Firmware, written in FORTH, and including the
 complete FORTH development library, the editor, and an assembler. OFW
 is available for systems  based on ARM processors.

 The Sugar Labs Replacing Textbooks project, which I started recently,
 will include a variety of materials for teaching programming and
 Computer Science, and for applying those languages to every school
 subject. We have compiled a list of successful projects for teaching
 programming in the elementary grades, including projects using Python,
 Smalltalk, Logo, LISP, BASIC, and APL.

 The real question is one that Seymour Papert asked in 1970: Can we
 design an environment in which children learn math and programming
 languages as readily as they learn human languages, largely from each
 other? Some of us think so, and we are working on it.

 I will be happy to answer further questions, or to direct you to those
 who know more about some aspects of Sugar than I.

 -- Forwarded message --
 From: Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com
 Date: Fri, May 6, 2011 at 11:28
 Subject: Re: [Sur] linux system por $25
 To: OLPC para usuarios, docentes, voluntarios y administradores
 olpc-...@lists.laptop.org
 Cc: Gleducar gledu...@gleducar.org.ar

 http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/marketing/2011-May/003273.html

 On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 5:23 PM, Daniel Ajoy da.a...@gmail.com wrote:
 linux system por $25

 http://www.raspberrypi.org/
 ___
 Lista olpc-Sur
 olpc-...@lists.laptop.org
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur

-- 
Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: [Localization] Fwd: Updated 11.2.0 schedule

2011-05-22 Thread Edward Cherlin

At the end of your e-mail, you wrote

Testing is much appreciated.

It sounds as if there is no formal testing process for Sugar on XOs. I
know that this is the case for packaging for various distributions. I
recently found out through my own testing of the release that Turtle
Blocks for Ubuntu Natty was packaged without an essential file,
tapalette.py.

I assume that it worked for the packager because the file was on his
computer from a previous installation or some such. We can't go on
like this. We need testing in known and repeatable environments, for
one thing, and we need to know who has done what.

I would like to see whether I can help with this situation, by
recruiting more testers, and setting up something more formal to make
sure that issues don't fall through cracks.

Where is the process from your point of view?

On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 23:04, Chris Leonard cjlhomeaddr...@gmail.com wrote:

Forwarding to L10n list

-- Forwarded message --
From: Daniel Drake d...@laptop.org
Date: Fri, May 13, 2011 at 12:38 PM
Subject: Updated 11.2.0 schedule
To: OLPC Devel devel@lists.laptop.org

Hi,

Due to various travel arrangements and movement on the XO-1.75 front,
we have delayed the 11.2.0 release by a few weeks from its original
plan (which would have already had us in feature freeze).

We also have some stability concerns: the current development images
have various regressions (mostly on the Sugar and activities side)
compared to our previous stable release, and we may not be able to fix
all of these in time for the release. The release notes will be as
painfully true as needed in pointing out these issues. If the issues
remain serious then deployments may wish to simply consider it as a
preview for the release that follows, where we'll aim to improve on
11.2.0.

The new schedule is:

Bug-fixes only (feature freeze): May 23rd
From this point onwards, only bugfixes are accepted, and the rate of
change will be low

Regression fixes only: June 20th
From this point onwards, only regression fixes are accepted and the
rate of change will hopefully be very low

Release: July 18th

Note that this gives about 1 week from today for any final feature
work to be landed.

Wiki updated:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/11.2.0/Release_plan
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/11.2.0

Here is some further info about how the bug-fixing and
regression-fixing stages will work:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_Process/Stabilization

Testing is much appreciated.

Thanks,
Daniel
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

___
Localization mailing list
localizat...@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/localization

--
Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

TurtleArt problems in Ubuntu

2011-05-22 Thread Edward Cherlin

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/turtleart/+bug/731133

TurtleArt 98.1, as packaged for Ubuntu, is missing essential files and
cannot start. Who is responsible for this package?

-- 
Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: quick Forth question

2010-01-25 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 10:59, Daniel Drake d...@laptop.org wrote:
Can anyone help me with a tiny Forth script? Can never quite get my
head around the language.

I once wrote pen plotter programs in FORTH for fractals, to test the
plotter mechanism. Hypnotic.

I'm trying to set up an if-else based on whether a mfg tag exists (or
whether writing a mfg tag succeeded or not)

I'm trying:

add-tag ak 0 catch if 2drop . Laptop already activated cr then

But, if ak already exists, it simply says:
Tagname already exists
...rather than executing my conditional code.

That isn't very FORTHish, to have the argument to add-tag come after.
Is that right?

Your description is incomplete, and looks incorrect. My guess is that
add-tag gives you the Tagname already exists message, and then FORTH
continues, executing your conditional when it gets to it, and dropping
two items from the stack. Please check.

Here is what we need in order to comment usefully:

Stack picture before starting.
Expected result of add-tag, with stack picture.
Expected result of ak, with stack picture. Is ak the address of a string?
We're OK about putting 0 on the stack.
Expected result of catch, with stack picture.

Once you have all of that, you may not need our help. You can compare
it with what actually happens by inserting stack display words.

Also experimented with find-tag but couldn't figure it out.

cheers,
Daniel
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

--
Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://www.earthtreasury.org/
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: OLPC XO 1.5 overheating problems

2009-10-04 Thread Edward Cherlin

I don't know whether I can help, but I'm willing to try. I edited the
Geode manuals for National Semiconductor before they sold the product
line to AMD. The throttling and suspension mechanisms are quite
complicated, but the explanations seemed to make sufficient sense at
the time. Of course, they might have made more sense if I had had a
chip to practice on.

On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 8:19 AM, Ed McNierney e...@laptop.org wrote:
Tiago -

Well, everyone gets to contribute something to thermal problems :-)
But the CPU's the main source and also provides internal throttling
mechanisms to manage it (along with the external heatspreader
mechanisms, of course). The A-phase boards were designed to get the
thing up and running, and for A-phase machines (produced only in the
dozens) it's completely OK to tell folks to do all kinds of funky
things to keep them running.

No, the FTL is integral to the microSD card itself, so we're not using
(and don't need) an external FTL for it.

- Ed

On Oct 3, 2009, at 10:56 AM, Tiago Marques wrote:

Hi Ed,

I was wondering if it's related to the CPU or Northbridge. I said the
description was unclear to me because it didn't mention where the
overheating was from, or if you had already found the problem. Some
videos of pre production units were shown running with just a square
of thermal interface material acting as an heatspreader and I found
that odd, even for alpha level units, that Quanta was shipping them
back to you that way.

Also, I'd like to ask something off topic(better to post another
mail?) but I couldn't find any description on the wiki about the flash
controller. Are you still using one - and if so which - or are you
just using the microSD card's FTL?

Best regards,
Tiago Marques

On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 3:34 PM, Ed McNierney e...@laptop.org wrote:
Tiago -

Sure, but what kind of elaboration would you like? These are pre-
production
machines and have an assortment of problems, this being one of
them. I
think the description is pretty clear; if you have a question about
it
please let us know - thanks!

- Ed

On Oct 3, 2009, at 10:13 AM, Tiago Marques wrote:

Hi all,

Hope this is the appropriate list to post this, I apologize if not.
Please be kind to redirect me to the appropriate one if so.

Referring to:

The B2 prototypes have shown a tendency to overheat. We are working
on a more respectable solution than simply throttling back the
processor. In the meantime, be aware that the laptop may begin to
function erratically if it gets too hot. This usually manifests
itself
as problems reading/writing the internal SD card.

Can someone please elaborate on this?

Best regards,
Tiago Marques
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

--
Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://earthtreasury.org/
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: OFW access from linux

2009-09-16 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 7:42 AM, Paul Fox p...@laptop.org wrote:
on the XO, openfirmware stays resident when linux runs, and is
accessible via an API specified in arch/x86/kernel/ofw.c. i've
just pushed a commit to our 2.6.30 kernel branch that adds a
sysrq hook (SysRq-y) for starting (returning to?) the resident
OFW command line interface. when invoked, you can do all the
usual OFW peeking and poking, and even play pong. (and, since
linux is still active, you can royally trash your system if
you're not careful.)

there's no SysRq key on the XO keyboard, so you'll need to use a
break on the serial console to invoke it, or, usually easier:
echo y /proc/sysrq-trigger. use resume from OFW to let
linux run again.

Added to

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/The_undiscoverable
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Open_Firmware

Thanks.

http://wiki.olpc.org/go/Open_Firmware

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/The undiscoverable

Thanks again.

OFW itself prevents invocation on secure machines, so this
only works when unlocked.

paul
=-
paul fox, p...@laptop.org
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

--
Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://earthtreasury.org/
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: [Server-devel] [IAEP] Where should we put Lesson Plans? Currwiki?

2009-09-15 Thread Edward Cherlin

+1, except not just PDFs. We have much better presentation formats,
such as Scratch, Turtle Art Portfolio, and Etoys presentation objects.

On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 6:16 AM, Caroline Meeks
carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote:
Thank Martin!
Your email really helped me.
Here is my current thinking on lesson plans (not courses)
Dimension - Lesson Plans can be found.
Level 1 - People who did lesson plans have notes in varies places, if you
want to replicate what someone else has done you have to find them and ask
them to give you, then explain to you their notes.
Level 2 - Clear lesson plans are written up (often as pdfs) and posted but
everyone has their own place to post them.
Level 3 -
There is an official place to find printable lesson plans but there is no search and no categorization.
The location maybe language or country specific.
Level 4 - Pdf type lesson plans are gathered in one location that is managed
by a searchable database. You can search by language, grade level and other
keywords as well as full text.

Dimension - Lesson Plans are easy to reuse with Sugar.
Level 1 - Lesson plans are in various formats on the internet.
Level 2 - Lesson plans are in neat easy to read and print pdfs
Level 3 - Lesson plans are more then pdfs they include sample files,
template files, links to what activities to download.
Level 4 - All the materials of the lesson are bundled into one file that
can be downloaded and loaded into your local Moodle instance making it ready
to go.

And the search engine makes it easy to find suitable materials in the database.

I'll let Kellie put that into Rubric Language ;)
So Peru looks like they are at Level 3 and Level 2.
The GPA team is at Level 1 on both dimensions. Its Kellie's job to move us
up between now and January.
I agree that Level 4 integration with Moodle is a goal, but first we have to
have examples where we have used Moodle to manage the lesson flow, then we
have to take those examples and decide how to export and import them. I
don't think we will be there by this January.
Meanwhile on the Lesson Plans can be Found scale if we partner with
Curriwiki we can potentially get to Level 3. Plus for the teacher while
they are searching they may well find other lesson plans not specifically
designed for Sugar that can be adapted to Sugar.
On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 6:06 AM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com
wrote:

Some notes I think may be interesting.

On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 4:58 PM, Caroline Meeks
carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote:

For the Moodle advocates. I am a big Moodle fan. But I don't think its
our right now solution for the work we are talking about doing.

Our target, elementary school teachers are not currently using either
Moodle or Sugar, adding both at once makes the learning curve even harder.

Adding a 3rd system... easier?

We are focusing on lesson plans in the 1 hour and even 20-minute
groupwork time frames. Moodle is more focused on longer time frames.

I am about to include José Cedeno's new 'timeline' courseformat which
should make classroom usage a bit better :-)

We are focusing on what the teacher will do and what the class will do
both online and offline during the lesson as well as learning goals,
standards, help for the teacher in differentiating the lesson etc. Think
the teachers guide for the text book. Moodle is more focused on what the
student is doing online. Its not a very natural fit.

That sounds a lot like the paper-based materials Peru is putting together.
A booklet for the teacher that guides a (probably multi-day) lesson
called XO-Reporter that covers lots of things, from choosing a topic to
report on, asking good questions, writing in news style with inverted
pyramid -- some parts involve using the XO.

http://www.perueduca.edu.pe/olpc/archivos/Fasc_PERIODISTA.pdf

More like that (though of varied depth)
http://www.perueduca.edu.pe/olpc/OLPC_fichasfasc.html

For new teachers, and in agreement that we are snowing them with a ton of
new things, these docs seem to be most useful _on paper_.

I cry a bit for the lost trees, but we do need these stepping stones. And
heck, I like my key guides / books / references to be on paper. If things to
aid support computer use want to use the same screen I am trying to use
for something else, it's a losing proposition.

Moodle has tremendous promise in terms of reducing teacher workload.
Here is an example of what I hope that in the future Moodle will be able
to:

Provide a link that students click and they open a Write document that is
a template/scaffolding for a specific assignment, say writing a scientific
argument.

I have _just_ published a Moodle update on Friday that should do this. If
a teacher creates a template and uploads it as part of Moodle topic

When the document is saved it is automatically turned in as Homework in
Moodle allowing the teacher to review and comment on the document from

Re: [Sugar-devel] updates and testing SocialCalc on the Sugar Live CD

2009-09-05 Thread Edward Cherlin

I ran through all of the basic functions of SocialCalc, including
every icon on every tab. I have tested some but not all of the 109
functions provided, with good results so far. Although there are
functions I could wish for, the only real deficiency I have found is
in the documentation.

I have created a page for elements of Sugar that children are not
likely to discover on their own,
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/The_undiscoverable. I recommend it to
developers who want to think about whether more of Sugar can be made
discoverable, or whether we need to write lesson plans for the
features that cannot be made obvious to the novice. I will put in a
section for SocialCalc. These are not bugs in the sense of incorrect
behavior or missing explanations, so I omit them here.

Here is a summary of the other issues I have encountered.

o The database functions are severely underdocumented. What database?
What are databaserange, fieldname, criteriarange?

o Where does Paste Formats get its formats from?

o What does Swap Colors do?

o The financial and statistical function definitions in the Help might
be clear to one who uses other spreadsheets a lot, but certainly are
not to a beginner.

o More explanation is needed on angles in degrees and radians.

o I understand Move From and Move Paste, but not Move Insert.

o I see how to set names, but not what to use them for or how.

o I don't see the Sheet setting control on the Format tab that the
Help refers to.

o I found the OK and Sort... buttons on the Sort tab confusing. It has
since become clear to me. Perhaps OK should be renamed Set Range.

Not bad for a beta.

On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 12:16 PM, Manusheel Guptam...@laptop.org wrote:
Dear community members,

We are preparing for the next release of SocialCalc on Sugar. Localization
infrastructure, canonicalization of the save format and collaboration will
be the key features available in the next release. We are also looking
forward to develop interoperability between SocialCalc format and a number
of other spreadsheet formats like .wk3/.wk4/csv/excel/open office
spreadsheet. We have recently received a number of requests on developing
interoperability between SocialCalc and .wk3/.wk4 format, which has been a
challenging problem to work on. Hope to get this feature ready before the
next release.

Lately, I have been testing SocialCalc on the Sugar Live CD, and have run
into issues. I can't seem to get SocialCalc to start. I fired up the Sugar
LiveCD, and opened up the USB icon in my journal. I can see the file
SocialCalc.xo on my USB stick. When I click on it, I get a start button,
but then nothing happens. Below is a gears image, which starts something
that looks like a developer interface. Not sure, where I have been going
wrong. Any help on this issue is highly appreciated.

Please visit the SocialCalc on Sugar page at
http://seeta.in/j/products-and-services/socialcalc-on-sugar.html. The
activity is available for download both from the SEETA website
(http://seeta.in) and from activities.sugarlabs.org. If you have any
questions, or would like to add suggestions/comments/feature requests,
please do so here.

Thank you for your continued support.

Regards,

Manu

___
Sugar-devel mailing list
sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel

--
Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://earthtreasury.org/
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: [Sugar-devel] updates and testing SocialCalc on the Sugar Live CD

2009-09-05 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 6:39 PM, Dan Bricklind...@bricklin.com wrote:
 Edward,

 Thanks for doing the testing. Here are some answers to some of the questions
 you asked or things you found undocumented.

Thanks. I believe that you are right in your comments below, that the
Open Document spec, manuals for other software, and your video will
enable us to create an excellent manual at FLOSSManuals.net. Would you
like to join us when we do the Book Sprint?

I am thinking about what we might add to the Help in SocialCalc,
allowing for the tradeoff between space and completeness. Adding links
to existing documentation will provide a sufficient backstop, but I
think that there are several places where just a few words will make
all the difference for beginning SocialCalc users, particularly for
harried teachers. I don't want to make them learn too much themselves,
or to have to tell children to rely too much on external resources.

I'm sure that we can find a suitable balance on these questions.

 The database functions, like all of the functions, are pretty much the same
 as the functions by the same name in Excel and many other spreadsheets (many
 going back to Lotus 1-2-3 and even sometimes VisiCalc). They are defined in
 the Open Document Format specification. The same is true of all of the
 financial functions. (There used to be an Open Formula specification, which
 I think got moved into Open Document Format. I coded the functions looking
 to the Open Formula specification.) The built-in SocialCalc doc does not
 provide more than the simple explanation for all functions to save space and
 since they are well documented with other spreadsheets.

Of course, our target users (students and teachers) do not have local
access to this other software. But we can put it into a manual.

Most of the
 SocialCalc documentation is about what is special to SocialCalc. Also, the
 code itself documents what it does, including, with the financial functions,
 a reference to the Wikipedia entry that helped in their specification. I
 assumed that others can read that to produce appropriate written
 documentation.

As a mathematician and programmer, I can, if necessary.

 (I think there is a reported issue that SocialCalc's IF
 function only takes the 3 argument form, not the 2 argument form. It also
 evaluated all arguments unlike many other IF functions.)

 The toolbar buttons, including the two types of move and swap colors, as
 well as the sheet settings, names, and more are explained in a video I
 created. The 54 minute Flash video, created with Camtasia, goes over many of
 the features of the main SocialCalc engine that the Sugar version of
 SocialCalc is built upon. (For example, that version does not have the
 Sugar-specific graphing tab.) You can view the video at:

 http://www.peapodcast.com/sgi/socialtext/sctraining1/

Perfect. I'll report on that soon.

 Note that the value format specification language, used to define numeric
 formatting, is similar to that used in most spreadsheets, including Excel.

Right. I didn't have any trouble with it.

 You can learn much of it by looking at the samples already built into the
 product (set a format and the choose Custom to see the definition). This can
 be used when customizing the product for other locales to, for example, have
 different currency symbols and placement. Custom formats are demonstrated in
 the video.

I tried it in Cyrillic briefly without problems, but I cannot type
other currency symbols such as € or £ within Sugar. I will have to do
much more language and locale testing.

 Thanks again for taking time to work with SocialCalc so we can help provide
 this functionality around the world through this platform.

 -DanB

 Edward Cherlin wrote:

 I ran through all of the basic functions of SocialCalc, including
 every icon on every tab. I have tested some but not all of the 109
 functions provided, with good results so far. Although there are
 functions I could wish for, the only real deficiency I have found is
 in the documentation.

 I have created a page for elements of Sugar that children are not
 likely to discover on their own,
 http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/The_undiscoverable. I recommend it to
 developers who want to think about whether more of Sugar can be made
 discoverable, or whether we need to write lesson plans for the
 features that cannot be made obvious to the novice. I will put in a
 section for SocialCalc. These are not bugs in the sense of incorrect
 behavior or missing explanations, so I omit them here.

 Here is a summary of the other issues I have encountered.

 o The database functions are severely underdocumented. What database?
 What are databaserange, fieldname, criteriarange?

 o Where does Paste Formats get its formats from?

 o What does Swap Colors do?

 o The financial and statistical function definitions in the Help might
 be clear to one who uses other spreadsheets a lot, but certainly are
 not to a beginner.

 o More explanation

Re: [Sugar-devel] updates and testing SocialCalc on the Sugar Live CD

2009-09-04 Thread Edward Cherlin

I downloaded SocialCalc from the Activities subdomain to the journal,
where it installed and ran with no difficulty. I will give it some
serious testing soon.

On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 12:16 PM, Manusheel Guptam...@laptop.org wrote:
Dear community members,

Have you tried copying it to the journal and then bringing up the menu?

Thank you for your continued support.

Regards,

Manu

___
Sugar-devel mailing list
sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel

--
Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://earthtreasury.org/
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: [IAEP] SHIRT SLOGAN VOTE! Class Acts Poster! OLPC/Sugar Community Book Sprint (Sept 6-11, Washington DC)

2009-08-31 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 1:12 PM, Holth...@laptop.org wrote:
Please vote for the back of our T-Shirt -- Mike Lee's image will be on the
front of the shirt:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/curiouslee/3865753915/in/photostream/
But we need your help for the back!!!

Proposal #1 (yes the constuctionist assessment parody's intentional!)

NO NINO LEFT BEHIND

That's NIÑO. But no. It brings up too many bad memories for me.

Proposal #2 (from http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Five_principles )

CHILD OWNERSHIP
LOW AGES
SATURATION
CONNECTION
FREE AND OPEN SOURCE

Needs too much explanation.

Proposal #3

(Caryl Bigenho's attached PDF, or close simulacra you provide!)

Yes! XOs in two colors each, please. Or one giant two-color XØ over
the entire text.

Proposal #4, another fantastic oldtime OLPC joke (see
http://rt.laptop.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=4519 and RT4424, or better yet
ask a Supportive friend ;)

MONGO HAPPY NOW

Please leave inside jokes inside. Mongo confused now.

Please vote BY midnight latest -- publicly or privately is fine -- FYI I am
paying for these T shirts with my own money, will be asking for a very small
payment (about $6 covering half the costs if you want a shirt) and more
important plz thank ALL the silent volunteers silently working their butts
off on DC logistics around Sept 6-11's http://wiki.laptop.org/go/ClassActs
:)

___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
i...@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

--
Edward Mokurai Cherlin
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/
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: [Sugar-devel] erasing the journal and config

2009-08-27 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 8:17 AM, Daniel Draked...@laptop.org wrote:
 2009/8/27 Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu:
 We have a lending library at SFSU, ready to go, but we need to have a
 way to erase the config and journal every time the XO comes back from
 a borrower.

 In my opinion, this is silly. Teach them how to run a script, teach
 them how to reflash or tell them to stop being difficult.

 As for the borrowers end - this is sillier. What are you expecting the
 borrowers to actually do with their XOs? It's for generating
 contributions to the community, right?

It is a fundamental principle of Customer Relations that you don't
tell users what they want to do with your product. If people have a
security concern, you deal with it or risk losing them and their
friends etc. permanently.

If you need to be convinced, ask any librarian about National Security
letters demanding a patron's reading list. You will get an earful.

 Daniel
 ___
 Sugar-devel mailing list
 sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org
 http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel

-- 
Edward Mokurai Cherlin
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/
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: The Next Wave of Activity Sharing

2009-07-26 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 12:01 PM, Joshua Eddyjoshuage...@gmail.com wrote:
 Sugar Labs DC would like to propose an exciting new direction for the
 development of the Sugar interface.  It is our belief that in the
 spirit of sharing and collaboration, Sugar activities should be
 publishable to the Internet, just as they are in Scratch
 (http://scratch.mit.edu/), another children's software suite.

+1

I am working on math lessons in Turtle Art at the moment, and was just
wishing for this. Right now it is very clumsy to export Journal
entries.

-- 
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)
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: is anyone actually doing Windows on XO work here?

2009-07-21 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 5:13 PM, Carlos Nazarenoobject...@gmail.com wrote:
Hey all.

Check out the latest piece:
Negroponte Sees Sugar As OLPC's Biggest Mistake
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/07/20/1628228

(The title is bad FUD from OLPC News -- it's actually Negroponte
saying that Sugar should have been run as an application instead of
the main OS layer/frontend and not Sugar itself as the mistake.)

