Re: Uruguay violates GPL by deleting root on OLPCs
Please explain your statement that lack of root violates GPLv3. Couldn't the owner of the system insert a SD card with a developer's version of Linux, mount the internal drive of the XO, and tinker with the installed packages as root from the external OS? Does GPLv3 expressly mention root access? I think Ubuntu disables root logins, but allows sudo access for root permissions. Is that a violation of the GPLv3? On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 2:32 AM, John Gilmore g...@toad.com wrote: Ignoring the fact that some deployments ship without root