Most of Slashdot is FUD, even if the headline is correct. I have
replied to several such stories about OLPC/Sugar and about other
important topics, on Slashdot and elsewhere, and you are all free to
quote me on this one. I've given up on Slashdot, since all but one of
my factual posts has been modded down to 1. I conclude that Slashdot
readers, like many in the political world, don't want to be distracted
from setting the world straight by facts.

http://xkcd.com/386/ Duty Calls

site:slashdot.org mokurai
#
Slashdot | One Laptop Per Child and Intel Join Forces
Re:OLPC is a project - Classmate is a device... by jabuzz (Score:2)
Friday July 13, @03:55PM; Re:OLPC is a project - Classmate is a
device... by Mokurai ...
hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/07/07/13/1646218.shtml - Cached - Similar -
#
Slashdot | Attempts to Count Linux Users Remain Pointless
Re:Start counting here by vimh42 (Score:1) Monday July 09, @12:10PM;
Re:Start counting here by Mokurai (Score:1) Friday July 13, @05:22PM
...
linux.slashdot.org/linux/07/07/09/1424259.shtml - Cached - Similar -
#
Slashdot | Open Voting at OSCON
Re:Modest proposal: Run it on Diebold's hardware? by Mokurai (Score:1)
Thursday April 22 2004, @06:05PM. Re:Modest proposal: Run it on
Diebold's hardware? ...
slashdot.org/articles/04/04/22/1913223.shtml - Similar -
#
Slashdot | President Of India Advocates OSS
... @10:18PM; OSS in home of Simputer by Mokurai (Score:1) Thursday
May 29 2003, @11:05PM; I2IT and IIIT by shamir_k (Score:1) Friday May
30 2003, @12:40AM ...
slashdot.org/articles/03/05/29/1226247.shtml?tid... - Cached - Similar -
#
Slashdot | Why Unicode Won't Work on the Internet
... (Score:1) Saturday June 09 2001, @01:04PM; Unicode character
allocation (was Unicode's reply) by Mokurai (Score:1) Thursday June 07
2001, @03:19PM ...
slashdot.org/mainpage/01/05/20/1431230.shtml?tid=95 - Cached - Similar -
#
Slashdot | Celebrating Spam's Ten-Year Anniversary
Re:The only solution to spam by Mokurai (Score:1) Friday March 05
2004, @03:03PM. when it's 20 by va3atc (Score:2) Friday March 05 2004,
@01:11PM ...
slashdot.org/articles/04/03/05/160229.shtml - Cached - Similar -
#
Slashdot | Diebold Voting Systems Grossly Insecure
Diebold Voting Systems Grossly Insecure -- article related to Bug and
United States.
it.slashdot.org/it/03/07/24/153258.shtml - Similar -

Now everytime there's a piece on OLPC at Slashdot.org, it seems 30% of
the comment traffic is composed of bashing OLPC for caving in to
Microsoft and Windows.

Now AFAIK, there's little to no Windows work being done in-house by
the OLPC team, and it's all or mostly at Microsoft's side that the
work's being done.

And AFAIK, the deal is that you buy the machine, you're free to run
any software you want on it. We're not stopping you from running
Windows even though we're pushing Sugar.

In this case, OLPC is not really in bed with MS but is more of
allowing MS to run Windows on the OLPC the same way users can install
any software they want on their PCs.

Am I correct in this assumption?

I'm sick and tired of the this OLPC-MS FUD (Fear-Uncertainty-Doubt) on
Slashdot (one of the highest-traffic websites, so high that getting
linked on the frontpage is like being DDOSed) and it would be great if
the record on this could be set straight so that the MS FUD inanity on
Slashdot can be ended as it's destroying the image of OLPC.

All the best,

-Naz

--
carlos nazareno
http://twitter.com/object404
http://www.object404.com
--
user group manager
phlashers: philippine flash actionscripters
adobe flash/flex/air community
http://www.phlashers.com
--
interactive media specialist
zen graffiti studios
http://www.zengraffiti.com
--
if you don't like the way the world is running,
then change it instead of just complaining.
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

--
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)
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: [Sugar-devel] Journal and filenames on USB disks - more leases.sig problems

2009-07-01 Thread Edward Cherlin

Better way: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities#Midnight_Commander

On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 10:41 AM, Martin
Langhoffmartin.langh...@gmail.com wrote:
I am trying to get leases.sig from the XS to the USB stick. On 8.2.x,
Browse.xo saves the file as

File leases.sig from http://...

... two possible ways to move next.

Copy and rename

1 - Insert (fat-formatted) USB stick, once mounted copy the file to
the USB stick. Check on Terminal indicates that the file has the LFN
we expect (File leases.sig from http://...;).

2 - Switch to the 'USB disk' view of the Journal.

3 - Rename the file to leases.sig . A check from the commandline
shows that the file has not been renamed. Oops?. The Journal only
renames the metadata. Bug?

Rename and copy

1 - Rename the file in the Journal to 'leases.sig'

2 - Insert (fat-formatted) USB stick, once mounted copy the file to
the USB stick. The Journal reports that the file is called lease.sig.
From terminal I can see that the file is called lease.sig.txt . Bug?

Is there a better way to do this?

cheers,

m
--
martin.langh...@gmail.com
mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
- ask interesting questions
- don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first
- http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
___
Sugar-devel mailing list
sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel

Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.

2009-05-20 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 10:18 PM, Chris Ball c...@laptop.org wrote:
 Hi,

    What is the command to start Sugar in 20090519.iso? There is no
    'sugar-emulator', and 'sugar' fails.

 On the first login screen, choose Sugar instead of GNOME on the
 Session dropdown at the bottom of the screen.

Got it. So obvious once you know. [sigh] I guess the menu is just in
alphabetical order.

Thanks. I'll add this to the Wiki.

    Is there an installer on the image? It doesn't make itself
    obvious.

 No, better to just copy-nand u:\the.img.  We'll work on making
 installed rather than live images for the NAND as one of the first
 build system priorities.

I was just wondering whether someone could install it in regular Fedora.

 - Chris.
 --
 Chris Ball   c...@laptop.org




-- 
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)
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.

2009-05-19 Thread Edward Cherlin

What is the command to start Sugar in 20090519.iso? There is no
'sugar-emulator', and 'sugar' fails.

Is their an installer on the image? It doesn't make itself obvious.

On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 1:17 PM, Chris Ball c...@laptop.org wrote:
We have some good news: OLPC has decided to base its software release
for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11. Unlike previous releases, we
plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving
users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead.
(This will mostly be useful for older kids in high school.)

I'm particularly happy about this plan because it will allow us to
catch up with the awesome work present in the Sugar community's most
recent release, Sugar 0.84, as well as merging the latest Fedora work
and including GNOME into the mix for the first time. The new machines
will have 1GB of RAM and 4GB of flash, so we have enough room for both
environments at once.

We think we'll need to use our own kernel and initrd, but the other
base packages we expect to need are present in Fedora already,
including Sugar; in fact, we already have an F11+Sugar+GNOME build
for the XO-1 using pure Fedora packages. That build will get better
as a result of this work (although OLPC's focus will be on getting
the XO-1.5 running) and it will form the basis for the XO-1.5 build.

If you're interested in contributing, we'd certainly love your help,
and you can find us on the fedora-olpc mailing list¹, and freenode
IRC's #fedora-olpc channel. Our existing F11 build images for the
XO-1 are here², and we'll soon begin publishing images for the XO-1.5
too. XO-1.5 beta machines will start to be manufactured over the next
few months, and will be available to contributors as part of our
Contributors Program³ once the hardware's up and running.

Finally, thanks are due to the volunteer Fedora packagers and testers
who helped us get to the point of being able to commit to Fedora 11
for this new build, in particular: Fabian Affolter, Kushal Das, Greg
DeKoenigsberg, Martin Dengler, Scott Douglass, Sebastian Dziallas,
Mikus Grinbergs, Bryan Kearney, Gary C. Martin, Steven M. Parrish,
and Peter Robinson. Thanks!

- Chris, for the OLPC techteam.

¹: http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-olpc-list
²: http://dev.laptop.org/~cjb/rawhide-xo/
³: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributors_program

--
Chris Ball c...@laptop.org
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.

2009-05-16 Thread Edward Cherlin

We shall see at what age it becomes practical to introduce children to
Gnome. I'm looking forward to the experiment.

In the meantime, are there instructions anywhere for setting up these
builds in VirtualBox?

- Chris, for the OLPC techteam.

¹: http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-olpc-list
²: http://dev.laptop.org/~cjb/rawhide-xo/
³: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributors_program

--
Chris Ball c...@laptop.org
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.

2009-05-16 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Peter Robinson pbrobin...@gmail.com wrote:
 If you're interested in contributing, we'd certainly love your help,
 and you can find us on the fedora-olpc mailing list¹, and freenode
 IRC's #fedora-olpc channel.  Our existing F11 build images for the
 XO-1 are here², and we'll soon begin publishing images for the XO-1.5
 too.  XO-1.5 beta machines will start to be manufactured over the next
 few months, and will be available to contributors as part of our
 Contributors Program³ once the hardware's up and running.

 In the meantime, are there instructions anywhere for setting up these
 builds in VirtualBox?

 probably the  best place to start is the sugar on a stick liveCD or
 Chris's rawhide-xo builds. In a week or so (May 25th from memory)
 Fedora 11 will be out and an install of that with the gnome and sugar
 desktops installed will be a good start.

 Peter

On checking further at http://dev.laptop.org/~cjb/rawhide-xo/, I saw
the instructions for qemu,

sudo qemu-kvm -cdrom 20090217.iso

so I can start in VirtualBox in the same way.

-- 
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)
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: from Peru, sugar in DEBIAN

2009-05-03 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 5:17 PM, OLPC Puno olpcp...@gmail.com wrote:
My name is Sdenka from Puno Peru, since one month we are using Debian at
Glorioso San Carlos High School in PERU. We installed the sugar and 10
activities including in Debian packages, then added ETOYS, SCRATCH AND
LOGOTURTLE.

I need the other activities' source code to compile in Debian to use and
test them with teenagers students this year. Our goal is testing and
then use Debian in elementary school which didn't receive LAPTOP XO, but
like to use the wonderful activities FOR EDUCATION.

Jonas Smedegaard is working on packaging Sugar activities for Debian,
and would be one of your best resources. In order to help you most
effectively, I would need to know something more about what you would
like to do. You can compile and run Sugar activities in several
different ways. If Sugar in jhbuild or in a virtual machine image will
work for you, these resources will help.

o http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Development_Team/Jhbuild

o http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Xo-get

o http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick

o http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Image_files

o http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/QEMU

Any information you can give on results of compiling, or on packaging,
or testing, will be very helpful.

Thanks in advance for your reply,

SDENKA
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: [Grassroots-l] OLPC Project

2009-04-02 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 8:37 PM, Angule Gabriel angule2...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Hello

 iEARN Kenya has interest in this project and would do with as many laptops as 
 you would practically be able to provide in its endeavour to initiate the ICT 
 integration in education programme within Kenyan schools.

Similarly Earth Treasury, OneVillage Foundation Kenya and Asante
Foundation are interested in setting up laptop projects in Maasai
schools and in other areas.

 We would like to start with some schools in Western Kenya then move on after 
 getting the necessary lessons.

 We were impreesed with the report from Mali.

 Are able to put us on?

 Regards


 Angule Gabriel
 iEARN Kenya Representative



 ___
 Grassroots mailing list
 grassro...@lists.laptop.org
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/grassroots




-- 
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.net/ (Edward Mokurai Cherlin)
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Another Linux in education

2009-03-18 Thread Edward Cherlin

Here is another needed port of Sugar.

http://itschool.gov.in/otherprograms.php#6

The Kerala IT Education Department believes that sharing is an
important virtue. However, sharing proprietary software would be a
violation of the End User. Building collaboration and sharing
practices are essential factors for the well being of societies and
proprietary software often denies that. Against the odds that
Proprietary software are user friendly, the effort of the Project saw
educational community in Kerala accepting open source technology. Its
own GNU\Linux supporting mechanism and a GNU\Linux resource center to
clarify all the queries in operational and software requirement issues
and there is constant interaction among these sections is an
advantage.

In the case of Project, the free software platform is i...@school
GNU\Linux, a free version of operating system was indigenously
developed in association with free software foundation. The open
source materials developed/used by the Project includes
√ i...@school GNU\ Linux- Free software operating system which is now
used in entire schools in Kerala

This distribution does not seem to have a site of its own, but there
is a fair amount going on around it. It is based on Debian, and was
started in 2006.

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8687173118.html

Indian schools to use homebrew Debian distro
Sep. 26, 2006

Earlier this month we learned via an AP story that the southern Indian
state of Kerela is in the process of migrating all computers in its
12,500 high schools from Windows to Linux. Today, DesktopLinux.com
learned what distribution they plan to use: a homegrown,
Debian-offshoot dubbed i...@school GNU/Linux.

#
Help Desk - HelpDesk
Jan 27, 2009 ... Information on i...@school GNU/Linux 2.0 - 2006 · Free
Software Business Directory. Join the support mailing list for School
GNU/Linux ...
support.space-kerala.org/ - 16k - Cached - Similar pages -
#
School GNU Linux Tips - HelpDesk
Aug 21, 2007 ... root (hd0, Press double tab , then it shows all
partion in that disk, find out linux partition number which is the
line containing ext2fs ...
support.space-kerala.org/wiki/index.php/School_GNU_Linux_Tips - 21k -
Cached - Similar pages -
More results from support.space-kerala.org »
#
Index of /downloads
it-at-school-gnu-linux-base-2.6.21.iso 241M - [DIR]
it-at-school-gnu-linux-base-2.6.21.iso.md5 1K - README.html 15K - ...
www.edugrid.ac.in/webfolder/download/schoolGnu/slgnu.html - 2k -
Cached - Similar pages -
#
Education Grid
This Education Grid Portal is provided as a platform for the
educational community to support generation and sharing of education
resources across the ...
www.edugrid.ac.in/ - 7k - Cached - Similar pages -
#
[School-GNU-Linux] i...@school GNU/Linux goes online - schoolgnu ...
Aug 17, 2006 ... Free Software, Free Society http://fsfs.hipatia.net
For Tips and Tricks on School GNU/Linux visit
http://support.space-kerala.org ...
www.freelists.org/post/schoolgnu/ITSchool-GNULinux-goes-online - 6k -
Cached - Similar pages -
# [PDF]
IT SCHOOL GNU LINUX INSTALLATION GUIDE
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
IT SCHOOL GNU LINUX INSTALLATION GUIDE. 1. First Boot Device CD rom
B¡n amänb tijw sF.Sn kvIqÄ áq/en\Ivkv kn.Un C«v {]hÀ¯nnv XpS§pI. AtmÄ
Xmsg ...
www.educationkerala.org/Data/pdf/installation_gnu_linux_pdf.pdf -
Similar pages -
#
Request your i...@school GNU Linux CD from Zyxware | Zyxware ...
We have been getting good response from the Linux community regarding
the new RequestCD service that we have started recently. We are happy
to inform all ...
www.zyxware.com/articles/2008/01/08/request-your-itschool-gnu-linux-cd-from-zyxware
- 23k - Cached - Similar pages -
#
LTSP for i...@school GNU/Linux: msg#00043 org.fsf.india.fsf-friends
LTSP for i...@school GNU/Li - Find Help in our org.fsf.india.fsf-friends Forum.
osdir.com/ml/org.fsf.india.fsf-friends/2005-11/msg00043.html - 23k -
Cached - Similar pages -
#
[Fsf-friends] LTSP for i...@school GNU/Linux
Hi all, LTSP for IT at SCHOOL GNU/Linux We have got the HCL winbee
thin client setup made working on customozed Debian installation for
IT at SCHOOL. ...
mm.gnu.org.in/pipermail/fsf-friends/2005-November/003729.html - 5k -
Cached - Similar pages -
#
The Innovation Lover » i...@school GNU/Linux
Jul 18, 2006 ... Today, I got some time to play with i...@school
GNU/Linux which is distributed all schools in kerala as a part of
i...@school. ...
www.sarathlakshman.info/2006/07/18/itschool-gnulinux/ - 19k -


And there's more where that came from.

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS6309151740.html
Related Stories:

* South Africa may migrate 14,000 Windows desktops to Linux
* Federal IT managers increasingly considering Linux, says panel
* Swiss government switches 3,000 systems to Linux
* Linspire offers to replace Microsoft in South Korea
* Open Source worthy of serious consideration by schools, UK
agency advises
* Chilean government moves to Linux in high schools
*

Re: [Sugar-devel] instructions for flashing SoaS on a XO

2009-03-11 Thread Edward Cherlin

2009/3/6 Wade Brainerd wad...@gmail.com:
 Glad to hear it works, I'm going to try it this weekend on my XO.
 I wonder if we could get the release team to execute these steps
 automatically for each release, and then make .img files available on
 downloads.sugarlabs.org along with the .iso files?

+1 I have also asked for that.

 That would skip a lot of
 potential mistakes that users might make, and would lower the barrier to
 entry (e.g. no Fedora or Ubuntu machine req).
 The same goes for .vmdk files, I would love to have .vmdk files created
 using http://sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick_VirtualBox/Preparing_a_disk_image available
 for each snapshot.

+1 also.

 Regards,
 Wade
 On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 4:42 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 I tried it (from Ubuntu instead of F10) and it seems to work
 flawlessly!! I've documented what I did in the wiki:

 http://sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Installation/OLPC

 -walter

 On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 1:19 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote:
  Hi,
 
  below are some instructions for flashing the last Sugar on a Stick
  image (containing Sugar 0.84) on a XO (provided you have a developer
  key).
 
  Could someone volunteer to test and wikify them?
 
  Thanks,
 
  Tomeu
 
  ---
 
  on a F10 system:
 
  $ sudo yum -y install crcimage mtd-utils
  $ wget http://dev.laptop.org/~cjb/rawhide-xo/livecd-iso-to-xo.sh
  $ wget
  http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/snapshots/1/Soas-200903051021.iso
  $ sudo sh livecd-iso-to-xo.sh Soas-200903051021.iso
  Soas-200903051021.img
 
  and then copy Soas-200903051021.img and Soas-200903051021.crc to a usb
  stick
 
  on the XO, boot with the usb stick plugged in and get into OFW, then
  type the following commands
 
  ok disable-security
  ok copy-nand u:\Soas-200903051021.img
 
  then the XO will reboot and you should get into Sugar.
  ___
  Sugar-devel mailing list
  sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org
  http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
 



 --
 Walter Bender
 Sugar Labs
 http://www.sugarlabs.org
 ___
 Sugar-devel mailing list
 sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org
 http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel


 ___
 Sugar-devel mailing list
 sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org
 http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel





-- 
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.net/ (Edward Mokurai Cherlin)
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

eBook controls (was Re: rotate button sucks on the XO)

2009-03-01 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 3:51 PM, Eben Eliason e...@laptop.org wrote:
 On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 6:43 PM,  da...@lang.hm wrote:
 On Sun, 1 Mar 2009, Eben Eliason wrote:

 second, you may want to use the keys for something else and not dedicate
 them to moving the mouse around.

For example, next page, previous page, front matter (cover or ToC),
back matter (index, notes, references). This does not give us a
convenient way to get back to a page we just left, which would
normally be done with on-screen controls.
-- 
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.net/ (Ed Cherlin)
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: Price point plus sales to individuals

2009-02-28 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 6:37 PM, Mitch Bradley w...@laptop.org wrote:
Okay, so those of you who are keen on there being a way for individuals
to buy XOs at $2xx dollars should place a volume order, set up a web
site, and start raking in the dough.

Earth Treasury has wanted to do that for more than a year, although
raking in the dough was not part of the vision. It would be hard
work for a thin margin at the best. It has not been possible, for
several reasons.

o Initially, it was cash in advance with no delivery date. Sixty days
later, we would get a date within the next year. So delivery within
three months is a great improvement.

o We never got the same terms twice when we asked.

o We didn't have and couldn't get the financing.

o GiveMany/Save the World for orders of 100 or 1,000 units was cancelled.

I will now assume some fudge factors that can be replaced with real
numbers with some research. So we can say that we can order 10,000
units @ $200 and change, or $2 million+. There is a volunteer support
gang, which we assume we can work with. Amazon is willing to handle
fulfillment, in principle, if OLPC asks nicely, but only if we can
assure delivery of orders within a month. That means we have to place
our order at least two months before we can start selling.

I will also suppose that we can get firm terms so that we can present
a real plan to any potential funding source. Then it turns out that we
are able to begin the discussion with several possible sources, and we
have in fact started a discussion, and will start others.

This is not to say that we have a full business plan, and we certainly
don't have funding lined up, but we are in the range where we can
discuss the possibility. So if anybody wants to help write the details
of a business plan and some funding applications (commercial or
non-profit).

The plan also has to include setting up paid support services for
buyers to deal with necessary infrastructure, training, developing
teaching materials, and the like. We have started the Digital Textbook
project with various partners, and we have a good idea where we can
get the other partners needed.

Obviously you guys know something about making a few bucks per machine
that has eluded the OLPC organization, so go for it. As the old canard
says, put your money where you mouth is.

I'll have to see if I can get someone who actually has money to do
that. I'll let you know.

--
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.net/ (Ed Cherlin)
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: Price point plus sales to individuals

2009-02-28 Thread Edward Cherlin

2009/2/18 Robert D. Fadel fa...@laptop.org:

On Feb 18, 2009 at 10:24 PM, John Watlington wrote:

I don't see how a non-profit can do this, as requires financing at
risk, and
staffing for uncertain demand. Let me know when you have the capital.

Absolutely true and I'm not sure the capital would be enough. Its difficult
to imagine OLPC entering a retail channel, directly or indirectly.

We aren't talking about retail at this point. The idea is to support
schools, museums, and the like to get 30 or more each.

Eventually I would like to see GiveOneGetOne revived, but not with the
abysmal marketing we saw last time. OLPC is one of the great brands,
if managed appropriately.

Perhaps I
have misunderstood the intent but thats what it seems like when we talk
about individuals buying small volumes, perhaps simply to tinker with a cool
machine.

I am working with The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose CA, which
wants 50 for a lab exhibit where school classes could get a working
demo and a peek at software in development. Other museums such as the
Exploratorium and Zeum in San Francisco and the MIT Museum have
expressed interest in creating a variety of exhibits. It's a cool
machine, but they want to use it, not tinker with it.

We also want to support home-schooling groups and other small trials.

Another reason for this is to educate the public and to create the
political will to get XOs into US schools, and to get the US to fund
XOs in developing countries.

In the immediate future I don't see overwhelming evidence that OLPC should
devote resources to satisfy every volume demand in every channel. The outcry
over discontinuing Change The World was far greater than the willingness of
people to put up money.

I will see what I can do. There is interest in funding a program such
as I have outlined, which is quite different from OLPC's program.

Very often those willing to pay were small-volume
resellers.

OLPC is better off focused on its engineering, advocacy and implementation
efforts AND supporting accompanying networks of olpc-phile communities.
Running an effective developer program is fundamental to all the above.

So what is this nonsense about OLPCorps?

--
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.net/ (Ed Cherlin)
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: Journal empty in Soas-200902231225 and what is Soas-200902241809.iso in snapshots/2/ ?

2009-02-25 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 6:50 PM, Ton van Overbeek tvoverb...@gmail.com wrote:
 When trying out Soas-200902231225 the journal stays empty.
 Anybody else seen this ?

This is true in several versions of Sugar, including Ubuntu packages.
Jonas Smedegård has made a patch for it, available from

http://debian.jones.dk/ sid sugar

 Ton van Overbeek
 ___
 Devel mailing list
 Devel@lists.laptop.org
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel




-- 
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://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai (Ed Cherlin)
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: power consumption after shutdown

2009-02-14 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 8:38 PM, Chris Ball c...@laptop.org wrote:
 Hi,

by default the wireless card remains alive to participate in a
potential mesh network, disabling wireless should give you a lot
more time.

 You're thinking of sleep mode, not the full shutdown that Mikus is doing.

That's not how I learned it. The wireless was designed to remain
active when everything else was off, in order to support mesh
networking throughout a community. However, I don't see any
measurements for that, although the wireless chip draws less than a
watt. Perhaps someone would be willing to add it to

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO_power_draw

 - Chris.
 --
 Chris Ball   c...@laptop.org
 ___
 Devel mailing list
 Devel@lists.laptop.org
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel




-- 
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://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai (Ed Cherlin)
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: AMD to stop working on Geodes (Carlos Nazareno)

2009-02-01 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 8:48 PM, Jordan Crouse jor...@cosmicpenguin.net wrote:
Edward Cherlin wrote:

National Semiconductor, which bought the line from Cyrix. I edited
several of the pin- and register-level manuals for various chips for
them more than ten years ago, and updates of my work are still online
on the AMD Web site. OLPC has educated AMD on how to use the
power-management registers to do things that nobody previously knew
were possible.

AMD may have made some odd decisions over the years, but they don't deserve
the kicking they are getting. AMD gave OLPC unprecedented access to the
combined software and hardware expertise for the Geode - AMD didn't have to
be so open and OLPC didn't ask for it. The AMD engineers (and there were
many, many more than I) worked hand in hand with the OLPC designers from the
beginning, long before virtually everybody on this mailing list or in the
IRC room had jumped on the bandwagon. I was fortunate to be working with
brilliant developers such as Mark and Mitch who were able to read datasheets
and ask interesting qeustions, and they were fortunate to be able to have a
nearly direct connection to the silicon designers that designed the part.

AMD and OLPC educated each other

My point. I took it as obvious that AMD had to teach OLPC about the
Geode processors, and commented that OLPC also found some other things
in addition to what they were taught.

- and the result was arguably the most open
processor in history on one side, and a little green machine on the other.
So I take exception to the idea that AMD was the bumbling fool in this
partnership -

Which is not what I said. I know something about combinatory
mathematics, and a good deal about the definitions of the Geode
registers, and I think it would have been astounding if OLPC had not
found combinations and sequences with new uses. I am also well aware
that AMD contributed greatly to the design of the XO, as did Red Hat
and Quanta. I am also aware that power management design and
implementation is nowhere near finished.

that is an unfair characterization, and an insult to the AMD
engineers that spent a lot of hours reviewing schematics, looking at USB
debug traces and writing code - much of which is still running on the system
to this day.

Jordan

--
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://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai (Ed Cherlin)
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: AMD to stop working on Geodes (Carlos Nazareno)

2009-01-27 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 8:39 PM, Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu wrote:
On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 5:14 PM, Mitch Bradley w...@laptop.org wrote:
On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Carlos Nazareno object...@gmail.com
wrote:

AMD sees no Geode chip replacement in sight
AMD on Monday said it has no replacement for the aging Geode low-power
chips that are used in netbooks and set-top boxes.
http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/274414/amd_sees_no_geode_chip_replacement_sight

The cost of developing and supporting a processor family is staggering.

AMD bought the Geode business from another company.

Often, when a company buys a business unit, that unit withers on the vine.
The new kids on the block have a difficult time establishing a strong
place within the established pecking order, so in the competition for
resources, the new group often comes up short. When there is an economic
downturn, the new group is often the first to go.

AMD barely has the resources to maintain a competitive stance in the part of
the market that has traditionally been their core, especially now that the
economy is bad.

I'm sure that AMD would be very happy if they had enough money to go after
the low power market, but they just don't.

I am delighted that this premature obituary also turns out to be
greatly exaggerated.

___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Somebody on Slashdot (yeah!) has a good write-up pointing to the fact
that AMD isn't halting production. Its just not going to develop Geode
further. http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1105799cid=26623857

From the comment:

begin quote

AMD is NOT halting production of the Geode. They are not leaving the
market (RTFM!). They have decided that it serves it's niche AS IS and
will be kept AS IS. That's a very different statement. They're saying
that it is a mature product (a rare thing in IT).

Currently, the Geode is good enough for many applications and would be
a step up for others. The embedded world tends away from the shiny
object model of upgrades. If it worked last year, it works this year,
and it'll work next year. Changes in the product are considered
undesirable.

AMD's statement doesn't even mean there won't be a die shrink or even
a faster Geode in the future, just that they won't be updating it's
architecture.

It's not a bad decision either. There is a significant niche for the
Geode between the Atom (too hot, too power hungry) and things like the
Dragon Ball and mips (not enough power).

Geode isn't in trouble until Intel comes out with an x86 that doesn't
need a heatsink (or at least doesn't need a fan).

end quote

Marvell has bought XScale from Intel. That may be the principal
alternative. The Encore Mobilis being bought by Brazil for its schools
uses an XScale processor and MontaVista Linux, so Sugar Labs should be
working on an XScale port of Sugar soon.

I've seen the Geode in action in Soekris boards
(http://www.soekris.com/) when I was doing fun Wi-Fi stuff, and used
to wonder what it would be like if we had a Geode machine running a
laptop...well that wish came true with the XO :-)

I'll also point out (peripherally) to a comment made by Jeff Bezos in
a BusinessWeek article
(http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_17/b4081064880218.htm),
where he says that frugality leads to innovation (necessity being the
mother of invention, etc.) and I think the frugality of XO's design
has definitely lead to many innovations. I for one would *not* have
thought that I would be using a 433MHz x86 laptop with 256MB RAM as my
favorite machine :-)

Alan Kay loves to ask how Doug Engelbart and his team managed to
shoehorn all of the Online System (NLS) in The Mother of All Demos
into 192K in 1968.This included realtime videoconferencing and
instantaneous, seamless crash recovery. People come up with all sorts
of technical theories, but Alan's answer is, Because they wanted to
badly enough.

Hats off to the Geode!

cheers,
Sameer
--
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: AMD to stop working on Geodes (Carlos Nazareno)

2009-01-27 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 10:32 PM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com wrote:

 AMD bought the Geode business from another company.

 National Semiconductor, which bought the line from Cyrix. I edited
 several of the pin- and register-level manuals for various chips for
 them more than ten years ago,

For National Semiconductor, that is.

-- 
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://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai (Ed Cherlin)
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: AMD to stop working on Geodes

2009-01-27 Thread Edward Cherlin

2009/1/27 Benjamin M. Schwartz bmsch...@fas.harvard.edu:
Carlos Nazareno wrote:
Do ARM processors do these things better than anything else on the
market right now? but then you lose the X86 compatibility and this
probably breaks things for cross-platform upstream contributions for
any deved/researched write-once-run-many apps/projects. (correct me if
I'm wrong, am just speculating because I'm not a CE and as well-versed
with computer architecture)

Sugar has been tested on both x86 and ARM [1].

How about the XScale version of the ARM architecture? Is anybody
working on that? We need it for the Encore Mobilis port, on Montavista
Linux.

It would be hilarious to me if the XO-2 had an XScale processor, and
Microsoft suddenly had to port Windows XP to it in order to stay in th
game. :-Þ

I expect it would run
perfectly on MIPS, PPC, SPARC, Itanium, Alpha... Linux runs on just about
every major architecture, and I expect the same of just about any
Linux-based system.

None of the Geode-specific power management code would work, of
course, but that's kernel-level stuff. It doesn't go into the .xo
bundles or the distro-specific packages.

I'm not too worried about upstream support. Our Activities are mostly
written in Python or portable C, and the underlying operating system is
typically based on Fedora, Debian[2], Gentoo[3]... which already support
all of the above architectures.

It's true that you lose the ability to run arbitrary binaries from other
platforms, but this is only important if you care about closed-source
code.

That means, for us, Flash and drivers. There are Open Source BIOS
equivalents for some of these architectures.

Most important open source programs are easily recompiled for any
architecture.

--Ben

[1] http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardSugar
[2] http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/installmanual
[3] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/base/index.xml#doc_chap4

___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: Leaving

2009-01-09 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 10:50 PM, C. Scott Ananian csc...@cscott.net wrote:
 Like many others, Friday will be my last day employed by OLPC.  I've
 enjoyed working on the project a lot, and hope to find some way to
 continue the work that has been begun.

I'm very sorry to hear that. Will you be able to attend XOCamp2?

The next release of Sugar appears to be left hanging, with no comment
from management. I find this appalling.


 Although I expect that the @laptop.org addresses will continue to work
 for some time, you should probably use csc...@cscott.net for future
 correspondence.  I've enjoyed working with you all.
  --scott

 --
 ( http://cscott.net/ )
 ___
 Devel mailing list
 Devel@lists.laptop.org
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel




-- 
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://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: see ya'

2009-01-09 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 12:04 PM,  p...@laptop.org wrote:
 like many others, today is my last day at OLPC.  my short tenure
 here has been loads of fun, and it's been an honor to be close to
 the center of such a great project.

 i'll be around -- please stay in touch.  to the extent i can, i'll
 be following the lists, and dropping in on irc once in a while.

 richard and i have agreed that since i've already tainted myself
 by working with the sooper seekrit EC firmware, and i'm still effectively
 under NDA, that there's no reason i shouldn't continue to be a resource
 for questions and help in that area, if anything should come up
 where richard's not around, or whatever.  hope i can help out
 somehow.

But it's the stuff you can't tell us that we want to know. ^_^ And
Richard Stallman, too.

 my home address is p...@laptop.org,

I believe you meant to say something different here.

 but pgf (or paul) @laptop will
 continue to work for some time, i believe.

 paul
 =-
  paul fox, p...@laptop.org
 ___
 Devel mailing list
 Devel@lists.laptop.org
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel




-- 
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://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

zen root (was Re: Flash wiki entries)

2009-01-02 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 11:41 AM, Samuel Klein s...@laptop.org wrote:

 Anyway, why does this wiki page tell you to enter
   sudo su -

 Some future zen compilation of sudo may support infinite nesting of
 levels of protectedness, so that you have to really REALLY mean it to
 say sudo sudo sudo 'make me a sandwich'

I had Zen Buddhist priest training, and I have publicly taken a vow
never to write anything entitled Zen and the Art of Computer
Programming. Stan Kelly-Bootle thought that vow worth recording in The
Computer Contradictionary.

So don't start any Zen threads here unless you know enough to mean it. ^_^

 SJ



-- 
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://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: Deployment image customization

2008-12-23 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 11:26 AM, Michael Stone mich...@laptop.org wrote:
 On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 09:18:51PM +0200, Morgan Collett wrote:
On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 18:29, Daniel Drake d...@laptop.org wrote:
 On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 2:19 PM, Greg Smith gregsmitho...@gmail.com wrote:
 Your suggestion that we allow
 addition of RPMs and get those built into a signed image via pilgrim or
 puritan is certainly valuable and part of the requirement.

 However, it doesn't cover a few added things (language settings was
 specifically requested by Mongolia and others):

 - Updated language packs (I believe we are trying to make this an RPM which
 may solve it)
 - Starting language
 - Date, time and timezone
 - Network settings

 Both puritan and pilgrim install many unpackaged hacks; that's actually
 the major reason why they exist.

 (Some special indirection needs to be taken if you want to deploy hacks
 to /home via olpc-update, since it doesn't touch /home, but for
 whole-NAND-reflash tasks, either is certainly adequate.)

 It's also possible to combine a compose-tool like puritan or pilgrim
 with our existing image-builder technology (which generates mfg-ready
 images from customization-stick data.)

Would it be possible to apply these tools to creating LiveCDs and
qemu-ready image files? I certainly don't want to add to the burdens
of over-burdened staff, but can some of us volunteers do that part? I
ask in large part because recent LiveCDs and image files don't work on
my computer.

 Michael
 ___
 Devel mailing list
 Devel@lists.laptop.org
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel




-- 
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://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: What's going on with Text To Speech on the XO?

2008-12-16 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 1:22 PM, James Simmons
jim.simm...@walgreens.com wrote:
Ed,

Thanks for your response. I never questioned that there was still interest
in TTS on the XO. What I was wondering is if there was any progress made by
Hemant Goyal or anyone else in getting the Speech-Dispatcher software
included with the Sugar distribution, if the newer version of Python that
resolved the power management issue was included, etc. I've sent a couple
of emails to Hemant and haven't heard back from him. I was wondering if he
was still working on these things, or if someone else had taken over his
work, etc.

I'm starting a textbook initiative, and haven't kept up with software
development that much. I would also like to have answers to your
questions, because we will need TTS for some of the early-grade
textbooks and for language learning.

He was making RPMs for Fedora for installing speech-dispatcher.

James Simmons

Edward Cherlin wrote:

Welcome back. There is significant interest from other organizations
in our use of TTS with text coloring. I have just started discussions
with the Doug Engelbart Foundation, Creative Commons ccLearn, Alan
Kay's Viewpoints Research, and OLE about a new project to create a
full range of teaching materials around Sugar. TTS-TC is important for
literacy, of course, and also for language learning.

--
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://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: XO deployment count?

2008-12-15 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 4:08 PM, Samuel Klein s...@laptop.org wrote:
On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 1:30 PM, da...@lang.hm wrote:
In countries all over the world, XOs are *actually arriving in
children's hands*.
--scott

[*] roughly means there are lots of minor details I'm omitting; Peru

rough numbers are good enough for answering critics who claim that OLPC
is a failure, the only thing is that if different people give vastly
different numbers we end up looking like idiots.

The latest I have heard is more than half a million in the hands of
students, and another half million on order or in the pipeline. That
isn't good enough for updating the Wiki, but staff are completely out
of bandwidth at least until after the New Year. There are supposed to
be more blockbuster G1G1 ads coming, for one thing. We have zero
information on sales through Amazon after the initial best-seller
listings.

the deployments page mentioned above is not linked to from the main page
of the wiki (this is one of my gripes about most wikis, they end up having
lots of information in them, but the linking structure is frequently so
bad that you would never know it, which leads to multiple pages being
maintained by different people, with conflicting information)

OLPC Ghana page says that Ghana has ordered 10,000 units, and
committed to enough for every child. But there is no contact
information, and the Ministry in Ghana (moess.gov.gh) doesn't have a
page for the project.

if you could pass this along to the folks on the business side. they need
to realize that we are part of their sales/marketing force.

You certainly are.

The main page is editable by anyone with a user account; I encourage
anyone with ideas about what should go there to add specific
suggestions to the talk page, or to update directly if the change is
obvious. Most other pages, if you see that they aren't linking to the
most current version of a relevant page, be bold and fix them.

SJ
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

--
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://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: Free Software Foundation Files Suit Against Cisco For GPL Violations

2008-12-12 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 11:14 AM, John Gilmore g...@toad.com wrote:
OLPC is at risk of similar action unless it gets its act together.
The project and its customers have skated by on GPL compliance,
figuring that we're the good guys, and make halfhearted attempts every
once in a while, so we won't get sued. That didn't work for Cisco.
Even a public *allegation* by FSF that OLPC is not compliant would
have an effect similar to the We're going Microsoft debacle, further
alienating the free software development community who OLPC depends
deeply upon. OLPC has, by distributing binaries under DRM, without
source code, and with minimal notice, hung a sword over its head that
just about anybody could unleash.

John

Some of us are new to one or another part of this issue, and need a
bit more background.

o Can you list the offending binaries and explain their faults?
o Can you explain how that puts us afoul of the GPL or any other
specific license?

Or are you just talking about PR effects if we claim to distribute
only Free Software, and somebody can say we ship something else in
addition, as happened with rms and tdr over the Marvell code on the
wireless chip and some other code in ROM?
--
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://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: Free Software Foundation Files Suit Against Cisco For GPL Violations

2008-12-12 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 12:22 PM, Michael Stone mich...@laptop.org wrote:
On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 11:52:54AM -0800, Edward Cherlin wrote:

On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 11:14 AM, John Gilmore g...@toad.com wrote:

OLPC is at risk of similar action unless it gets its act together.
The project and its customers have skated by on GPL compliance,
figuring that we're the good guys, and make halfhearted attempts every
once in a while, so we won't get sued. That didn't work for Cisco.
Even a public *allegation* by FSF that OLPC is not compliant would
have an effect similar to the We're going Microsoft debacle, further
alienating the free software development community who OLPC depends
deeply upon. OLPC has, by distributing binaries under DRM, without
source code, and with minimal notice, hung a sword over its head that
just about anybody could unleash.

John

Some of us are new to one or another part of this issue, and need a
bit more background.

For some basic background, please see

http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/4265

Thanks. That explains about source code and notice. Is there anything
about DRMed binaries?

http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/4268

That's a lost cursor bug. I assume you meant some other one.

Thanks,

Michael

--
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://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: [Grassroots-l] SugarLabs Sur - Libre Social Network Project

2008-12-12 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 12:52 AM, Sebastian Silva
sebast...@fuentelibre.org wrote:
Friends of our community,

I'd like to introduce you to a project that Rafael, me, Alejandro
(proj.man.) , Antonio (django wiz), Alfredo (theather educ) and Jose
(mathematics professor at the UNMSM) have been working on.
It is our proposed strategy for training and supporting a large rural
and distributed sugar deployment including collaboration servers in
traditional Computer Labs settings. Already we are preparing for a
workshop with the first teachers in early february, when the roll out
will occur.

We have two main strategies:

- Reduce the maintenance overhead of schools by providing a tailored
suite + best practices + documentation ---easy to replicate

Earth Treasury wants to work on the teaching materials. We announced
our intention of forming an RD consortium for this just a few days
ago.

- Harnessing social network functionality for sharing, collaboration
and peer-support --- easy to share

Everybody understands the value and power of social networks. However
these remain propietary and have a number of privacy and control
issues. We'll incorporate existing social networking software (could
be Elgg, NoseRub, Pinax...) that not only will provide One Social
Network Per School, but will jumpstart the first (that I know of)
massive, self-replicating, decentralized educational social network
ecosystem, a network of social networks. And we want to make it extra
easy to add a node anywhere on the globe.

That is another item that Earth Treasury has had on its To Do list. We
have to be able to link schools and individual students around the
world, for educational and social purposes, and then to create
multinational partnerships to set up sustainable businesses.

Our expected deployment involves ~200 school laboratories (and
servers), and ~2300 workstations, for a total of tens of thousands of
students and their respective teachers who will be online and
collaborating with each other and with the community across
organizational, geographic, and cultural boundaries. We will foster
this community and bring them in touch with other teachers using Sugar
in the classroom. Perhaps even more schools will join this global
network, as we want to make it as simple as possible.

What computers? XOs? Laptops? Desktops with Sugar on a Stick?

We hope to give details on this deployment soon but need a particular
confirmation from the Regional Government. We have submitted a
proposal for USAID challenge and would use the money as SugarLabs to
develop, prepare, tailor and integrate a platform that allows us to
deliver excellent teacher workshops that empower educators to
appropriate the technology and learn about it in community like we
so happily do in Free Software.

Please find our proposal for at
http://www.netsquared.org/projects/free-social-networks-rural-education

Give it a look. Think about it. A large social network owned by its
users, that can grow organically without any need for central offices
or large datacenters... Give us your comments and feedback and...

Vote for it. The voting process is particular, you have to pick us,
and then 2 others. You can't vote unless you pick 3. Please do this
for us.

I would do it if you were asking!;-)

I did this before seeing your message. You rock.

In all seriousness, I think our proposal has a great chance, because
frankly, i think it rocks and is better than the other options, but
the first phase of the challenge involves the community for picking
15, then a panel picks 3 winners. So we need you, community!

Thank you for your time.
--
Sebastian Silva
Iniciativa FuenteLibre
http://blog.sebastiansilva.com/
___
Grassroots mailing list
grassro...@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/grassroots

--
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://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: Free Software Foundation Files Suit Against Cisco For GPL Violations

2008-12-12 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 4:53 PM, John Gilmore g...@toad.com wrote:
 Some of us are new to one or another part of this issue, and need a bit more 
 background.

 o Can you list the offending binaries and explain their faults?

 Sure.  For example, ls is part of the Coreutils.  In 8.2.0, it's
 licensed under GPLv3+ (try ls --version); in earlier releases, it's
 licensed under GPLv2+.  In both cases, OLPC is shipping binary copies
 of ls on the flash media of laptops.  This means that it must ensure
 that every recipient has either the actual source code of ls, or has
 both a written offer of such source code and ready access to redeem that
 offer for the actual code.

Interesting. I have never received a Linux system with either the
source code or a written offer of source code. I certainly know where
to download it.

 One of the original ideas at OLPC was that all the source code would be
 put on the school servers and every school would have a server and so
 the kids would all have access to the sources.  See
 http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/4286#comment:8 .  That didn't work in
 practice, because many laptops go to places that have no school
 servers.  It didn't work for G1G1 either.  See also
 http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/4417 .

Presumably we could have included a CD, regardless of whether
recipients had drives.

 There are also some packages for which OLPC doesn't seem to have
 SRPM's that match its RPM's:  http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/4835 .

Wouldn't surprise me. Who is supposed to take care of this stuff?

 In addition, there's a bigger problem with the packages that are
 licensed under GPLv3 (24 packages in 8.2.0, and growing).  GPLv3 bans
 TiVoization which is the way that the TiVo company figured out how
 to cheat the GPLv2.  They used a ton of GPL software to build a
 product, flashed the binaries into a physical product, and provide all
 the matching source code -- but the firmware in the physical product
 will never let you reflash the binaries.  This means you are free to
 modify the source code and recompile it, but you can never actually
 modify it IN THE PRODUCT.

 GPLv3 bans this, for products designed for household or consumer use.
 If the vendor themselves has the power to reflash the binaries, then the
 consumer must be provided the keys and instructions required to do so.

OK, now I know what you are talking about. Yes, I would prefer
children to have complete software freedom. I don't see it happening.
I expect that if faced with this question directly, governments would
uniformly assert that they are the consumers, and that no court in
their countries would disagree, since the government paid for the
equipment. I also see no way that a US court would hold any of this to
be a license violation, given that the source code is delivered to the
governments.

 OLPC follows exactly the TiVo model.  It comes with DRM that prevents
 the kids from reflashing their own laptops, even though OLPC can
 reflash them with new versions.  The DRM directly affects modified
 versions of the kernel and initrd, which do not contain software
 licensed under GPLv3.  Coreutils (ls) is GPLv3 though.  Normally, to
 modify ls you wouldn't need to reflash; you could just log in as
 root and install the new version on top of the old version (with rpm
 or yum or cp).  But some of the countries who distribute OLPC
 laptops want even more control -- they have disabled root access
 completely for the kids.  This means the kids can't just login as
 root; they'd need to reflash to install a modified version of ls,
 and they can't.  This violates GPLv3.

 In addition, one of the key deliverables for the 9.1 release is
 limited-time leases that would make the laptop refuse to boot, if
 some third party who has OLPC connections doesn't issue it a new lease
 periodically.  Part of the implementation strategy was/is to avoid
 cheating by denying every laptop user the ability to reset the
 laptop's clock.  This can only be enforced if root access is removed.
 Thus Uruguay's mistake is scheduled to be spread into every country as
 of the 9.1 release.  This violates GPLv3.

 OLPC has a complicated process for getting the keys that would enable
 you to reflash your laptop, get past the lease crap, (or merely to
 boot software, such as the Fedora 10 release, that isn't signed by
 OLPC's secret keys).  This is the developer key process, which
 requires Internet access, a 24-hour arbitrary delay imposed by OLPC,
 and a lot of hand-holding and instructions.  Many kids in the
 mountains of Peru and Uruguay do not have Internet access.  There's
 supposedly a way to send a postcard to OLPC, but I think it has never
 been tried (it neglects to tell the kids to include their serial
 number and UUID, which are required; and it would require that the
 kids correctly type in a long string of random letters and digits.
 The Support Gang has had lots of trouble with *adults* with email and
 telephones being unable to do such things.)

 It may

Re: What's going on with Text To Speech on the XO?

2008-12-11 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 1:38 PM, James Simmons
jim.simm...@walgreens.com wrote:
I've haven't been working on the XO lately (my basement office had to go
through Mold Remediation after a flood) but I have been monitoring this
mailing list every day. When I last did any development work on the XO
it was to create a mostly successful text to speech feature for the Read
Etexts activity. Using this successfully would require some RPMs
installed on the XO that Hemant Goyal was working on for Fedora, plus a
newer version of Python that resolved some problems caused by
threading. What I remember is that if you used threading at all in your
activity it prevented power management from working.

I've been cleaning up my basement after the tile installers finished and
there is some hope that I can resume working on my activity, at least a
little. I have my XO upgraded to the latest release of Sugar and it
looks like Speech Dispatcher still is not part of that release.

I'm well aware of all the other work going on with the XO and I don't
kid myself that this should be a priority for anyone, but if someone
could bring me up to date on what's happening with text to speech on the
XO I'd be much obliged.

James Simmons

___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

--
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://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: Music Keyboard for TamTam?

2008-12-04 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 11:55 PM, Caryl Bigenho [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Thanks for all your efforts!

The last time I used a midi keyboard with a Mac (it was a G3) it had to have
a special midi interface and then was just plug and play from there
using Finale as a program. In looking over your discussion below, it looks
like you did manage to get a midi keyboard to work with the XO, but with
great difficulty. Some questions...

Will it work with all of the TamTam Activities?

Is it likely that all midi keyboards would work?

All MIDI *USB* keyboards. Not those with only the standard MIDI
connector, unless we find MIDI to USB converters cheap.

Would it be possible to put the instructions into language that the less
technically inclined could easily follow to get started on this?

As soon as we decide on the technical solution. Plug in your USB MIDI
instrument, assign it an instrumental voice in the UI, and play,
should about cover it when we have everything put together.

Does anything have to be changed in the software/hardware to make this
easily used by teachers everywhere?

It should be set up so that it Just Works.

Do you know of any source of very simple, inexpensive midi keyboards? No
bells and whistles needed, they are already in the XO in the TamTam
Activities.

Google very kindly put this ad up in Google mail next to your message.

Yamaha UX16 MIDI/USB
$41.99 In Stock Now
Free Shipping
www.kensprosound.com

Could easier use of a midi keyboard be incorporated into a change in the
Sugar OS (like 9.1.0)?

Or is there an easy way to make the current set-up easier?

I leave the rest to the developers.

Thanks again for your interest and efforts!

Caryl

--
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://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: Music Keyboard for TamTam?

2008-12-01 Thread Edward Cherlin

Re: Music Keyboard for TamTam?

2008-11-30 Thread Edward Cherlin

2008/11/15 Caryl Bigenho [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
Hi,

I was wondering if there would be a way to connect a usb musical keyboard to
the XO to use with the TamTam suite of Activities?

The software would have to be able to recognize the input from the
keyboard. A small 37-key midi keyboard by M-Audio costs about $50.
http://www.fullcompass.com/product/324805.html. It supposedly works with
any computer with a usb connection, but I suspect they mean any Mac or
Windows based machine.

With an appropriate USB MIDI driver installed.

The programs in the TamTam suite are really powerful, and could appeal to
older children and adults if the keyboard input was more suited to their
larger hands.

Any ideas?

We need to add a driver from the usual sources, and we need to modify
our music software to accept MIDI from USB as well as from
conventional files. This being Linux, the changes required for
handling a port as a file are fairly trivial internally, but we need a
UI to select USB I/O and to map it to the desired instrument.

Once we have this, we get not just MIDI keyboards, but drums, guitars,
breath controllers, string controllers, and all the rest, and we can
play any instrument from any controller.

I am also looking forward to using the second touch screen on an XO-2
as a MIDI controller, with all of the graphical input possibilities
that it will allow: keyboard, drums, string tablature, theremin,...

I'm not on your mailing list so please just cc your answer to:

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Thanks

___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

--
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://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: [Localization] OLPC Afghanistan

2008-11-27 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 10:15 AM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
[changing to the olpc devel mailing list]

On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 10:50 AM, Ebtihaj Obaidi
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hi dears.
finally OLPC Afghanistan started its official work from Afghanistan.
For details just visit:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/One_Laptop_Per_Child_Afghanistan
OR
http://www.olpc.blogsky.com

Hi Ebtihaj,

would like to know more about your software development tasks, what is
OLPC Afghanistan going to work on?

I see work on Dari, Pashto, and Uzbek for Afghanistan. How about
Hazaragi and Aimaq? Do you need Tajik?

We have an Arabic language Qur'an Activity, and we also have the Sword
Activity, which can handle any texts, dictionaries and commentaries in
any number of languages. What would your country like to make
available to its children?

What other Activities would be specific to Afghanistan? Music?
Literature? Games? Art? History?

Thanks,

Tomeu

Sohaib Obaidi Ebtihaj

BSc. (Hons.) Economics, IIIE-IIUI
OLPC Afghanistan
Community Development Liaison.

+923349072974
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

http://www.eqtisad.co.cc
http://www.olpc.blogsky.com
http://www.olpc.af

___
Localization mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/localization

___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

--
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://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: [Localization] [sugar] 9.1 proposal: Language learning on the XO.

2008-10-30 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 11:28 AM, Yamandu Ploskonka
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Please be _very_ careful on any thought about teaching English with the XO.

It is a requirement in many countries. We don't have a choice.

Enemies of the project everywhere are just waiting for a chance, any
chance, to call us yokels of the imperialist empire, and they would have
a field day if the XO delivered EFL.

The defense against this nonsense is to provide courses for as many
languages a possible, and toolkits for people to develop their own for
languages not currently popular in the textbook industry. Also, to
encourage schoolchildren to learn how to record and preserve their
linguistic heritage everywhere.

Of course we know that many locally parents want EFL, as they want Math,
but there is a weird layer of opinion that would just be so happy to
ruin the whoile project for short term political gain.

Pay no attention to the naysayers, Yama. By their fruits ye shall know them.

To develop _tools_ for language learning is _very_ good, as a general
concept.

Aymaran kids need to learn better skills in Aymara, and such tools would
be useful, Castillian speaking kids skills in Castillian and would
benefit to learn Aymara and Quechua also, but proposing Aymara and
Quechua kids to be assisted to learn Castillian using the XO is already
a delicate matter, proposing English is a definite no-no in these times.

In many countries English or a former colonial/imperial language
(French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian) are required for all
children. In the Netherlands, for example, students get 12 years of
English. English is the only language that people can agree on in
India, and is the language of almost all higher education there.

_We_ are not going to impose anything on the children. We are going to
make tools available.

Since all of this is a local decision anyway, I know of a deployment
that, at the request of local parents and with local workers is
developing EFL materials.

Tell us more.

What I suggest is that as a team to focus in the _tools_. Dictionaries,
interactive tools (HablarConSara, etc). Those can then be loaded with
local language packs, and eventually, and as a local decision, other
languages, which of course are not limited to English.

I see that we agree on the principles, and we are discussing
presentation more than substance.

I listened to an
NPR report the other day on how fashionable it is to have pre.schoolers
learn Mandarin nowadays.

Yes, we have Chinese immersion in elementary schools and preschools
here in Cupertino.

Yama
___
Localization mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/localization

--
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://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Fwd: 9.1 proposal: Language learning on the XO.

2008-10-28 Thread Edward Cherlin

Sorry, this got away before I added the rest of the recipients.

-- Forwarded message --
From: Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 10:25 PM
Subject: Re: 9.1 proposal: Language learning on the XO.
To: Chris Ball [EMAIL PROTECTED]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 4:46 PM, Chris Ball [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Hi,

 I'm learning Spanish at the moment, and I wish the XO made it easier
 for me.  I don't have any knowledge of what the right way to do either
 conventional or constructionist language learning on computers is; if
 anyone has much experience with either, I'd love to hear about it.

http://pagesperso-orange.fr/une.education.pour.demain/materiels_pedago/sw/swprese.htm
Caleb Gattegno: The Silent Way

The Silent Way is the pedagogical approach created by Gattegno for
teaching foreign languages; the objective is for students to work as
autonomous language learners.

 I have some obvious candidates for software that could be produced in
 mind:

   * A method -- similar to Scott's recent GtkLabel overlay for allowing
 strings inside Sugar and activities to be translated -- that does a
 dictionary lookup of a word on the screen and overlays the
 translation of that word into a local language.  This should be
 activity-agnostic, if possible.  For bonus points, translate
 phrases instead of just words.

I worked once for Sentius Corp., which had such software for providing
either translations or definitions through pop-up portlets. This
kind of software is in wide use.

Sites such as translate.google.com and
http://www.popjisyo.com/WebHint/Portal_e.aspx or http://www.rikai.com
offer various ways of doing this, including copy and paste, or
entering a URL to get a version of a page annotated dynamically.

   * Perhaps some kind of Pronunciation Activity that gives you words
 in the target language, speaks them to you, explains what they
 mean in your local language, and asks you to speak them back,
 perhaps grading your response?  (All but the last part is already
 possible to do manually in the Words activity, but not in a
 structured way.)

Our text-to-speech engine will be available for all Activities. In
addition to speaking selected text in any supported language, it will
highlight the point of pronunciation as it reads. It can be adapted to
a language lesson Activity.

   * Is there any free content that matches iconic images to words,
 so that language vocabulary could be taught even without textual
 translation to a local language?

We ought to be able to combine Google Translate and Google Images
using Google APIs.

There are a number of picture dictionaries or visual dictionaries, in
which all of the parts of an object are labeled in the target
language. We could ask for a license, or create our own. We could
throw a draft together out of free clip art in fairly short order, and
get our artists to do something even better for global publication.

 Feel free to come up with questions/ideas around language learning on
 the XO in general in this thread, and they'll make it into the
 conference talk.

There is a substantial body of Free Software for language learning,
and other Computational Linguistics software that could be adapted to
language learning.

o Content: Literature; man pages and other documentation; localization files

o Dictionaries

o Typing tutors for various writing systems

o Kana drill and practice

o Flashcard programs usable for vocabulary, simple grammar drills
(plurals, genders, tenses) and somewhat more.

o Spelling and grammar checkers

What we need most is a Transformational Grammar engine to drill more
advanced constructions.

From simple transformations, such as I am going out.--We are going
out. to such things as counterfactual conditionals. He went.--Had
he gone... or If he had gone..., including different patterns for
the formal, even the old-fashioned (to prepare students for
literature) and the more colloquial. Or dialect. If'n he went..., if
a student so chooses.

A quite decent summary of some of the development of this field is in
From algorithms to generative grammar and back again
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/goldsmith/Papers/CLS2004Algorithms.pdf,
by John Goldsmith, The University of Chicago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Goldsmith
http://hum.uchicago.edu/~jagoldsm/Webpage/index.html

The author describes one of his research interests as unsupervised
learning of morphology. Unfortunately for us, that means unsupervised
computers attempting to analyse word structure, with a 70-80% success
rate measured by words in the corpus. It has nothing to do with human
learning or the grammar of sentences.

An algorithm for the unsupervised learning of morphology
http://hum.uchicago.edu/~jagoldsm/Papers/algorithm.pdf

 Abstract

This paper describes in detail an algorithm for the unsupervised
learning of natural lan-
guage morphology, with emphasis on challenges that are encountered

Re: [Community-news] Software developers needed for OLPC Afghanistan

2008-10-24 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 4:45 PM, Don [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 I am interested Svetla.
  I have lots of skills and I do also possess a bit of charm.
 I am not religious but that does not mean that I am against religion.
  Sadly my knowledge of
  computers thus far are only windows based.  I am a G1G1 and to be
  frank, not a lover of microsoft.  My trade is in construction... on
  both the very high
  ends and the very low.  If you think there is a place there for one
  such as me so as to perhaps
  strengthen your credibility in that culture, please let me know.

Actually, it is not a matter of credibility. Decades of war destroyed
much of the building stock and infrastructure and almost all industry,
and the Taliban drove everybody competent from the country, down to
the level of telephone installers. Although people have been
returning, and there is a considerable amount of investment,
Afghanistan needs people who can teach the skills for building,
including math, engineering, design, skilled trades, finance, and
sustainability. And the skills for teaching.

 Don Czapski

-- 
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://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: [Community-news] Software developers needed for OLPC Afghanistan

2008-10-24 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 5:16 PM, Don [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

On Fri, 24 Oct 2008 16:09:21 -0700, Edward Cherlin
[EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 4:45 PM, Don [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I am interested Svetla.
I have lots of skills and I do also possess a bit of charm.
I am not religious but that does not mean that I am against religion.
Sadly my knowledge of
computers thus far are only windows based. I am a G1G1 and to be
frank, not a lover of microsoft. My trade is in construction... on
both the very high
ends and the very low. If you think there is a place there for one
such as me so as to perhaps
strengthen your credibility in that culture, please let me know.

Actually, it is not a matter of credibility. Decades of war destroyed
much of the building stock and infrastructure and almost all industry,
and the Taliban drove everybody competent from the country, down to
the level of telephone installers. Although people have been
returning, and there is a considerable amount of investment,
Afghanistan needs people who can teach the skills for building,
including math, engineering, design, skilled trades, finance, and
sustainability. And the skills for teaching.

I am a a licenced builder in the state of michigan...USA, with decades
of experience in construction...and also being friendly to everyone
along the path of creativity. I have trained many young ones with my
knowledge over the years. I would like to help.
Who are you?
Don

I am a volunteer with OLPC and Sugar Labs, and I run Earth Treasury.
You can see a video I made about where the XO program can take us on
my Wiki page (URL below). To see my names, you need to turn on Unicode
support or use a Unicode-capable mailer, and install Chinese, Sanskrit
Devanagari, and Arabic/Urdu fonts.

I am working towards a microfinance project in Afghanistan, to supply
looms and other art and craft tools and to supply Internet
connectivity so that people can sell their works on eBay,
Shopping.com, Overstock.com, and so on.

My first work on OLPC Sugar software was in language
support--keyboards, writing systems, fonts, and so on. I helped
recruit translators for the less well supported languages of target
countries. Now I watch for other things that need to be done, and go
recruit people to do them. Village electricity and broadband Internet;
microfinance; various kinds of software; educational content; redesign
of textbooks to take advantage of the powerful collaborative software
in Sugar; and more.

--
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://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: [Grassroots-l] World scriptures

2008-10-18 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 6:40 AM, Lisa Caroline Lewis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Are there any other sites we could use which would be less biased in how
 they define what religions?

We don't have to use their site at all if we don't like their attitude.

AFAIK the Sword software is under a Free license, and we can just put
our stuff where we like.

 I imagine some might be seriously offended
 by considering Buddhism a cult, and in general OLPC shouldn't find
 itself in the position of endorsing one religion over another.

I wouldn't list my work on that page. I would ask for a respectful
page for non-Christian religions.

 Choosing
 the immediate expediency of a convenient site over the mission of OLPC
 could very well cost OLPC all kinds of support.  Do we really want to
 open ourselves to charges of being underhanded Christian missionaries?

By posting non-Christian scriptures? Do you really think people will
be that confused?

 I imagine there might be some countries which are already challenging
 for OLPC to work in, and this could make it significantly harder in
 certain conditions.

Let us not borrow trouble, but inquire whether this is so.

 From the crosswire.org site:
 ---begin quote---
 About Us
 The CrossWire Bible Society is an organization with the purpose to
 sponsor and provide a place for engineers and others to come and
 collaborate on free, open-source projects aimed at furthering the
 Kingdom of our God. We are also a resource pool to other Bible societies
 and Christian organizations that can't afford --or don't feel it's their
 place-- to maintain a quality programming staff in house. We provide
 them with a number of tools that assist them with reaching their domain
 with Christ.
 ---end quote---

 My $0.02,
 Lisa

Good questions. Thank you, Lisa.

 On Thu, 16 Oct 2008, Jeffrey Kesselman wrote:

 2008/10/16 Sebastian Silva [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 E
 The link http://www.crosswire.org/sword/publisher/index.jsp seems to suggest
 they would be open, for at least putting it on the Cult / Unorthodox
 module add-on section.


 The irony being that this is a world-project and, buy the numbers,
 when comapred with say, Buddhism, Christianity is the cult/unorthodox
 religion.

Now, now. No need for snark.

 JK
 ___
 Grassroots mailing list
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/grassroots

 ___
 Grassroots mailing list
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/grassroots




-- 
Don't panic.--HHGTTG, Douglas Adams
fivethirtyeight.com, 3bluedudes.com Obama still moving ahead in EC!
http://www.obamapedia.org/page/Smears Join us!
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai For the children

Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज ) is my name
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place,
The Truth my destination.
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: [Grassroots-l] World scriptures

2008-10-18 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 12:48 PM, Eduardo H. Silva
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 I would vote for the The Nag Hammadi Library (early christian lost
 gospels) to be included as well in this all-encompassing
 religions/theologies activity: http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html
 .

Are you putting your hand up? Votes don't count, only volunteers.

 Eduardoa

-- 
Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज ) is my name
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place,
The Truth my destination.
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

9.1 Proposal: Textbooks (was Fwd: Call for Proposals for OLPC miniconference November 17-21, 2008)

2008-10-18 Thread Edward Cherlin

As requested.

On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 11:52 AM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 I would suggest that people cc' devel@ and sugar@ as well, so that we
 can see what has been proposed (and encourage people to make proposals
 who have not already).

-- Forwarded message --
From: Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 6:00 PM
Subject: Re: Call for Proposals for OLPC miniconference November 17-21, 2008
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 3:05 PM, Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 An OLPC miniconference will be held November 17-21, 2008 at our
 Cambridge offices (10th floor, 1 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA, USA)

 This week-long event will help frame our long-term software development
 efforts. In addition, we will work on prioritizing requirements,
 features and goals for the next major feature release called XO Software
 Release 9.1.0.

I think I can attend.

 Please submit proposals for topics to cover. These may include, but
 are not limited to:
 - Top concerns and requirements of users and countries including reviews
 of available feedback
 - Learning priorities and tools needed to support them
 - Technologies, applications and software design proposals
 - Process and infrastructure proposals
 - Current and needed research

 For details about the event and submission process, see the XOcamp
 description online. [1]

 Please submit  200 word descriptions of topics or sessions on the
 event page [2] or by emailing your ideas to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .

What does an electronic textbook look like?

Since the 1960s there have been experiments in high-powered
educational software, but not a lot of textbook development that
integrates this software into the text, and very little classroom
experience. This session will look at the available materials, the
types of software and content available, and the implications for
future curricula.

What do we know? What examples do we have and what do they show us?
What opportunities can we see? How do we make this happen? What
questions should we ask next?

Examples:

o Edison Talking Typewriter to teach reading and writing to pre-school children
o Ken Iverson's textbooks, Arithmetic, Algebra, and Calculus
o Smalltalk and the Dynabook concept
o Matlab, Mathematica, and other powerful software
o Notebook and workspace formats and capabilities
o Teaching programming to children: Smalltalk, Logo, APL, others

 Thanks,

 Greg Smith
 OLPC Product Manager on behalf of the OLPC development team

 [1]  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XOcamp
 [2]  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XOcamp_2#Sessions
 ___
 Devel mailing list
 Devel@lists.laptop.org
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

--
Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज ) is my name
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place,
The Truth my destination.

-- 
Don't panic.--HHGTTG, Douglas Adams
fivethirtyeight.com, 3bluedudes.com Obama still moving ahead in EC!
http://www.obamapedia.org/page/Smears Join us!
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai For the children

Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज ) is my name
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place,
The Truth my destination.
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

World scriptures

2008-10-16 Thread Edward Cherlin

We have a Bible program in Sugar. Sword allows any number of texts,
dictionaries, and commentaries in any combination of languages to be
integrated together. I know where many other scriptures in many
languages are available, and would like to start a project to
integrate them into Sword and make them globally available. Some of
the materials are

Qur'an, Muslim
Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Sikh
Tipitaka and Tripitaka, Buddhist
Kanjur, Tanjur, Buddhist
Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Hindu
Laozi, Juangzi, Daozang, Daoist
Confucius, Mencius, Confucian
Talmud, Jewish
Popul Vuh, Mayan

I am open to other suggestions, and will need help with appropriate
dictionaries and commentaries. This is a large project, and will need
people with a range of skills. I can contact organizations that work
on each of the sets of texts listed, but we will need more contacts
beyond them.

o Should I create one ticket for the project, or one per religion, or what?

o Where can we host this?

-- 
Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज ) is my name
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place,
The Truth my destination.
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: World scriptures

2008-10-16 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 3:30 PM, Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 The instructions for preparing new modules are at

 http://www.crosswire.org/wiki/index.php/DevTools:Modules

 Let's pick some short texts and try them out. I'll start with the
 Heart Sutra in Sanskrit and Chinese.

New page: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Heart_Sutra
I added some notes on the Sword Read page in the OLPC Wiki.

 On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 11:15 PM, Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 We have a Bible program in Sugar. Sword allows any number of texts,
 dictionaries, and commentaries in any combination of languages to be
 integrated together. I know where many other scriptures in many
 languages are available, and would like to start a project to
 integrate them into Sword and make them globally available.

[snip]
-- 
Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज ) is my name
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place,
The Truth my destination.
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: [OLPC-Games] Play Go issues for laptop

2008-10-12 Thread Edward Cherlin

?
 Another excellent way to get some feedback would be for Andres and I to
 play
 a game together online.  The KGS Go Server is a terrific program.
  Looking
 at how that works together, and talking about important aspects of the
 game,
 could give you a good deal of insight into how to improve PlayGo.
 This forum is fine, I am happy to conduct these discussions through your
 list.  I just wasn't sure how many people were on it, or if this was the
 appropriate place for this discussion.
 Thanks,
 Paul Barchilon,
 American Go Foundation
 http://tigersmouth.org
 http://agfgo.org


 On Oct 10, 2008, at 7:37 PM, Andrés Ambrois wrote:

 On Friday 10 October 2008 06:49:58 Edward Cherlin wrote:

 I am a go player and programmer, and I have been involved in PlayGo

 from the beginning. I am also the one communicating with AGA about

 PlayGo and about our plans for multilingual content for teaching Go.

 Some years ago I worked on a multilingual go glossary in Unicode,

 adding various writing systems to the ASCII original.

 On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 9:53 PM, Paul Barchilon [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:

 Hello to all who are working on this project, and thank you for the great

 service you are providing to kids around the world!  I am the Vice

 President of the American Go Foundation, a charitable organization that

 provides free Go equipment to children and teachers in schools.  I spend

 a great deal of time teaching children, and am an active Go player and

 organizer on the national scene.  It has come to my attention that there

 are a number of problems with the Play Go program, and also that a set of

 rules that are appropriate for children may well be needed.

 I am not a computer programmer, and do not have one of the laptops, so I

 haven't actually seen the Play Go program at work.

 Hello Paul and Edward!

 I've written most of the code in PlayGo, following Gerard J. Cerchio's
 initial implementation, so its very encouraging to see so much enthusiasm
 behind it!

 While I'm not a great Go player, (I do think it's a fantastic game, just
 haven't found a good sparring partner :)). I believe it's a great way to
 teach
 analytical thinking to young kids in a fun way. Therefore, feedback such
 as
 this, from knowledgeable people like you, is paramount to its
 improvement.
 Thank you!


 You can download the latest version. I'll get you instructions offline.

 I did ask a child who

 has one, and plays Go, to tell me how it seemed.  He may have an older

 version of the software, but if his observations are correct it sounds

 like there are some serious issues.  I would be very glad to help solve

 some of these problems if you would like some input.  As I said, I can't

 program, but I can tell whoever is writing the software what the problems

 are.

 Thank you.

 Great! Thanks for testing! Perhaps you could encourage people to try the
 latest version of the activity. You can find it at
 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities/All . I would love to hear about
 this
 issues in more detail.

 Please feel free to contact me directly at [EMAIL PROTECTED]  If you

 would like a rule set designed for children, please let me know and we

 will be happy to write one for you.

 We will be very interested to hear from you on this.

 Perhaps we could continue this discussion using this list? It would be
 better for other people that can contribute *hint hint*.

 You can see one example of our approach to

 this on our youth go website, which is here:

 http://tigersmouth.org/viewpage.php?page_id=8

 Sweet. Now that the Help activity is being shipped, perhaps we could
 include
 this work in a help bundle for PlayGo. Is this work under a free license?

 Thank you so much, and I hope to hear from whoever is programming Play

 Go.

 Thank you!

 Sincerely,

 Paul Barchilon,

 American Go Foundation

 http://tigersmouth.org

 http://agfgo.org

 --
 -Andrés



 ___
 Games mailing list
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/games





 --
 Walter Bender
 Sugar Labs
 http://www.sugarlabs.org
 ___
 Games mailing list
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/games


 ___
 Games mailing list
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/games





-- 
Don't panic.--HHGTTG, Douglas Adams
fivethirtyeight.com, 3bluedudes.com Obama still moving ahead in EC!
http://www.obamapedia.org/ Join us!
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai For the children
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: journal is hard + sugar and the digital age

2008-10-09 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 7:15 AM, Carlos Nazareno [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Hi Tomeu. Some personal feedback:

 3) Basically - The journal is really hard for people/ kids to use over
 a longer period of time. Kids and teachers can't find things that they
 did unless it was done within the last 30 minutes.
Could you please elaborate on the difficulties that people have when
using the journal?

 I've experienced the same problem. Items tend to clutter up in the
 journal over time, it's like viewing your entire web browsing history.
 Its current implementation simply leads to information overload with
 the accumulating number of entries.

How about the Gmail method, in which you archive messages when you are
done with them, but you can tag messages, set filters, and search
easily?

 IMHO, the philosophy of nothing gets forgotten with the journal is a
 bit flawed because as people we don't even naturally do that. We
 selectively choose which information to remember and mark as important
 and discard the rest because that's just information overload.

 Think about it from a browser paradigm. You bookmark important items
 that you want to reuse later on. On the other hand, viewing your
 browser history over a prolonged period of time gets pretty unwieldy.

 Another problem I've had is that I tried to offload some programs onto
 an SD card due to the XO's limited internal storage. This can lead to
 hundreds to thousands of files when opening up the SD card in the
 journal. The flat heirarchy makes navigation extremely difficult when
 you have this many files.

 Sure, there's search, but that presupposes that you know the names of
 the files you're looking for. What if you stick in something that has
 hundreds of files and you were looking for an image file or something
 that you didn't know the name of?

 Hmm. I think one improvement that can be added to the journal is to
 improve the display filters?

 Like for example, the ability to filter by delineated date? It would
 be a little better if users could browse the journal from a date
 range, like the range of 2 weeks to 3 weeks ago only because that's
 when the user remembers the activity that was used.

 Another one is the ability to view journal entries by name
 alphabetically. This would help in browsing through entries.

 That being said, is there a possibility of creating a separate file
 manager activity? The reality of having to deal with files and folders
 is an inevitability that users will eventually go through once they
 grow in sophistication and interact in other digital environments like
 pcs. I think giving the idea of giving XO users the ability to view
 the sourcecode and muck around with them (a much-touted feature of the
 XO) requires a sophistication levels above navigating through and
 dealing with folders and files.

I recommend installing Midnight Commander for file management.

yum install mc

It is text-mode, so it runs entirely in a Terminal session, and
doesn't need to be Sugarized.

If you think that this is too much for students, we can easily rip out
unneeded functions.

could you elaborate on what means for teachers/schools/govts to
prepare kids for the digital age? It may be that we are not giving
enough importance to that requirement (?).

It clearly does not mean supposing that the tools of today will be
around in the same form in twelve years when our newest students will
graduate. So it must mean learning to adapt.

 *Interoperability with current systems.

 The sugar environment fosters a new closed paradigm/ecosystem that
 is different from pre-established paradigms. The intentional removal
 of the file and folder paradigm might make transitioning difficualt
 and I think users are having difficulty because of it.

 Also, for high school students, this means *office applications*.
 They're pretty much a requirement in private schools here where I come
 from. One of the things we hope do achieve with OLPC is to bridge the
 divide between haves and have nots, and that includes giving them
 a boost in IT skills (which is one of the biggest attractions of
 OLPC). I guess that's why governments or educational ministries
 insisted that the XO be able to run windows or no go.

You don't think that Free Software for the office makes the grade?

If we could start teaching students Office 2012 today, I would
consider it. If the alternative under discussion is teaching Office
2000, don't bother.

 Oh, some more observations slightly off-topic:

 Here in Manila, internet cafe rates are now cheap due to extreme
 popularity and proliferation. You can go surfing or playing LAN games
 for 20 Pesos/hour which is about 42 cents. Going home, I pass through
 a depressed area and there are 5 internet cafes in there.

 I've seen 6-8 year old street children in groups of about 3, pooling
 together money to play 3D realtime strategy games like the newest
 command and conquer or counterstrike and take turns at the seat
 playing in cafes playing. They

Re: [sugar] notes from the field - Mongolia

2008-10-09 Thread Edward Cherlin

Martin, Deniz, cool it, the pair of you. No more ad hominem attacks.
You each owe the other an apology. And one to Marco, too.

The list is not out of touch. There are many on the list who are
ignorant of conditions on the ground and of other things through no
fault of their own.

Now shake hands and come out arguing about facts, needs, and possibilities.

On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 5:25 PM, Martin Dengler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 On Thu, Oct 09, 2008 at 08:10:57PM -0400, Deniz Kural wrote:
 [this list is out of touch]
 Hence, student, or teacher, I need a USB stick.

 1. Plug USB stick into XO running build from the last six months
 2. Drag files from the Journal to the USB stick icon
 3. Drag files from the USB stick's file list to the Journal

 Deniz

 p.p.s Marco, you're a stuck-up asshole :)

 And you managed to call people that actually know what the hell
 they're talking about out of touch.  Thanks for advancing the
 state of knowledge on the list all the way forward to, oh, 2007.

 ___
 Sugar mailing list
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar





-- 
Don't panic.--HHGTTG, Douglas Adams
fivethirtyeight.com, 3bluedudes.com Obama still moving ahead in EC!
http://www.obamapedia.org/ Join us!
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai For the children
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Python 2.6 Turtle module and Sugar TurtleArt (was Re: [Edu-sig] Edu-sig Digest, Vol 63, Issue 11)

2008-10-08 Thread Edward Cherlin

How would you compare this turtle module with the TurtleArt activity
in Sugar? It is available in .deb and .rpm packages for Ubuntu,
Debian, and Fedora, and also in .xo bundles, installable with
xo-get.py. Sugar Labs is working with other Linux distributions to
make Sugar packages available as widely as possible.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/TurtleArt
http://wiki.laptop.og/go/Xo-get

On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 1:14 PM, John Posner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Miguel,


 Python 2.6, which was released one week ago, comes with a new turtle
 module. Perhaps this is something, you and your kids would like as it
 is pure educational Python software based on Tkinter. One of it's design
 goals was to provide easy access to graphics ...


 Gregor's new Turtle module is, indeed, terrific. If some students need a
 gentler introduction, take a look at the point-and-click front end that I
 added (ClixTur at http://www.geocities.com/jjphoogrp).

 Students can begin by creating drawings pretty much as they would in KidPix
 or Paint or Visio. (OK, it's a bit more primitive, because there are no
 dragging operations). As they click, a transcript of the Python code being
 executed appears in a separate window. The students can use this code to:

 * play back the transcript, to recreate their drawings

 This is very simple, but it gets across the idea of a stored program. And
 the high speed of the playback will be fun for younger students.

 * make revisions to the Python/Turtle code, and see what differences they
 produce in the drawing

 This kind of introduction to programming is much less intimidating than
 starting with a blank page. And it's just about as satisfying, especially if
 you generated the original code yourself with the point-and-click interface.

 Best of luck,
 John Posner






 ___
 Edu-sig mailing list
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig




-- 
Don't panic.--HHGTTG, Douglas Adams
fivethirtyeight.com, 3bluedudes.com Obama still moving ahead in EC!
http://www.obamapedia.org/ Join us!
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai For the children
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: [sugar] G1G1v2 Activities

2008-09-19 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 2:54 PM, Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Hi All,

 We need to pick the activities we ship with 8.2 when its manufactured
 for G1G1 users. Management needs to sign off on the final list as early
 as next week.

 Its not definitive but we want your input on what we should include.

 What do you think are the most important activities to include?

 Please pick up to 10 and put them in order of priority.

 We will tally the votes and use that as input to the decision.

 Thanks,

 Greg S

 PS this is not a scientific voting system like used recently in the
 sugar vote. I accept Arrow's impossibility theorem
 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem) and my
 math foo is weak so I'm not going to try and justify the methodology.

1. Measure
2. Etoys
3. Turtle Art with Sensors
4. Scratch
5. xo-get
6. Dr. Geo II
7. E-Paati/E-Paath
8. Record
9. TamTamJam
10. TamTamSynthLab

There are several others that I can't recommend until I try them, or
some other features are added. E-Pals is at the top of that list.
-- 
Don't panic.--HHGTTG, Douglas Adams
fivethirtyeight.com, 3bluedudes.com Obama still ahead in EC!
http://www.obamapedia.org/ Join us!
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai For the children
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: Peru and Microsoft announcement

2008-09-16 Thread Edward Cherlin

Thanks for talking to us.

This would be even more useful as the basis for an article or
editorial in one or more of the computer magazines or Web sites, or a
fact-filled press release. All of the media people I have talked with
say they would like to hear from OLPC.

We don't have to frame it as us vs. them. We can just announce the
state of current deployments, and discuss plans for future deployments
and G1G1, including whatever can be said in public about the Microsoft
trials. Everybody wants to know what's up with the Amazon deal, too.

2008/9/16 Ed McNierney [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 Folks -

 There have been a number of questions about press coverage late last week
 from Peru concerning the introduction of XO laptops running XP and Office.
  Microsoft has previously ordered a number of XO laptops for XP testing and
 pilot deployment.  The usage and distribution of these machines for that
 effort is up to Microsoft, and that's what they're doing in Peru.  This
 activity is not news, but is just a stage in Microsoft's plans as they were
 announced back in May:

 http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/may08/05-15MSOLPCPR.mspx

 There are a number of milestones yet to be achieved before XP can be made
 widely available on XO machines in any form, from any source.   The work
 involved will require at least more several months to complete.  Microsoft
 and OLPC announced in May that we'd work to make XP available in a future XO
 dual-boot configuration, and nothing has changed about that situation.

  - Ed

 Ed McNierney
 Vice President of Software Development
 One Laptop Per Child
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ___
 Devel mailing list
 Devel@lists.laptop.org
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel





-- 
Don't panic.--HHGTTG, Douglas Adams
fivethirtyeight.com, 3bluedudes.com Obama still ahead in EC!
http://www.obamapedia.org/ Join us!
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai For the children
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: Power-on to GUI in 20 seconds

2008-08-29 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 11:38 AM, Mitch Bradley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 pgf wrote:

 bert wrote:
   Am 29.08.2008 um 15:34 schrieb [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
  
bert wrote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0fAUGRUDVA
   
Brought to you by Gerardo Richarte, with bootstrapping help from
Mitch Bradley.

Thanks, Mitch. Where can we get details and code?

i can't resist pointing out that we could probably do that with
linux too, if we weren't committed to using an off-the-shelf desktop
distribution.
  
   Are we committed to that?

 i suspect so.  it gives us huge leverage in terms of reducing
 development time and in increased numbers of familiar developers.
 while i'm sure there's a bunch of savings that could be had
 in boot time, some of it would come in terms of reduced or
 delayed services and system flexibility.  the fact is that
 once the XO is up and running, it's an extremely powerful,
 full-fledged workstation.  (approximately speaking, of course.  :-)
 there's something to be said for that.

 I think we need to be careful to stay focused on our mission.  To the
 extent that we are too compatible with the big wide world of PCs and all
 the different flavors of Linux, we risk becoming irrelevant.  If you
 want a PC, there are plenty of choices, nearly all of them better (at
 running conventional software) than XO.

I disagree with that analysis. If we had to dump Sugar to be
compatible, that would be a disaster. Multiple boot from flash drives
just strengthens us. I have been talking to other Linux distro groups,
and BSD also, at trade shows, to encourage them to get their software
working on the XO so that our children can study _everybody's_ source
code.

 In my mind, making yet another PC is uninteresting.  We need to focus on
 doing something that is fundamentally better.  We cannot win at the old
 game; we have to invent a new game.

We did that. There is no going back, and the competition knows it. We
inspired dozens of less-capable but higher-priced imitations (see
liliputing.com), which will eventually get mesh networking and
versions of Linux with Sugar, becoming more-capable but higher-priced
imitations, and spreading our work everywhere. I'm all for it.

 (i do think we should be making our dual-boot capabilities
 equally available for all OSes.  i'd love to be able to
 (trivially) try SqueakNOS or debxo, for instance, or be able to
 experiment with application-specific fast-bootable images.  and i
 think a lot of G1G1 folks that might prefer an alternate
 distribution of some sort for day-to-day would probably like to
 keep the OLPC code around as well, just to keep their laptops
 stock, and to track our progress.)

I also want to see Open Firmware replace proprietary BIOSes
everywhere. In fact, I would like to see OFW-only embedded systems,
since FORTH is designed for that environment. (I am assuming that
Mitch can add real-time capabilities to OFW, and that a variety of
development environments are available for such systems.) Or perhaps
OFW/Parrot hybrids. I don't know. It's Free Software, folks, what do
you want to implement today?

-- 
Silent Thunder [ 默雷 / शब्दगर्ज / شبدگر ج ] is my name,
And Children are my nation.
The Six Worlds are my dwelling place,
And Truth my destination.
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: OFW vs. proprietary BIOS

2008-08-29 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 5:07 PM, Mitch Bradley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Edward Cherlin wrote.
 I also want to see Open Firmware replace proprietary BIOSes everywhere.

 I'd like that too, but it won't happen.  The market forces that drive
 the computer business still favor proprietary thinking, notwithstanding
 the many FOSS arguments to the contrary.  Intel calls the shots by
 controlling a big percentage of the silicon designs, and Intel is
 pushing UEFI, partially because it allows them to keep their
 chipset-dependent startup code proprietary.  The board manufacturers do
 what the dominant silicon vendor allows them to do.

If you would be willing, I can put you in touch with companies that
make only Linux computers, who would be delighted to get out from
under Intel as well as Microsoft. RMS would give you an endorsement.
I'm sure we can get you Slashdotted. Want to give it a try?

I spent 17 years in high-tech market analysis. My professional opinion
is that you have a good shot, and that the XO is the sum of all of
Microsoft's and Intel's fears. (Otherwise they wouldn't be pushing for
dual-boot, and the resulting multitude of side-by-side comparisons.)
Certainly, it's an uphill battle overall, but you are starting from an
unassailable niche.
-- 
Silent Thunder [ 默雷 / शब्दगर्ज / شبدگر ج ] is my name,
And Children are my nation.
The Six Worlds are my dwelling place,
And Truth my destination.
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: ibus, a new input framework

2008-08-28 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 11:52 PM, Sayamindu Dasgupta
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Hi,
 I just came across ibus, an input framework which seems to be designed
 to be a better replacement for scim. A presentation is available
 online at http://ibus-user.googlegroups.com/web/ibus.pdf
 Has anyone used this ? Any comments on how well this works and how
 stable this is ?
 Thanks,
 Sayamindu

I'm on Debian Hardy. I compiled and installed Ibus, ibus-pinyin and
Ibus-tables (apparently) but I'm having trouble with the others. I
can't make the ibus-Hangul engine, and I can't make install
ibus-chewing. Ibus doesn't run. Some error communication:


[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~/Desktop/ibus-hangul-0.1.1.20080823$ make
make  all-recursive
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/mokurai/Desktop/ibus-hangul-0.1.1.20080823'
Making all in engine
make[2]: Entering directory
`/home/mokurai/Desktop/ibus-hangul-0.1.1.20080823/engine'
/usr/bin/swig -python -I/usr/include -o hangul_wrap.c ./hangul.i
/bin/bash ../libtool --tag=CC   --mode=compile gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I.
-I..-I/usr/include/hangul-1.0 -I/usr/include/python2.5
-I/usr/include/python2.5  -g -O2 -MT _hangul_la-hangul_wrap.lo -MD -MP
-MF .deps/_hangul_la-hangul_wrap.Tpo -c -o _hangul_la-hangul_wrap.lo
`test -f 'hangul_wrap.c' || echo './'`hangul_wrap.c
libtool: compile:  gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I..
-I/usr/include/hangul-1.0 -I/usr/include/python2.5
-I/usr/include/python2.5 -g -O2 -MT _hangul_la-hangul_wrap.lo -MD -MP
-MF .deps/_hangul_la-hangul_wrap.Tpo -c hangul_wrap.c  -fPIC -DPIC -o
.libs/_hangul_la-hangul_wrap.o
hangul_wrap.c:118:20: error: Python.h: No such file or directory
etc.

Where is Python.h supposed to come from?

...
make[1]: *** [_chewing_la-chewing_wrap.lo] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory
`/home/mokurai/Desktop/ibus-chewing-0.1.1.20080823/engine'
make: *** [install-recursive] Error 1


[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~/Desktop/ibus-chewing-0.1.1.20080823$ ibus
Starting ibus-daemon OK
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File /usr/local/share/ibus/daemon/ibusdaemon.py, line 28, in module
import dbus.server
ImportError: No module named server
Start ibus-daemon failed

 --
 Sayamindu Dasgupta
 [http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]
 ___
 Devel mailing list
 Devel@lists.laptop.org
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel




-- 
Silent Thunder [ 默雷 / शब्दगर्ज / شبدگر ج ] is my name,
And Children are my nation.
The Six Worlds are my dwelling place,
And Truth my destination.
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Fwd: [ElectionReformActivistsforObama] LinuxWorld Obama vs McCain - YouTube

2008-08-24 Thread Edward Cherlin

The Open Voting software is written in Python. We would like to start
a project to offer it to schoolchildren for conducting school
elections and learning more about the election process in general and
the security and reliability requirements for election software more
particularly.

-- Forwarded message --
From: Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun, Aug 24, 2008 at 12:19 PM
Subject: Re: [ElectionReformActivistsforObama] LinuxWorld Obama vs
McCain - YouTube
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: Election Reform Activists for Obama
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Ah, thank you. I'm in that video in my anti-Spam shirt as a Founding
Member of the Open Voting Consortium. We were delighted to have the
Raging Grannies join us.

On Sun, Aug 24, 2008 at 9:48 AM, Brent Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Election reform news-

 Here's a YouTube post regarding the LinuxWorld open voting event

 http://www.youtube.com/v/q8CSKdMTARY

 Let's keep working so 2008 is the last presidential election conducted on
 secret, corporate owned software systems.

Indeed.

 Brent Turner

 San Francisco Election Integrity League

--
Silent Thunder [ 默雷 / शब्दगर्ज ] is my name,
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place,
And Truth my destination.

-- 
Silent Thunder [ 默雷 / शब्दगर्ज ] is my name,
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place,
And Truth my destination.
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: olpc school request

2008-08-23 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 12:54 AM, Jerry and Amy Higdon
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Thanks so much.
 When I search for OLPC I find many such references are made about buying for
 those really in need like Bangladesh...
 How can I find out if there is a program of sort for Bangladesh going right
 now or not?

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployments

There isn't one.

 Jerry

 John 3:30 He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and
 less.

 - Original Message 
 From: Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To: Jerry and Amy Higdon [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Cc: devel@lists.laptop.org
 Sent: Friday, August 22, 2008 12:17:58 AM
 Subject: Re: olpc school request

 2008/8/21 Jerry and Amy Higdon [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 Greetings,

 I am a missionary who is inquiring upon olpc for a couple small schools in
 Bangladesh.
 I also work as a technology management professional for the past 25 years
 and have a heart for children.

 Who might I contact to find out if these schools could qualify for the
 program.

 Your question seems to be whether OLPC would accept an application to
 donate XOs to your schools. That is not how the program works. There
 are three ways to get XOs into a country.

 * Have the government buy a large number of units. This is what Peru
 and Paraguay (Uruguay) have done.
 * Have an NGO or private donor buy laptops through GiveMany. This is
 the case in Mexico, where billionaire Carlos Slim has made the first
 major purchase.
 * Get into the GiveOneGetOne program. I have no idea how G1G1
 countries are selected. The current list is Haiti, Rwanda, Ethiopia,
 Cambodia, Afghanistan, and Mongolia.

 Other processes should become available over time, but not yet.

 Whom might you approach for donations?

 How many children do you have?

 What are the local issues? (Economic, health, agriculture,
 environment, or whatever.)

 When your children get educated, what economic opportunities will they
 be able to take advantage of?

 Thank you for your help.


 Pastor Jerry

 [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 www.NewHopeQC.com

 John 3:30 He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and
 less.


 --
 Silent Thunder [ 默雷 / शब्दगर्ज ] is my name,
 And Children are my nation.
 The Cosmos is my dwelling place,
 And Truth my destination.





-- 
Silent Thunder [ 默雷 / शब्दगर्ज ] is my name,
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place,
And Truth my destination.
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: olpc school request

2008-08-21 Thread Edward Cherlin

2008/8/21 Jerry and Amy Higdon [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 Greetings,

 I am a missionary who is inquiring upon olpc for a couple small schools in
 Bangladesh.
 I also work as a technology management professional for the past 25 years
 and have a heart for children.

 Who might I contact to find out if these schools could qualify for the
 program.

Your question seems to be whether OLPC would accept an application to
donate XOs to your schools. That is not how the program works. There
are three ways to get XOs into a country.

* Have the government buy a large number of units. This is what Peru
and Paraguay have done.
* Have an NGO or private donor buy laptops through GiveMany. This is
the case in Mexico, where billionaire Carlos Slim has made the first
major purchase.
* Get into the GiveOneGetOne program. I have no idea how G1G1
countries are selected. The current list is Haiti, Rwanda, Ethiopia,
Cambodia, Afghanistan, and Mongolia.

Other processes should become available over time, but not yet.

Whom might you approach for donations?

How many children do you have?

What are the local issues? (Economic, health, agriculture,
environment, or whatever.)

When your children get educated, what economic opportunities will they
be able to take advantage of?

 Thank you for your help.


 Pastor Jerry

 [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 www.NewHopeQC.com

 John 3:30 He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and
 less.


-- 
Silent Thunder [ 默雷 / शब्दगर्ज ] is my name,
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place,
And Truth my destination.
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: Tux Type on the XO

2008-08-12 Thread Edward Cherlin

2008/8/12 Cynthia Solomon [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 Hi All,
 Please respond to David Bruce on the following issues.
 Thanks,
 --Cynthia





 Begin forwarded message:

 From: David Bruce [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Date: August 11, 2008 11:35:43 AM EDT
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Cc: Cynthia Solomon [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: Tux Type on the XO
 Hello Cynthia and Seth,

 Over the weekend I installed all the needed tools and libs with yum, and
 successfully built and installed our current, unmodified release ofTtuxtype
 on the XO.  It runs just like on any other platform, except that it can't
 get a 640x480 fullscreen, so it runs in a 640x480 box centered in the
 normal-resolution screen.


 So - I'm ready to start modifying Tuxtype itself.  I have a few questions
 regarding what you would like to see:

 1.  Are the lib requirements a problem?  Tuxtype uses SDL, SDL_mixer,
 SDL_image, SDL_ttf, and SDL_Pango (which depends on some other libs).  All
 of these were easily installed with yum, but they do take up some space.
 fwiw, they are a subset of the libs needed for Tuxpaint, so if Tuxpaint is
 being considered as a standard app, it will bring in everything Tuxtype
 needs (the same is true for Tuxmath, btw).

 2.  Regarding Tuxtype itself, what needs to be improved to get it to meet
 the needs of OLPC?  My own sense is that there are two obvious issues to be
 addressed.

 First, Tuxtype needs to use fullscreen at the machine's normal resolution -
 the 640x480 box is just too small on the XO's small monitor.  This is
 something we have been meaning to address anyway, and we have done so
 already for Tuxmath, so the issues are known.

 Second, we need to use standard GNU gettext for i18n.  Currently, Tuxtype
 supports i18n via language-specific themes with its own home-brewed
 gettext.  It does not use the standard locales mechanism.  The player
 selects the language to use within the program.  This is also something that
 has been on the agenda for some time.

 Neither of these issues is exactly trivial, but they aren't prohibative,
 either.


Either way we need lessons for every keyboard we ship, and for Dvorak,
whether two-handed or one-handed (left or right). There are a lot of
amputees in Africa as a result of various civil wars. I'm learning
left-handed Dvorak so that I can type with one hand and mouse with the
other.

 3.  Am I supposed to be sugarizing Tuxtype in some way?  For now, I just
 launch it from the command line (which also requires adding /usr/local/bin
 to $PATH, unless there is some other location where programs are supposed to
 be installed).

Presumably we should implement collaboration and two-person typing games.

 Regards,

 David Bruce



 ___
 Devel mailing list
 Devel@lists.laptop.org
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel





-- 
Silent Thunder [ 默雷 / शब्दगर्ज ] is my name,
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place,
And Truth my destination.
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: [Localization] Arabic Projects

2008-08-02 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 7:44 AM, Nicholas Bodley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 On Wed Jul 30  7:17 , Walter Bender  sent:

Welcome to the project.

Localization is more that string translation. In particular, there is
work to be done to improve the RTL rendering in Sugar. Do you know of
any Python programmers who could help with this?

With skills in using Pango from Python. We need that documented somewhere.

Also, Pango has been integrated into Squeak, but nobody in that
community has worked on complex scripts AFAIK, so we need more people
with Smalltalk and Pango skills.

regards.

-walter

 I'm really uncertain whether Sugar developers are aware of the complexity of
 rendering Arabic text acceptably. I'd love to be able to say that rendering 
 (that
 is, displaying and printing) Arabic is easy; however, it is anything but easy.
 Surely, our native Arabic speakers are completely aware of this, but it might
 help if I explain something about what is involved, for the sake of those who
 don't yet know.

 First, a bit of personal background: I'm very interested in writing systems, 
 but
 am strictly a dilettante/amateur in the field. Please do correct anything I'll
 say that is wrong!

I have written about Unicode, including RTL and Bidi, professionally,
but have not done development in this area.

 Our Latin (or latin, or Roman/roman)* alphabet is quite straightforward to 
 write
 and typeset; it's simply a matter of placing letters

numbers, and punctuation

  in LtoR order on the writing
 line.

and getting accents placed correctly on letters.

 This holds true of several other alphabets, such as Greek and Cyrillic, but
 those of India and Southeast Asia are not so simple. *Homework I've neglected 
 to
 do! :)

The rudiments of rendering for Asian scripts are described in the
Unicode Standard, available in PDF on the unicode.org site.

 Hebrew is another RtoL writing system, but it's extremely simple when 
 compared to
 Arabic.

First important point: Hebrew and Arabic are Bidi scripts, not just
RTL. Numbers in particular are written LTR within RTL text, and there
are other exceptions, which differ among languages. The essentials are
described in Unicode Standard Annex #9, Unicode Bidirectional
Algorithm. http://unicode.org/reports/tr9/. Some of the
language-specific details are handled in the Unicode Common Locale
Data Repository, http://unicode.org/cldr/.

 Keeping in mind that probably almost all writing systems have a typeset 
 variety
 as well as a cursive, flowing, handwritten variety, Arabic is rare in that 
 when
 properly written, its nature, even when typeset (and when rendered by 
 computer)
 is essentially cursive. Although trademarks and product labels can seem to be
 typeset, nevertheless, afaik, the only way to acceptably render Arabic text 
 is
 essentially according to cursive form, as if handwritten.

The rudiments are available in
http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.0.0/ch08.pdf
Unicode Standard 5.0 8 Middle Eastern Scripts

 It is easy to position individual Arabic letters in RtoL sequence, leaving 
 small
 spaces between letters, but the result, I'm essentially sure, looks very bad;

Absolutely.

 it
 would definitely not be acceptable in an XO! (Apparently Arabic typewriters
 created rather wretched-looking text; I'd love to know.)

Here is a random example, giving the same sequence of letters
separately and then joined.

ش س ي ب ل ا ت ن م ك
شسيبلاتنمك

 Arabic letters can have as many as four different forms for each letter, 
 although
 (pretty sure!) not every letter has four different forms. More, soon, about 
 this.

Correct.

 Furthermore, keeping in mind the cursive (from the Latin for running, iirc)
 character of Arabic when properly rendered, consecutive letters are often 
 joined.

 As to the four forms, one is standalone, or isolated -- this is the form a
 letter takes when it's all by itself.

For example:

ي

 The other three forms are for the beginning and for the end of a word, as 
 well as
 a third form used within a word.

The same letter as above, in all three combining forms.

ييي


 The names I recall for these forms are initial, medial, final, and isolated.

 Arabic text in computer form could simply specify each letter is sequence, 
 with
 no regard to which of the four forms is to be used; however, to simplify the
 process of rendering somewhat, combining forms are offered in Unicode (or
 were!) -- see Arabic Presentation Forms, A and B,
 Unicode ranges U+FB50--U+FDFF (A) and U+FE70--U+FEFF. (This was Unicode 3; 
 sorry
 if I mislead.)

The combining forms are deprecated. They greatly complicate sorting
and searching.

 Apparently, these simplify the process of rendering decent Arabic, although
 (fairly sure) they are not a completely-acceptable solution.

This turns out to be obsolete information. Before Unicode, fonts (as
previously mechanical typewriters) did not support the necessary
rendering functions to handle contextual forms. Now they do.

 =+=

Re: [sugar] specifying what services Activities may use

2008-08-01 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 6:32 PM, Jerry Williams [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Seems like this problem for linux was solved with RPM.

I wouldn't go quite that far. The holes in RPM drove me to Debian. %-[

 With rpm if something is missing for something you want to install, it
 complains and won't let you install it.

Apt and yum also track dependencies, both better than RPM, and rather
than refuse to install, they offer to get the dependent libraries for
you. Why aren't we using this approach with xo-get?

 It seems like a lot of the python code I have looked at assumes you have
 stuff and just quietly dies and you have to look at the log and see, oh I am
 missing some module.
 Like the Terminal activity needs python-json.
 Pacman needs pygame.

 Jerry Williams

 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:sugar-
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mikus Grinbergs
 Sent: Monday, July 28, 2008 6:19 PM
 To: devel@lists.laptop.org; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: [sugar] specifying what services Activities may use

 There was an earlier discussion of how to provide the right build
 level for users out in the field, since now Builds can be installed
 separately from Activities -- leading to the possibility that for
 someone an Activity_version on his XO will find itself *mismatched*
 with the Build_version on his XO.


 The problem is bigger than that.

 Since Joyride 2210, I have seen three of the Activities I often show
 off get broken by the *removal* of services from the Joyride builds.
 If the current software distribution process has trouble matching
 existing Activities to the services_provided_by_a_Build -- how will
 NOT YET EXISTING Activities be accommodated by the software that
 Sugar is supposed to run on top of ???

 I'm thinking of someone in a far-off land who has an idea for a
 killer Activity, to be run under Sugar.  HOW does he learn which
 (library, or kernel, or whatever) services will be available
 *everywhere* Sugar can be installed, which services will be
 available only with *specific* builds/platforms, and which services
 would *never* be available for functions fitted into Sugar ?


 mikus

 ___
 Sugar mailing list
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar


 ___
 Sugar mailing list
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar




-- 
Silent Thunder [默雷/शब्दगर्ज] is my name,
And Children are my nation.
The whole world is my dwelling place,
And Truth my destination.
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

Re: Collaboration Requirements

2008-08-01 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 2:21 PM, Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Hi All,

 I wrote up some collaboration requirements to help get us to a
 definition of collaboration support that teachers can use in schools.

Thanks. It is not clear to me whether you mean to include the case of
children at different schools collaborating, even in different
countries. This will be vital for language learning, and important for
many other educational and other functions.

 This is my first somewhat rigorous requirements definition for OLPC so
 comments on style as well as substance are welcome.

 I will take one round of comments then I'll find a place for it in the
 wiki (more comments always welcome after that).

 Collaboration requirements for OLPC XOs and XS
 Greg Smith
 July 30, 2008

 Background:
 The concept of Collaboration has been around for a long time. I have
 used cuseeme, MeetingPlace, NetMeeting, WebEx, IRC, AIM, Gobbby,
 Sametime, PC Anywhere, Cisco HD Video conferencing and others. Our
 challenge is different in three respects.
 - wireless
 - educational use
 - greater scale

 Motivation:
 The goal of this requirement definition is to provide all the information
 necessary to define tests and fix critical collaboration bugs in 8.2.0
 and to set a goal for 9.1.0.

 The best case is that this write up motivates test cases which results
 in a list of detailed examples of collaboration  that will be supported
 in 8.2.0. These examples should be deployable and usable by teachers in
 class. Examples of use cases generated by teachers are at:
 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Use_Cases#Collaboration_Examples

 Collaboration is an area where we are on the cutting edge of available
 technology. It was well promoted and teachers on the sur list have
 repeatedly asked for a definition of how to use it successfully.

 A list of activities supposedly enabled for collaboration is at:
 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Collaboration_Central

 Documentation on previous wireless tests is at:
 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Test_Config_Notes#Wireless_.26_Network

 Requirements Definition:

 I set a high bar but I try to balance between available technology and
 the desires of the teachers. I hope can at least test to this standard
 soon, even if we don't close all bugs found by that testing until later.

 Requirements beginning with must are critical to success, should are
 very important but can be deferred and nice to have are very useful
 but likely to be deferred.

 If a must requirement cannot be met, we should still attempt to
 support as much of it as possible (e.g. if we can't do 50 XOs in N9, 40
 or 30 should be tested and supported).

 I - Network Requirements

 i - Supported Architectures
 N1 - Must support one of the four network scenarios defined at:
 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Networking_scenarios

 The scenarios in priority order are named as follows.
 S1 - Simple Wifi
 S2 - School Wifi
 S3 - Simple Mesh
 S4 - School mesh (no need to test, just recorded here for completeness)

 ii - RF Environments
 N2 - Must support environments where there are no other RF signals
 beyond the APs as needed by the network scenario.

 N3 - Must support RF environments where up to 2 other APs are visible in
 the XO neighborhood.

 N4 - Should support environments where there are up to 4 other APs
 visible in the XO neighborhood.

 II - Scale
 i - Scale of XOs collaborating
 N5 - Must support up to 10 XOs collaborating together. See activity
 examples for exact steps.

 N6 - Should support up to 20 XOs collaborating together.

 N7 - Nice to support up to 30 XOs collaborating together.

 ii - Scale of XOs visible within range of each other

 N8 - In N5 above must allow up to 1500 XOs within range in the school.
 Can require that all other XOs aside from those collaborating have their
 antennas turned off.

 N9 - Must allow 50 (should allow 100, nice to have 300) other XOs within
 range in the school where all XOs have their radios turned on. Can
 require that only those collaborating are using the network (AKA
 everyone else is verbally asked to stop using the Internet and stop
 collaborating) but they can leave their XO radios on in scenario S1

 N10 - Must allow 50 (should allow 100, nice to have 300) XOs within
 range in the school where all XOs have their radios turned on. Can
 require that only those collaborating are using the network (AKA no
 collaboration and no Internet access) in scenario S2.

 N11 - Must allow 50 (should allow 100, nice to have 300) XOs within
 range in the school where all XOs have their radios turned on. Can
 require that only those collaborating are on a given Mesh channel (1,6
 or 11) while all the other XOs are on different Mesh channels in scenario S3

 III Types of collaboration

 In all cases, a single XO starts activity, then shares it, then other
 XOs join the shared activity.

 N12 - Must support up to 3 XOs using an activity and all others XOs (as
 allowed by the scale) watching what happens on that

Re: CIS solar charging-correct list?

2008-07-29 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 2:38 AM, Stan. SWAN [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Greetings- in spite of numerous [EMAIL PROTECTED] categories I
 can't find any concerned with solar charging! Can someone please
 direct me, as  = devel@lists.laptop.org seems essentially software.

[EMAIL PROTECTED], copied here.

 The need arises after being asked to post my recent findings on
 charging a OLPC with a new release 10W CIS PV. Tests were made in the
 New Zealand winter (which is mostly very sunny with extremely clear
 air) , although the CIS PV worked wonderfully- especially off angle
 under overcast skies (when it outperformed a 20W polyX PV) - initial
 results indicate 10W PVs are marginal for OLPC/XO.

 Check pix = www.manuka.orconhosting.net.nz/cisxo1.jpg  =
 www.manuka.orconhosting.net.nz/cisxo2.jpg

 Given the essential need to charge in regions totally devoid of mains
 power (in our case inland New Guinea),the solar quest is naturally
 pretty crucial to the whole rollout. It's otherwise akin to being
 given a 4WD Mercedes, but with no ongoing fuel supply

Yes, I am putting together a group to research electricity, Internet
connections, and microfinance in order to get XOs to the poorest and
most remote villages.

  TIA  - Manuka ( Wellington NZ)
 ---
 ___
 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: Definition of Stable Enough To Release for 8.2.0

2008-07-23 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 1:16 PM, Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Hi All,

 After a chat with the team this week I tried to come up with a
 definition of what is good enough to release for 8.2.0.

Thanks.

 This is just a starting point and I'm sure we'll talk about it again.

 Please comment, edit and augment as needed. I may be missing some
 important areas...

 11 - Must support all languages and keyboards previously supported.
 support means all previously translated strings still work in
 activities and sugar.

Support needs to include in its meaning

* All programs accepting text input or displaying text in any way in a
supported language/writing system combination correctly render and
print the text. Exceptions: Traditional Mongolian, until it gets into
Pango; and vertical writing (with columns in RTL order in Chinese,
Japanese, Korean, Yi, etc., and columns in LTR order in Traditional
Mongolian, Uighur, etc.), until we enhance the Activities to permit
it.

* Write, Browse, and others must correctly select text in Bidi
contexts, that is logically contiguous but visually discontinuous
selections.

* Cut, copy and paste must work correctly. In Bidi contexts. This
means correctly reordering text before displaying it.

* At some point we need to support CLDR fully. (Common Locale Data Repository).

I will be happy to discuss how much of this has been done in this
release, specific cases, standards, and how to test for these
requirements.

 All language types work the same (e.g. RTL)

The correct term here is Bidi. Hebrew, Arabic, and other languages
of Africa and Asia with RTL text may require LTR numbers, dates, and
other Bidi features. Foreign computer terminology will typically
appear as LTR sequences within RTL text.

Also, there should be a reasonable way to configure keyboard
selection. At some point, students will have to be able to add
keyboards for the writing systems of languages they are learning.
Students should have ready access to Dvorak keyboard options.

* GUI, fine.
* Command line, might be tolerable
* Edit configuration files, no way

These are key issues. There are other nice-to-haves that I will bring
up after this release goes out.

-- 
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: PlayGo Patches/Commit access

2008-07-19 Thread Edward Cherlin

2008/7/19 Andrés Ambrois [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
  Hello all!

  I've recently started learning python and sugar programming and, while
 trying to be useful in the meantime, have been tinkering around with the
 PlayGo activity.

Thanks. I wrote to the American Go Association when we started this
project, and they wrote back, We can't tell you how excited we are.
They put a note in their e-mail newsletter about us. When we can take
our software to one of their events, we can talk about getting
assorted game records and go literature into a library content bundle.

I was a 6-kyu player in my youth, according to the teachers in my
school in Korea, where I was a Peace Corps Volunteer. I learned at a
chess club when I was eleven. If I had had access to the literature
available now, I am sure I would have made amateur dan. I am delighted
to see children getting opportunities I didn't have back then, and
being able to help get even more opportunities to way more children.

I can read the Korean and Japanese go literature a little, and I can
provide pointers to a lot of on-line resources.

The Hip-Hop Chess Federation is also interested in our work, as is
International Chess Master Josh Waitzkin, author of The Art of
Learning. Walter Bender started discussions with his book and chess
tutorial software publishers about Free licenses on versions of the
book and software.

I have literature and contacts for a great many more games. We aren't
going to run out of programming exercises for a very long time.

  I have a few patches that add basic scorekeeping,

Do you mean scoring at the very end of a game, or scoring games in
matches, or what? Can your code estimate who is ahead in a game?

 error messages
 (like: There already is a stone there!), and small code cleanup.

Is there a ko rule implemented? Can we get all of the different rule
sets as options (Japan, China, Korea, Ing)?

 I'd like
 to start tackling bigger problems (like collaboration) in the future.
 However, cjb told me on #sugar the best way to get this commited is having
 commit access to the git repo. I couldn't find a Commit access application
 in the wiki,

Yes, we are very bad at these management issues. Nobody is in charge,
and as far as we can tell, nobody in management notices when nobody is
in charge. %-[

As I understand it, the project manager is supposed to give
participants git access. When a project manager abandons a project, it
often happens that nobody does anything about it.

 so I'm using part of the project hosting application here :) :

Exactly right, under the circumstances.

 1. Project name   : PlayGo
 2. Existing website, if any : http://wiki.laptop.org/go/PlayGo
 3. One-line description : A Go game activity

 6. Committer list:
Username   Full name SSH2 key URLE-mail
    -  
  --
 #1  aa  Andrés Ambrois  http://aambrois.homeip.net/site/files/id_rsa.pub
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 11. Translation
   [X] Set up the laptop.org Pootle server to allow translation commits to be
 made

 12. Notes/comments: The project already is on the git repository:
 http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=projects/PlayGo;a=summary . But I couldn't find
 it in the pootle server. It'd be great to have it added.

 Also, I'm Uruguayan so I'll take care of the spanish translation :). If anyone
 needs any help with Spanish, I'm usually around at #olpc :D
 --
  -Andrés

 ___
 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: Abiword 2.6.4 on Ubuntu (was Re: [sugar] Write needs your help)

2008-07-18 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 3:24 PM, David Van Assche [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 This from the abiword on ubuntu webpage
 (http://abisource.com/wiki/Install_on_Ubuntu)

 At this time, the latest version available directly from Ubuntu is an
 Ubuntu-modified 2.4.6. We are working to get AbiWord 2.6 in Ubuntu
 8.04 Hardy Heron

 and adding their repo installs 2.6.4... but if you need the source
 that should work too

 I can build it without problems on my hardy system... just requires a
 lot of development library dependencies like below, you need to
 install libglib2.0-dev

 Kind Regards,
 David Van Assche

I built 2.6.4 from source yesterday on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron on an
AMD Opteron 64-bit.

It does not display non-alphabetic ASCII correctly. The digits and
punctuation, and also the space character, mostly appear as Unicode
hex substitution glyphs. Armenian and Arabic display OK. Bengali
vowels do not attach to base consonants, but are displayed in their
standalone form. I'm giving up for the day.

-- 
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: Instructions draft

2008-07-18 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 11:42 AM,  [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Hi everyone!

Hi, Mia.

 My name is Mia and I am a mini-intern for ILXO. Next year I will be
 in 7th grade.

Would you like to come to PyCon next year to show the grown-ups how to
use an XO?

Mel Chua asked me to write a set of instructions for
 reviewing http://projectdb.olpc.at/. I have attached a link for a
 draft of these instructions

I think you have the makings of a tech writer (my day job) if you
would be interested. If so, you would be welcome to help on the OLPC
documentation.

I found just a few copy edits (typos, usage), and one question. (Below)

 and I am hoping that you guys could give
 me some feedback.

You say to change the status of the projects to Pending, and write
e-mails to the proposers explaining the status and giving feedback.
Should they go to anybody else?

I don't see any projects to look at so that I could compare your
instructions with the task. The Project Database link takes me back to
the Information page. Did I miss something, or is the site not yet
ready?

 Thanks!

A pleasure.

 Mia

 Instructions link:
 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developers_program_review_process

 ___
 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: [sugar] Abiword 2.6.4 on Ubuntu (was Re: Write needs your help)

2008-07-18 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 9:24 PM, Ryan Pavlik [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Edward Cherlin wrote:
 On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 3:24 PM, David Van Assche [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 This from the abiword on ubuntu webpage
 (http://abisource.com/wiki/Install_on_Ubuntu)

 At this time, the latest version available directly from Ubuntu is an
 Ubuntu-modified 2.4.6. We are working to get AbiWord 2.6 in Ubuntu
 8.04 Hardy Heron

 and adding their repo installs 2.6.4... but if you need the source
 that should work too

I did get the repo package, and it gives me the same problems.

 I can build it without problems on my hardy system... just requires a
 lot of development library dependencies like below, you need to
 install libglib2.0-dev

 Kind Regards,
 David Van Assche


 I built 2.6.4 from source yesterday on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron on an
 AMD Opteron 64-bit.

 It does not display non-alphabetic ASCII correctly. The digits and
 punctuation, and also the space character, mostly appear as Unicode
 hex substitution glyphs. Armenian and Arabic display OK. Bengali
 vowels do not attach to base consonants, but are displayed in their
 standalone form. I'm giving up for the day.

Well, today Bengali displays correctly, but Armenian is completely
wiggy. It sometimes appears correctly, sometimes blank, and sometimes
as Devanagari.

 Thanks for your testing!  Yeah, I saw your bug, that's a weird one!  It
 works for me on AMD64 with the packages I had the PPA build.  I've put
 some info requests on the bugzilla report - if anyone wants to help
 figure this out the link is
 http://bugzilla.abisource.com/show_bug.cgi?id=11708

 --
 Ryan Pavlik
 www.cleardefinition.com

 #282  +  (442) -  [X]
 A programmer started to cuss
 Because getting to sleep was a fuss
 As he lay there in bed
 Looping 'round in his head
 was: while(!asleep()) sheep++;

-- 
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

Abiword 2.6.4 on Ubuntu (was Re: [sugar] Write needs your help)

2008-07-17 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 1:54 PM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Sorry, what I meant is that, ideally, we would be testing Write in
 joyride with the 2.6.4 version. As we don't have that version in
 joyride yet, I think the closest we can do is testing Abiword 2.6.4.

 Thanks,

 Tomeu

It appears that the 2.6.4 sources aren't configured to build correctly
on Ubuntu using configure and GNU make.

./configure reports

configure: error: No package 'glib-2.0' found

(The correct name on Ubuntu is libglib2.0-0)

Then make says:

Building AbiSuite with [ABI_ROOT=/home/mokurai/tmp/abiword/abiword-2.6.4]
make ABI_ROOT=/home/mokurai/tmp/abiword/abiword-2.6.4 -C src
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/mokurai/tmp/abiword/abiword-2.6.4/src'

I can't seem to figure out which platform you are using.

You should probably try using the autoconfiscated build system (rather
than this, the deprecated and unsupported diving make system) by running
configure (creating it with autogen.sh if need be) and using GNU Make.
Using configure is a requirement for all known platforms that
aren't some form
of Windows, QNX Neutrino, or MacOS X.

exit 1
make[1]: *** [fake-target] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/mokurai/tmp/abiword/abiword-2.6.4/src'
make: *** [compile] Error 2


Does anybody have a workaround? Would someone like to fix configure to
work on Ubuntu? Do the makefiles need any change?

So far I have the old version of Write that Ubuntu offers accepting
and displaying Cyrillic and Greek correctly. I'll wait until I have
something up-to-date to test before proceeding to the other 30+
possibilities.

Kim, should we create a process for globalization QA? We need testing
for Amharic, Arabic, Khmer,

-- 
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: [sugar] Abiword 2.6.4 on Ubuntu (was Re: Write needs your help)

2008-07-17 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 2:47 PM, Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 1:54 PM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Sorry, what I meant is that, ideally, we would be testing Write in
 joyride with the 2.6.4 version. As we don't have that version in
 joyride yet, I think the closest we can do is testing Abiword 2.6.4.

 Thanks,

 Tomeu

 It appears that the 2.6.4 sources aren't configured to build correctly
 on Ubuntu using configure and GNU make.

 ./configure reports

 configure: error: No package 'glib-2.0' found

 (The correct name on Ubuntu is libglib2.0-0)

No, I see that it is the lack of -dev packages. I am now installing
them one or two at a time. %-[

 Then make says:

 Building AbiSuite with [ABI_ROOT=/home/mokurai/tmp/abiword/abiword-2.6.4]
 make ABI_ROOT=/home/mokurai/tmp/abiword/abiword-2.6.4 -C src
 make[1]: Entering directory `/home/mokurai/tmp/abiword/abiword-2.6.4/src'

I can't seem to figure out which platform you are using.

You should probably try using the autoconfiscated build system (rather
than this, the deprecated and unsupported diving make system) by running
configure (creating it with autogen.sh if need be) and using GNU Make.
Using configure is a requirement for all known platforms that
 aren't some form
of Windows, QNX Neutrino, or MacOS X.

 exit 1
 make[1]: *** [fake-target] Error 1
 make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/mokurai/tmp/abiword/abiword-2.6.4/src'
 make: *** [compile] Error 2


 Does anybody have a workaround? Would someone like to fix configure to
 work on Ubuntu? Do the makefiles need any change?

 So far I have the old version of Write that Ubuntu offers accepting
 and displaying Cyrillic and Greek correctly. I'll wait until I have
 something up-to-date to test before proceeding to the other 30+
 possibilities.

 Kim, should we create a process for globalization QA? We need testing
 for Amharic, Arabic, Khmer,

 --
 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
 ___
 Sugar mailing list
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar




-- 
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: [sugar] Programming environments on the XO

2008-07-17 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 6:25 PM, Martin Sevior [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 On Thu, 2008-07-17 at 20:45 -0400, Walter Bender wrote:
 I'd vote that we not expend too much effort in supporting multiple
 development environments in Pippy at the moment--there are so many
 other high-priority things to be working on. Is there really a lot of
 demand for this from the field?

 -walter

 On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 11:28 AM, Benjamin M. Schwartz
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
  Hash: SHA1
 
  Chris Ball wrote:
  | Another useful feature would be for
  | Write to have unique background colors for collaborators, as Gobby does.
  | I wonder if that would be a small enough task for someone to take on.
 
  See also #7447.  Currently, Write doesn't support background colors at all.
 

 Hi Folks,
Just so you know. The only reason for #7447 is because we
 haven't put the UI in to enable it. libabiword supports background
 colors. If the Powers That Be decide that this is an important feature
 for children it is very easy to implement it. Every feature of AbiWord
 is present in libabiword, say the word and we'll implement it for Write.

 I'm not sure different colors for different users is such a good idea
 though. The document will quickly become a mess.  Though if the kids
 want to do this they can.

 Cheers

 Martin

It will be much more of a mess if you can't tell who wrote what in a
collaborative editing session. Does Abiword provide change tracking,
so that users can turn author coloring on and off at will?

-- 
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: [Localization] How do we manage translation effort in Release, process/roadmap?

2008-07-15 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 9:47 AM, Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Hi Sayamindu,

 Great work, thanks for taking up the gauntlet on this!

 One question for you, how much lead time do you need to do the translations?

 Assuming something like final test starts 15 days before the target
 release date, when do we need to tell the developers to freeze all of
 their strings?

We are nowhere near that state. That would be OK if we had enough
localizers working full-time from a previous release that was
completely localized. In the present state of things we have no way to
complete localization in most languages, no matter how much lead time
we specify.

The range on our Pootle server is from 0% translated (Aymara, for
example) to 99% for German. Spanish, the most used, is at 69%, but
almost all of what is missing is in Etoys internals.

We could pick a few languages that are in deployments and are close
enough to finished for this sort of freeze to be meaningful. My
impression as that that would consist of Spanish and French. I invite
you to examine http://dev.laptop.org/translate and draw your own
conclusions.

It would be helpful if we could get a page generated automatically
with some statistics on language projects, but I don't know who could
create it. Sayamindu is rather overwhelmed.

 Possible dates are 90 days before target release day and 60 days before
 target release day.

 Let me know which of those you prefer or if you think a different lead
 time is warranted.

A different kind of policy is warranted.

 Thanks,

 Greg S

-- 
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: low power actions?

2008-07-11 Thread Edward Cherlin

What would it take to put in a journaling filesystem?

On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 10:49 AM, Eben Eliason [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 1:33 PM, Gary C Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 One concern I have with auto saving state before powering off is the
 potential corruption of journal data. How robust is the Journal if
 power off happens half way through an ongoing auto state save – do you
 loose both the new journal entry and the original entry you had
 resumed from (partially overwritten)?

 Disclaimer:  I'm not a technical expert on the DS, so others more
 familiar should probably correct me if I make claims below that are
 false.

 This is yet another problem that can be bypassed with the new DS.
 In one of our past meetings, we laid out requirements for the process
 by which activities save their state, and it included a means for
 activities to check in temporary saves if they wished to, optionally
 passing a flag to tell the Journal to actually create a new entry.
 This system was in place such that, if the Journal detected that a
 given activity crashed, it could automatically make a new Journal
 entry based on the last temporary save, as a form of auto-recovery.
 This approach could similarly be used after a power failure.

 Additionally, in the worst case a corrupt entry might wind up in the
 Journal, but that shouldn't be a problem because, at present, copies
 are stored so there is no loss of data, and in the future we'll have
 versions, and only one version of many would be corrupt.  It should
 never be the case that the entry that was opened gets corrupted.
 Ideally the Journal would be able to recognize when a save transaction
 doesn't finish and either replace it with the most recent temporary
 state or remove the entry compeletely.

 - Eben
 ___
 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: [Localization] How do we manage translation effort in Release, process/roadmap?

2008-07-06 Thread Edward Cherlin

 with pulling newer
translation was announced recently.
(http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/localization/2008-June/001138.html)
 So we could easily manage the effort.
But could we expect similar announcement for every activities, or will
the window for translation of activity aligned to
development road map of sugarlab or OLPC?
   
Maybe I missed important thing, though...
   
Thanks in advance
/Korakurider
___
Devel mailing list
Devel@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
   
 ___
 Localization mailing list
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/localization




-- 
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

Security for launching from URL (was Re: Release 8.2.0 -- pls add critical features (Greg Smith))

2008-07-04 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 6:35 AM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Greg wrote:
Thanks for keeping us apprised of your needs!

 My pleasure.

I'm also not aware of any feasible design proposal which might address
your request. You need a precedent or engineering level suggestion to
move this forward. Is this possible in Firefox at all?

 Probably not.
...
 We need a way to seamlessly integrate supporting materials such as
 readings, lesson plans, together with activities. HTML is the way to do
 this and the browser is what we use to display html. URI's are what we
 use to link to different resources.

 We may end up hacking Browse esp. to allow this because of the immense
 demand.

 We need to make it dead simple for teachers to use activities like
 EToys, E-Paath, Measure in the classroom. The easiest way to do this is
 to make the transition from lesson plan to activity as easy as possible.

I think that having a URL launch a local application will
be a fatal security hole. I don't know of any examples of that off the
top of my head.

 I don't know squat about security but this is a very important application.

This is Ivan's domain. My guess is that there is a way to secure the
process, but it might require some extra effort beyond a software fix,
like teachers whitelisting URLs for lessons. Or perhaps just
whitelisting our Moodle instances. Signed lesson plans? At any rate,
_not_ allowing random outside URLs to launch local activities and give
them scripts to run.

My guess is that you need to re-think your Moodle
- activity model and work flow. If can solve the problem from there
using the currently available functionality that will be the shortest
path to a solution.

 I have rethought it and I believe more firmly that the moodle -
 activity workflow is the way to go.
...
 thank you for your attention to these important matters. You should come out 
 to
 Nepal one of these days. As I told one of the developers recently:
 Get Thee to a Pilot site! Any Pilot site!

 Bryan
 Kathmandu

 ___
 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: fonts-thai-ttf has been abandoned!

2008-07-02 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 2:52 PM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 We added a package named 'fonts-thai-ttf' to our builds a while ago
 for thai font support.  However, no one here now remembers where this
 font came from, or where the upstream came from.  Can someone familiar
 with thai support help out?  Ideally we'd like to confirm the
 licensing and then grow a maintainer for this package in fedora.
 Thanks!

I would expect it to be the same as the Debian package ttf-thai-tlwg,
but if not, then you have a new resource.

Thai fonts in TrueType format
This package provides some free-licensed fonts that are
enhanced by developpers from Thai Linux Working Group.
In TrueType format.

At the moment, it provides two families from the National Font
Project (Garuda, Norasi), one from NECTEC (Loma) and three
developed by TLWG itself (Tlwg Mono, Tlwg Typewriter, Purisa).

http://www.nida.gov.kh/activities/localization/thai.pdf

  --scott

 --
  ( http://cscott.net/ )
 ___
 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: First Draft Development Process Proposal

2008-06-30 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 8:31 AM, Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Hi All,

 I posted a first pass Release Process Overview.

 See: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_Process_Home

Thank you.

 Its based on work done by Michael and others on this list. It needs a
 lot more work, but I hope we can start using it soon and improve it over
 time.

 I could use help fleshing it out and closing the open items listed in
 the final section. Let me know if anyone wants to work with me on that.

 The goals of this process are:
 1 - Ensure high quality releases which meet the needs of users in a
 timely fashion.
 2 - Maximize the participation, productivity and enthusiasm of the open
 source community.
 3 - Create a predictable process which helps users and developers plan
 for the future.

 I want to minimize the process overhead as much as possible. If its not
 helping make coders life easier then its not likely to make better code.

 Please comment, question, augment and criticize as needed. I especially
 want to know if it makes sense, looks useful and meets the goals
 outlined above.

 Comments on linked pages also welcome, especially:
 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Releases
 and
 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Unscheduled_software_release_process

 Any input welcome.

 Thanks,

 Greg Smith
 OLPC Product Manager

 PS - This is my first e-mail to the list since I changed from volunteer
 to employee. It's truly an honor to have this chance to work for OLPC
 and to learn from you all!

 Right now, I'm 90% focused on gathering input so I'm open to a call or
 e-mail exchange with anyone who is contributing to the project. If you
 want to have a brief call, just send me an agenda and a few open times
 7AM - 6PM US ET, Mon - Fri.

We don't seem to have any process for translating textbooks and
content. There are teacher training materials in Spanish and Nepali
that we need in English, and a variety of other content in many
languages.

I think that we also need to do some work on creating a global
conversation on curriculum and free textbooks incorporating Sugar
software capabilities, and what we know about how children learn and
when they can learn it.

I am working with others to create a separate process for researching
and deploying other parts of the solution, such as electricity and
Internet in villages with microfinance support, parts which are out of
scope for OLPC. But we would still like to coordinate our efforts with
yours.
 ___
 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: etoys now available in Debian's non-free repository

2008-06-27 Thread Edward Cherlin

I think that the result of all this is that we can produce all of the
C (or some other language, maybe CLOS) and Smalltalk source files that
Debian wants (even if we think of the C as compiler output, we don't
have to bother them with that interpretation.) One of the compilers
translates a subset of Smalltalk to C, but I gather that other
compilers can translate all of Smalltalk/Squeak/Etoys/what you like to
their chosen target language. As I understand it, Debian wants to see
a commented set of semi-human-readable code in ASCII files (although
we can discuss using Unicode source) together with various multimedia
files in known open formats, from all of which an Etoys image can be
constructed, and they don't care how we generate them, or what mix of
languages we use, as long as there are Free/Open Source compilers and
any other needed apparatus for them.

I gather that all of this can be done by a fairly trivial Smalltalk
program. Would somebody write it and post it, and would somebody run
it and make the results available? Then if Albert agrees we've done
it, we can invite Debian to examine it, and get back to work.

On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 11:15 PM, Yoshiki Ohshima [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 At Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:47:11 -0700,
 Edward Cherlin wrote:

 On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 11:04 AM, Albert Cahalan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  I'm glad that Debian didn't break the rules for etoys.
  You're claiming to be open source, yet you've LOST the
  source code decades ago.

 This turns out not to be the case. All of the source code for the
 parts of Etoys written in Squeak/Smalltalk is in the image.

  ... is in .sources and .changes and the image holds the compiled
 results of them and each of these compiled results hold a file offset
 of the source chunk.

 The .sources file and .changes file contain all of this code nicely
 formatted.

  Yes.

 The core of Smalltalk, the part not written in Smalltalk,
 is also available in both source and in binary parts of the usual
 image. The usual tools for handling all of this are in
 Smalltalk/Squeak. Nothing prevents you from rewriting them in C,
 Python, or what you like.

  Oh, yes.  Speaking of which, Dan did a version in Java:

 http://news.squeak.org/2008/06/21/jsqueak-smalltalk-interpreter-written-in-java/

 Now, for the rest of you, let's see what we can produce, to make
 Albert happy, but more importantly Debian. We have .sources and
 .changes. Albert and Debian would like to see source for the VM, in
 the manner of gst, and the binary core of Smalltalk that goes with it.
 What can we show them, and what would it take to show them the rest?
 The Squeak system includes code for generating a new version of the
 virtual machine (VM) on which it runs. It also includes a VM simulator
 written in itself (Squeak). For this reason, it is easily ported.
 What's missing? Is there anything in bytecode without Smalltalk
 source? It doesn't seem so. The primitives like memory management and
 BitBlockTransfer get translated to C and compiled along with the VM.
 Is that right?

  Yes.

  A sidenote. The repository on squeakvm.org seems is a tree of .c and
 .h source files and you can compile it by gcc to produce the VM.
 However, many of these files are not the sources in a strict sense;
 These .c and .h files are target files from another phase.

  It is almost the same manner as Scheme48 ships scheme48vm.c.  If
 (only if) somebody claims that Squeak's way of doing is wrong, that
 person should also claim that Scheme48 should be taken out from
 Debian.

 Smalltalk/X [Gitt95] and SPiCE [YaDo95] generate C code from programs
 using the full range of Smalltalk semantics, including blocks.
 http://users.ipa.net/~dwighth/squeak/oopsla_squeak.html, Related Work.
 So apparently we can translate all of the Smalltalk tools for creating
 code files and rebuilding an image to C source, and we can presumably
 preserve the original comments from the Smalltalk.

  I'm not sure what you mean by code files and an image to C source.

 Since the result was a complete Squeak
 image with all Smalltalk source code, and C source where needed, is
 anything else missing?

  No would be the answer, If I understand your question.

 The interpreter is structured as a single
 class that gets translated to C along with the ObjectMemory and BitBlt
 classes. Is that it?

  The modern version has basically different set of primitives in
 different files, but that is it.

 Is there any reason not to simply check .changes into git?

  The public version of (so to speak) .changes and .sources are
 already in the SVN on dev.laptop.org, and it is installed in
 /usr/share/etoys.

  Should we
 have a way to split out changes to specific objects, and write a tool
 to merge a sequence of such changes into a .changes file? Hm, it
 appears that this is unnecessary with Monticello and squeakvm.org.

  Before commiting it, we need to ask why splitting the file adds any
 value (when the editor can provide such views

Re: etoys now available in Debian's non-free repository

2008-06-27 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 12:04 AM,  [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 On Thu, 26 Jun 2008, Edward Cherlin wrote:

 I think that the result of all this is that we can produce all of the
 C (or some other language, maybe CLOS) and Smalltalk source files that
 Debian wants (even if we think of the C as compiler output, we don't
 have to bother them with that interpretation.) One of the compilers
 translates a subset of Smalltalk to C, but I gather that other
 compilers can translate all of Smalltalk/Squeak/Etoys/what you like to
 their chosen target language. As I understand it, Debian wants to see
 a commented set of semi-human-readable code in ASCII files (although
 we can discuss using Unicode source) together with various multimedia
 files in known open formats, from all of which an Etoys image can be
 constructed,

 so far so good

  and they don't care how we generate them

 I think you are wrong here

I don't think your opinion or mine count. Debian's counts. What did they say?

 , or what mix of
 languages we use, as long as there are Free/Open Source compilers and
 any other needed apparatus for them.

 this part is again correct.

 I gather that all of this can be done by a fairly trivial Smalltalk
 program. Would somebody write it and post it, and would somebody run
 it and make the results available? Then if Albert agrees we've done
 it, we can invite Debian to examine it, and get back to work.

 if you send them C that's generated and call that your source, it's the same
 thing as writing your code in C and sending assembler as your 'source'
 (assuming there was a cpu independant assembler)

The analogy doesn't work. If I have C, I'll send the C. I have friends
who used to write APL and ship Ada as source, and their military
customers never complained. If the generated C is well-structured and
has the comments from the Smalltalk embedded, so that people can
understand it, what's the problem?

 breaking out the .source and .changes files that have been referred to in
 this thread and having the build process create the resulting blob that you
 use would probably be acceptable (and far more useful as people can then
 send out patches to those files)

I personally don't mind which files are generated or how. If .source,
.changes, and VM source are sufficient, hooray. If we generate the
files some other way, hooray. I want to see readable, commented C and
Smalltalk, or some other such combination.

 David Lang

 On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 11:15 PM, Yoshiki Ohshima [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:

 At Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:47:11 -0700,
 Edward Cherlin wrote:

 On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 11:04 AM, Albert Cahalan [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:

 I'm glad that Debian didn't break the rules for etoys.
 You're claiming to be open source, yet you've LOST the
 source code decades ago.

 This turns out not to be the case. All of the source code for the
 parts of Etoys written in Squeak/Smalltalk is in the image.

  ... is in .sources and .changes and the image holds the compiled
 results of them and each of these compiled results hold a file offset
 of the source chunk.

 The .sources file and .changes file contain all of this code nicely
 formatted.

  Yes.

 The core of Smalltalk, the part not written in Smalltalk,
 is also available in both source and in binary parts of the usual
 image. The usual tools for handling all of this are in
 Smalltalk/Squeak. Nothing prevents you from rewriting them in C,
 Python, or what you like.

  Oh, yes.  Speaking of which, Dan did a version in Java:


 http://news.squeak.org/2008/06/21/jsqueak-smalltalk-interpreter-written-in-java/

 Now, for the rest of you, let's see what we can produce, to make
 Albert happy, but more importantly Debian. We have .sources and
 .changes. Albert and Debian would like to see source for the VM, in
 the manner of gst, and the binary core of Smalltalk that goes with it.
 What can we show them, and what would it take to show them the rest?
 The Squeak system includes code for generating a new version of the
 virtual machine (VM) on which it runs. It also includes a VM simulator
 written in itself (Squeak). For this reason, it is easily ported.
 What's missing? Is there anything in bytecode without Smalltalk
 source? It doesn't seem so. The primitives like memory management and
 BitBlockTransfer get translated to C and compiled along with the VM.
 Is that right?

  Yes.

  A sidenote. The repository on squeakvm.org seems is a tree of .c and
 .h source files and you can compile it by gcc to produce the VM.
 However, many of these files are not the sources in a strict sense;
 These .c and .h files are target files from another phase.

  It is almost the same manner as Scheme48 ships scheme48vm.c.  If
 (only if) somebody claims that Squeak's way of doing is wrong, that
 person should also claim that Scheme48 should be taken out from
 Debian.

 Smalltalk/X [Gitt95] and SPiCE [YaDo95] generate C code from programs
 using the full range of Smalltalk semantics, including blocks

Re: Dictionaries/spell checkers

2008-06-27 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 2:33 PM, Sayamindu Dasgupta [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Thanks for the link Khaled. I went through the wiki page, and it seems
 that once we switch to F9 as our base, 6104 should be fixed. We need
 to double check though if the versions of Xulrunner and libabiword
 (rather, enchant) we ship use hunspell or not.
 Thanks,
 Sayamindu

Should we contribute all of the words in our localizations to these
dictionaries? We are going to be making up computer terminology in
many languages.

 On Sat, Jun 28, 2008 at 2:42 AM, Khaled Hosny [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 I think we need first to spell dictionaries/engines among all
 applications, I think F9 did most of the job
 (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureDictionary), see also
 http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6104

 Regards,
  Khaled


 On Sat, Jun 28, 2008 at 02:28:03AM +0530, Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:
 I was wondering about the languages - I guess as a minimal, we should
 ship the spelling dictionaries for the languages mentioned in
 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Mfg-data#Keyboards (if they are available).
 This should also be also a part of the locale specific customization
 keys we have been thinking of (more or this very soon, ie, as soon as
 my brain become a bit cleared up :-).
 Thanks,
 Sayamindu



 On Sat, Jun 28, 2008 at 2:23 AM, Samuel Klein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  well, there are the cracklib dictionaries.  There are also the spelling
  dicts for aspell and the wordlists for Speak (not in the core builds, but
  should be).
 
  SJ
 
  On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 4:26 PM, Sayamindu Dasgupta [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  wrote:
 
  Hi,
  Can anyone provide me with any information on the
  dictionaries/spellcheckers that we ship in our builds ?
  Thanks,
  Sayamindu
 
  --
  Sayamindu Dasgupta
  [http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]
  ___
  Devel mailing list
  Devel@lists.laptop.org
  http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
 
 



 --
 Sayamindu Dasgupta
 [http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]
 ___
 Devel mailing list
 Devel@lists.laptop.org
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

 --
  Khaled Hosny
  Arabic localizer and member of Arabeyes.org team

 -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
 Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)

 iD8DBQFIZVekRoqITGOuyPIRAoJLAJ9VrBZ2TJTKhO/ReKhqEhWCET3bYQCfX8dz
 FVSeegy1WY9TSD0MlG+Bf9k=
 =fBCK
 -END PGP SIGNATURE-





 --
 Sayamindu Dasgupta
 [http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]
 ___
 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: etoys now available in Debian's non-free repository

2008-06-27 Thread Edward Cherlin

I am no slouch at understanding a bootstrap process, but it has taken
me a few days to find the information I'm trying to understand by
myself, given the refusal to even consider that someone might need
this information in order to answer Debian's concerns, and thus the
refusal to provide the pointers to it. So it is no surprise to me that
Debian still has those concerns. It is no good being right if you
can't explain or demonstrate _why_ you are right in terms that make
sense to someone else who is willing to understand, but doesn't know
how.

On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 11:17 AM, Yoshiki Ohshima [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 At Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:43:45 -0700,
 Edward Cherlin wrote:

 I think that the result of all this is that we can produce all of the
 C (or some other language, maybe CLOS) and Smalltalk source files that
 Debian wants (even if we think of the C as compiler output, we don't
 have to bother them with that interpretation.) One of the compilers
 translates a subset of Smalltalk to C, but I gather that other
 compilers can translate all of Smalltalk/Squeak/Etoys/what you like to
 their chosen target language.

Now I see that this is unnecessary. We have the directly executable
Smalltalk source for the VM, including memory management and graphics
primitives written in Smalltalk. It is already in the .sources files.
We can therefore provide all of the source code for Etoys in a
conventional file system in the way that users of compiled languages
expect. This may be necessary in order to educate the Debian license
people. It might even be useful to somebody who wanted to base another
language on Smalltalk. Yes, they should probably modify the Smalltalk
interpreter in the image instead, and use Smalltalk to run, test, and
debug it, and export/translate/compile everything necessary once it's
all working. But it's their choice.

 As I understand it, Debian wants to see
 a commented set of semi-human-readable code in ASCII files (although
 we can discuss using Unicode source) together with various multimedia
 files in known open formats, from all of which an Etoys image can be
 constructed, and they don't care how we generate them, or what mix of
 languages we use, as long as there are Free/Open Source compilers and
 any other needed apparatus for them.

  As Alan precisely put it (we are dealing with stories, not
 reality.), this seems to be a backward way to work on this problem.
 When (if) Debian guys asked something based on wrong understanding,
 what we should do is not to cater the wrong story, but have them have
 real understanding.

Right. So that means we have to educate them. Which means, just as in
Piaget's research, we have to educate ourselves first about how the
Debian people have constructed their understanding of the programming
process, and how we can assist them to construct an improved model.
Saying, We're right! What's the matter with you people? doesn't cut
it.

I find it useful to meet people half way in such a situation. Well, we
don't have to have our code in a conventional file system, but here is
how you can fairly trivially create such a file system and rebuild an
image, even though we never do this in practice. Well, almost never.
Aha! You can do it that way, somebody might need to do it that way,
that's what I'm looking for in the first place. So give. Don't tell me
I don't need to know.

I want to _see_ that fairly trivial script. I want Debian to see it
and to be able to run it and examine its output. Once they understand
how one can generate source code in the traditional form whenever
desired from the real source, and where that real source lives, they
may be able to believe in using the code in the image and not
bothering with generating a conventional representation. They seem to
want proof that we can do something unnecessary but comforting. Well,
it shouldn't be any real effort, so why not give them that
demonstration?

We had an issue like this in the IETF on multilingual URIs in
ASCII-encoded UTF-8. It was claimed that this would break everything,
so we showed how to translate between this form and normal UTF-8 in
two or three lines of Perl for each direction. The final question was
whether Japanese users would be able to type a mixed ASCII-Japanese
URL containing Katakana, Hiragana, and Kanji. So I didn't just say,
Motiron dekiru naa! Nihonjin wa baka da to omou desyou ka nee? I
gave it to them, keystroke by keystroke, with the keyboard layout and
IME switching and the conversions to Kana and Kanji. And then they
said, Oh, of course. Now I can see that there isn't a problem. OK, we
can make a standard for this.

  The reality is that the all description of classes and methods are
 already accessible (even in text files like .sources and .changes) and
 anyone can see all the code, and modify in the way the core developers
 do.  That is the equal basis we provide to the world.  Giving the
 translated stuff, except the C code for the virtual machine that is
 needed

Re: etoys now available in Debian's non-free repository

2008-06-26 Thread Edward Cherlin

 for the Etoys and Squeak VMs? Is
_everything_ done in Smalltalk and kept in the image file? Wait, I see
it. http://www.squeakvm.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/. Albert?

Is there any reason not to simply check .changes into git? Should we
have a way to split out changes to specific objects, and write a tool
to merge a sequence of such changes into a .changes file? Hm, it
appears that this is unnecessary with Monticello and squeakvm.org.
Hey, Albert, check _this_ out.
http://www.wiresong.ca/Monticello/UserManual/ Well, we'll see if
anybody still has issues.

As far as I am concerned, you should write any such tools in
Smalltalk/Squeak, and offer that source code to anybody who demands a
translation to another language. No, I'm wrong, not a problem. We can
translate it to C ourselves. There you go.

I'm hoping that the answers to all of these questions will allow us to
go back to Debian and say, Sorry for the misunderstanding, here is
everything you asked for (Smalltalk/Squeak source code files,
reasonably commented C source for VM and toolset). And to put into our
git whatever people want in git, without making pointless busywork for
the Etoyers. Or set up an instance of Monticello for Etoys versioning
and package management.

Win-win-win.

-- 
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: etoys implementation

2008-06-25 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 11:00 AM, Yoshiki Ohshima [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
[John Gilmore wrote:]
There's also a warning at http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak that if you
want to run eToys, you need to run a different version of Squeak than
everybody else.

*That* is Etoys. What is wrong with it?

Yes, Etoys is precisely a version of Squeak with more objects added in.

Just out of curiosity:
Exactly how is it different from vanilla squeak? (If there is such a
thing at all.)

More objects written in Squeak.

Whichever two images you would like to compare (why not write
Squeak?), launch two images and evaluate:

Smalltalk condenseSources.

or equivalent in them.

Explain to John and me how you get a command line in Etoys. No, I see
it. It's the text input mode in a Scriptor.

http://www.fit.vutbr.cz/study/courses/OMP/public/software/sqcdrom2/Tutorials/SqOnlineBook_(SOB)/englisch/sqk/sqk00046.htm

tells you how to operate the controls to get to a scriptor and type in
it to create a changes file.

doFileout
Smalltalk changes fileOut.
self beep: 'croak'

Actually, John, everything you need is in the Etoys Help tool--Script
Tiles, Object Catalog, and Halo Handles (including the Viewer and
Debugger)--and the Squeak tutorial
http://www.fit.vutbr.cz/study/courses/OMP/public/software/sqcdrom2/Tutorials/SqOnlineBook_(SOB)/index.html

Each of image will make a .sources file so you
get two .sources file. Then, use diff (perhaps you might want to
convert CR to LF before that) to see the difference.

Is this .sources output what Debian is asking for? If not, why not,
and what would we have to do to complete it from their point of view?

http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/759

Smalltalk condenseSources
extracts the currently valid definitions form both
the sources file and the changes file and merges these into an
new sources file SourcesV3.6 (you are asked to supply the name of the
new sources file).
All outdated definitions are dropped. We have a 14MBytes sources and
10 MBytes changes file.
When these merge we have a 16 MBytes source file and a nearly empty
changes file. We therefore conclude, that the 10 MBytes of the changes
contained 2 MBytes new code and 8 MBytes development history.

Can gst bring in a .sources file and a .changes file and create a working image?

Is it a different VM, or just a different distribution since it has a
different binary blob?

The VM is well synchronized with the trunk VM. They were identical
a few weeks ago. We now have a few more patches in the OLPC VM branch
but it is not significant. The VM is a separeted rpm BTW.

Why do you refer it to as binary blob?

Yeah, it's mostly Smalltalk source and objects created in Smalltalk.

-- Yoshiki
___
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: wiki spam!

2008-06-20 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 12:49 PM, Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 It's becoming very annoying having to deal with spam (bots?) operating
 on the wiki, trying to blank wiki pages, like in the case of the following:

 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Multi-hop_mesh_network_in_MIT_campus

 Is there a way to prevent that? Why not require user logins to make edits?

There are much less intrusive methods.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Spam
External link spamming with bots

A few parties now appear to have a spambot capable of spamming wikis
from several different wiki engines, analogous to the submitter
scripts for guestbooks and blogs. They have a database of a few
hundred wikis. Typically they insert external links. Like blog spam,
their aim is to improve their search engine rankings, not to directly
advertise their product.

If you see a bot inserting external links, please consider checking
the other language wikis to see if the attack is widespread. If it is,
please contact a sysop on the Meta-Wiki; they can put in a
Wikimedia-wide text filter. Any Meta sysop can edit the Wikimedia-wide
spam blacklist to add or remove the patterns that are recognized by
the filter, with the changes taking effect immediately. New links can
also be added to the list if a new spammer should start making the
rounds.

Sysops are authorised to block unauthorised bots on sight. Spam bots
should be treated equivalently as vandalbots. Edits by spambots
constitute unauthorised defacement of websites, which is against the
law in many countries, and may result in complaints to ISPs and
(ultimately) prosecution.

The link spam problem extends far beyond Wikimedia projects, and is
generally worse on smaller wikis where the community struggles to keep
it clean. meta:Wiki Spam page [obsolete] has some more general
information and advice for users of wikis elsewhere on the internet,
while meta:Anti-spam Features [has been moved] describes features
available in MediaWiki (for administrators running this software)

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Anti-spam_features
MediaWiki provides the following features to reduce the problem of Wiki Spam...


 p.

 --
 Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos
 Graduate student
 Viral Communications
 MIT Media Lab
 Tel: +1 (617) 459-6058
 http://www.mit.edu/~ypod/

 ___
 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

Unicode for Etoys

2008-06-19 Thread Edward Cherlin

Trac Issue #4011 Put the Pango support for Etoys in place. is marked
for Update 2.

What is the holdup? This is a blocker for Mongolian Cyrillic, Greek
http://www.olpcnews.com/countries/greece/using_xos_in_greece.html,
Ethiopian Amharic, any Arabic trials, Dari and Pashto in Afghanistan,
and Cambodian Khmer.

Issue #4894 Support cyrillic says that the code was fixed but the
fonts for Greek and Cyrillic weren't put in the distribution.
*   milestone  changed from Update.1 to Update.2

Oops. The greek and cyrillic fonts aren't actually distributed and loaded ...


What is the status?

-- 
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: Read Etexts now supports Text To Speech

2008-06-10 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 9:09 AM, James Simmons [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 I know there are several people interested in having Text to Speech with
 Karaoke highlighting be a built in part of the Sugar environment.  Also,
 when I originally requested a Git repository for the Read Etexts
 activity Ed asked if text to speech with highlighting would be
 supported.  I was reluctant to commit to that at the time, thinking it
 would be too difficult.  It turned out to be both easier and more
 difficult than I thought it would be, but I have released version 4 of
 the activity which now supports TTS with the words highlighted as they
 are spoken.

Wonderful news. Now we have to talk to management about getting a
project created to support more languages. Perhaps organized like
Pootle, but with entirely different software. The idea is that we need

* a linguistic analysis of the sound system of the language, or of any
particular dialect
* a script containing all of the sounds of the language for informants
to read for recording
* a process to create the files for the speech engine in the appropriate format
* a dictionary and an orthography engine to convert from the written
language to the required sound sequence. There will still be
ambiguities that would require strong AI to resolve. He wound the
bandage around the wound is a simple example of the problem.

 The code could be improved, no doubt.  I am fairly new to Python
 programming.  But I think trying out this Activity could give you some
 idea of what to expect if you attempt to incorporate TTS as part of the
 Sugar interface.

 1).  Speech-dispatcher needs to run in a separate thread from the GTK
 event loop, otherwise the callbacks needed to highlight words won't be
 received.
 2).  To get the callbacks as each word is spoken you need to format the
 text to be spoken as an XML document with tags *before* each word.  My
 code assumes that words are separated by whitespace, which works for
 many languages but not all of them.  I know Sanskrit doesn't work that
 way, for instance.

Nor Chinese, nor Thai, nor a number of others.

 3).  Espeak does not allways do a callback for each word, and there is
 no obvious reason why any given word would be skipped.  I understand
 that Festival works better, but I haven't tried it.  At the suggestion
 of Hynek Hanke of the speech-dispatcher project I made the tag ids for
 each tag correspond to the word number in the document.  In this way I
 can get the tag id in the callback and always highlight the correct word
 even if occasionally words are skipped over by espeak.
 4).  Pausing and resuming speech doesn't work.  No idea why.
 5).  The instructions for setting up speech-dispatcher on the wiki are
 obsolete.  You cannot use espeak-generic module with speech-dispatcher
 and get callbacks.  You need to use the normal espeak module.  When you
 try to use the normal espeak module with the current RPMs
 speech-dispatcher complains of a missing library.  So if you want to try
 my Activity you'll need to use sugar-jhbuild with speech-dispatcher
 installed and configured to use espeak.

 Hemant Goyal is working on creating RPMs for speech-dispatcher and will
 be updating the instructions on the wiki.

Is anybody interested in making the Debian/Ubuntu packages? This would
be one of my favorite demos.

 The Activity page is: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Read_Etexts

 James Simmons



 ___
 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: [Localization] [Fwd: Re: #7116 NORM Never A: Possible European G1G1 program needs appropriate keyboards]

2008-06-03 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 9:39 AM, LASKE, Lionel (C2S) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Hi Edward, Hi Kim,

 Many thanks for your answer.


 setxkbmap fr

 Okay, I will try it. Of course, I need to stick some little stamps on each 
 key :-)

I don't know sources in Europe, but one of the best in the US for key
labels is Hooleon.com. It might be that we should just put a sheet in
with each XO for countries where we don't print the keytops
appropriately. Or just tell people how to order them. I don't use
stickers for non-QWERTY layouts myself. I prefer to print out layout
diagrams and learn to touch-type. Efficiency expert Frank Gilbreth got
his children typewriters with blank key caps to push them to
touch-typing, as he described in Cheaper by the Dozen. That's a
technically but not socially viable solution to incorrect key labels.
It would certainly freak out many buyers. :-(

 Arranging for printed key tops for every standard layout in Europe
 would be a logistical nightmare. The most recent proposal is to ship
 US International, although the question of Greek and Cyrillic has been
 raised.
 Another idea: put several keyboard in each G1G1 box, one for the French 
 Keyboard, one for the Deutschland Keyboard, ...
 As NN said: Everyone should try disassembling their XO, so if someone want 
 a localized keyboard, it should disassembly the XO first to plug the right 
 keyboard. (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Keyboardstep4d.jpg).
 But maybe it's a costly solution, it depend of the individual cost for the 
 keyboard piece.

The logistical problem begins with printing the keytop labels, or more
precisely with determining how many of each to print.

 Some compromise might be in order. Spanish is certainly
 available for manufacturing. Haiti does not use the French layout, so
 French has not been done.

Correction: French was done for Rwanda.

 As you said, the French keyboard seems to be available 
 (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_French_Keyboard).
 Due to the image name 800px-Rwanda-B3.png, it probably came from the Rwanda 
 pilot ?



 Anybody who wants to volunteer for such documentation, keyboard file,
 and scripting work should let me and Kim Quirk know.

 Of course, I'm volunteer to help you. I'm already Volunteer and Language 
 Administrator to translate English to French. Few other people at OLPC France 
 are also contributor to the project (Samy Boutayeb, Miguel Alvarez, Xavier 
 Carcelle, ...)
 Let me know what we could do.

Are you comfortable editing Linux system files? If so, we can create a
project to XO-ize all of the standard keyboard layout files. The work
is not arduous, but requires great precision of execution and extreme
clarity of communications. Kim, how should that project be organized?
Should we file a bug for each target keyboard? I can add a table to
the OLPC Keyboard Layouts Wiki page of what needs to be done, and who
has signed up to do what. I can also write the procedure.

I see that some XO keyboard layouts simply add an OLPC section to the
standard files. Walter, Kim, what can you tell us about XO-ization?
How standard are the changes for Latin-alphabet layouts? What do we
know about the remaining non-Latin layouts? Who else has worked on
this?

 Best regards.

Lionel.


-- 
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: [Localization] [Fwd: Re: #7116 NORM Never A: Possible European G1G1 program needs appropriate keyboards]

2008-06-02 Thread Edward Cherlin

 the XO to the French 
 government. I'm afraid that one of the first remark we've got could be: Hmmm 
 it's a funny machine, do you have a French Keyboard ?

 So, yes I'm really think that we need an appropriate keyboard in France, like 
 in Deutschland, in Italy and in others countries.

 My name is Lionel, Lionel Laské (please, don't miss the accent on my name).

Oui, bien sûr.

 Regards.


 Lionel.

 --

 Message: 3
 Date: Sat, 31 May 2008 08:18:10 -0700
 From: Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: [Localization] [Fwd: Re: #7116 NORM Never A: Possible
EuropeanG1G1 program needs appropriate keyboards]
 To: Kim Quirk [EMAIL PROTECTED], Chuck Kane [EMAIL PROTECTED],
Nicholas Negroponte [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Cc: OLPC Localization list [EMAIL PROTECTED], OLPC Devel
[EMAIL PROTECTED], Adam Holt [EMAIL PROTECTED],Community 
 Support
Volunteers -- who help respond to help AT   laptop.org
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Message-ID:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

 On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 7:09 AM, Kim Quirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Adam and Support gang,

 A second G1G1 program will still be only US/International keyboards
 (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Keyboard_layouts#US_International_keyboard).
 There are too many logistics, production, forecasting, and shipping
 issues associated with more than a couple of SKUs (different laptop
 configurations) for a G1G1 program.

 I don't know whether that is acceptable to Europe. They want Cyrillic
 (Bulgarian and Serbian layouts are completely different from each
 other and from Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian, which are all quite
 similar), Greek, and Eastern European (Czech, Slovak, Polish...are
 nearly identical), at least. I can look up the standard layouts in
 more detail if that will help. You need to specify exactly which
 countries will be included in your version of Europe. Lithuania,
 Latvia, and Estonia are EU members. So are Malta and Cyprus. Turkey is
 a candidate. Croatia, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia,
 Montenegro, and Albania are not members.

 You had better get the lawyers to check out EU regulations on computer
 sales. I suppose that you can get away with printing only US
 International on the keyboard as long as you say so, very clearly, in
 the announcements and ads, and explain how to access the other layouts
 in a document shipped with the laptops.

 But, from a languages perspective, It would be great to point
 translators for European languages (or any languages) to various ways
 in which they can help translate our wiki pages and add to the product
 translations through Pootle.

 IFYP

 Here are some links:
 Localization of XO files: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Localization
 Translating wiki pages: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Translating
 Pootle page, including table of localizers: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pootle
 Pootle: http://dev.laptop.org/translate
 Localization mailing list at http://lists.laptop.org/

 Thanks,
 Kim


 On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 3:14 PM, Adam Holt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Dear Kim,

 Can we get some preliminary discussion going in the next couple weeks,
 towards helping people set up fuller support
 structure for those European languages?

 Talk to me about any language support issues that management isn't handling.

 Or if nothing else, an idea as to how many EU countries are liable to be
 supported for 2008's G1G1?

 Whether it's 2 countries or 12 countries makes all the world of difference

 Uh, actually there are 27 countries in the EU, and 8 candidates.
 Non-members include Switzerland, Norway, and the new countries formed
 from former Yugoslavia (except Slovenia).

 ;)
 --A!

 %-[

-- 
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: [Localization] [Fwd: Re: #7116 NORM Never A: Possible European G1G1 program needs appropriate keyboards]

2008-06-02 Thread Edward Cherlin

I made an error in my previous posting. The OLPC French AZERTY
keyboard layout exists, and is shown on the OLPC French Keyboard page
on the Wiki. ISO_Next_Group and ISO_Prev_Group in the file listing are
the keyboard switching commands. I see that this definition supports
more than the two layouts proposed originally for OLPC keyboards by
cycling through a list. See
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Category:Keyboard for links to other
available layouts.

On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 9:11 PM, Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Sorry for so much cross-posting, but this affects us all.

 On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 12:59 PM, LASKE (or possibly LASKÉ), Lionel
 (C2S) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Hi all,

 Just to add my one cent on the appropriate keyboard issue:

 Merci beaucoup.

 My name is Lionel Laské. Like others people I love the OLPC Project. So like 
 others, I talk a lot about OLPC, and I show the XO that I've bought via G1G1 
 (thanks to a good friend of mine in USA). Of course every people here which 
 viewing my XO say WOW and say where I can get mine ?. So it's really 
 frustrated to say: no way today. So yes, here in France like elsewhere in 
 Europe, we're waiting for our G1G1 from month.

 I think that G1G1 is a very good way to promote the OLPC project and to help 
 the OLPC Foundation. But I really think that a G1G1 in France without a 
 French keyboard is not a good idea.

 It is important to understand that the standard Fedora Linux French
 AZERTY keyboard layout ships on the laptop. You invoke it with

 setxkbmap fr

 from the Terminal activity to use the file containing

key AD01  { [ a,  A,   ae,   AE ] };
key AD02  { [ z,  Z, guillemotleft,less ] };
key AD03  { [ e,  E, EuroSign, cent ] };
key AD11  { [dead_circumflex, dead_diaeresis, dead_diaeresis,
 dead_abovering ] };

 and so forth. Note that this provides the dead key accents that the
 French expect, rather than the Compose key sequences used in the US
 layout. For example, Compose ' a produces á, Compose ` e produces è,
 Compose , c produces ç, and similarly for combinations containing ^ ô
  ïÿ and others, such as Compose A A producing Å. On the French
 layout, dead_circumflex o produces ô, and similarly for other
 combinations. This comes from the century-long tradition of using
 deadkeys on French typewriters, keys that typed an accent symbol but
 did not advance the carriage, so that the letter could be typed
 without backspacing.

 There are two questions before us concerning GiveOneGetOne for Europe,
 in addition to the question of the countries to be included.

 * Which layouts will be printed on the keytops?

 * Which standard Linux keyboard layout files on the XO will be
 modified for the special keyboard arrangement on the XO? Among other
 things, we should be able to use the ×÷ key as is, or for switching
 keyboard layouts, as defined in keyboard configurations for customer
 countries and GiveOneGetOne target countries.

 Arranging for printed key tops for every standard layout in Europe
 would be a logistical nightmare. The most recent proposal is to ship
 US International, although the question of Greek and Cyrillic has been
 raised. Some compromise might be in order. Spanish is certainly
 available for manufacturing. Haiti does not use the French layout, so
 French has not been done.

 Since keyboard layout files are Open Source text files, the community
 can do the necessary modifications if someone will document the
 requirements. If we can't get it from people who have done the work,
 we can compare the XO versions of files for Spanish and other
 languages of target countries with the more usual versions.

 You can make the French keyboard the default on your own XO by
 following the instructions at
 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Customizing_NAND_images#Keyboard. We need
 someone to create a script to automate the process, and we should get
 those instructions translated and customized for various countries and
 language choices.

 Anybody who wants to volunteer for such documentation, keyboard file,
 and scripting work should let me and Kim Quirk know.

 Outside of G1G1, for example, in Rwanda, different users might want
 English International, Pan-African, and French keyboards in any
 combination. Some Arabic-speaking countries will want Arabic together
 with AZERTY or QWERTY, and so on for the rest of the Francophonie, and
 in a similar way for other former colonies. Presumably Mongolia will
 eventually want Cyrillic, traditional Mongolian, and US, and
 individuals may want to add one or another of the Dvorak keyboards.
 India has ten writing systems, and will require more discussion and
 thought.

 Of course, French people are often arrogant and rude but they really love 
 their language and they really love their accents: é, è, à, ô, ë and some 
 other funniest. And French keyboard allow very easily to type accents.

 My son (7

Re: [Fwd: Re: #7116 NORM Never A: Possible European G1G1 program needs appropriate keyboards]

2008-05-31 Thread Edward Cherlin

On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 7:09 AM, Kim Quirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Adam and Support gang,

 A second G1G1 program will still be only US/International keyboards
 (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Keyboard_layouts#US_International_keyboard).
 There are too many logistics, production, forecasting, and shipping
 issues associated with more than a couple of SKUs (different laptop
 configurations) for a G1G1 program.

I don't know whether that is acceptable to Europe. They want Cyrillic
(Bulgarian and Serbian layouts are completely different from each
other and from Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian, which are all quite
similar), Greek, and Eastern European (Czech, Slovak, Polish...are
nearly identical), at least. I can look up the standard layouts in
more detail if that will help. You need to specify exactly which
countries will be included in your version of Europe. Lithuania,
Latvia, and Estonia are EU members. So are Malta and Cyprus. Turkey is
a candidate. Croatia, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia,
Montenegro, and Albania are not members.

You had better get the lawyers to check out EU regulations on computer
sales. I suppose that you can get away with printing only US
International on the keyboard as long as you say so, very clearly, in
the announcements and ads, and explain how to access the other layouts
in a document shipped with the laptops.

 But, from a languages perspective, It would be great to point
 translators for European languages (or any languages) to various ways
 in which they can help translate our wiki pages and add to the product
 translations through Pootle.

IFYP

 Here are some links:
 Localization of XO files: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Localization
 Translating wiki pages: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Translating
Pootle page, including table of localizers: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pootle
Pootle: http://dev.laptop.org/translate
Localization mailing list at http://lists.laptop.org/

 Thanks,
 Kim


 On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 3:14 PM, Adam Holt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Dear Kim,

 Can we get some preliminary discussion going in the next couple weeks,
 towards helping people set up fuller support
 structure for those European languages?

Talk to me about any language support issues that management isn't handling.

 Or if nothing else, an idea as to how many EU countries are liable to be
 supported for 2008's G1G1?

 Whether it's 2 countries or 12 countries makes all the world of difference

Uh, actually there are 27 countries in the EU, and 8 candidates.
Non-members include Switzerland, Norway, and the new countries formed
from former Yugoslavia (except Slovenia).

 ;)
 --A!

%-[

-- 
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

1 2 3 >

1 - 100 of 280 matches

Mail list logo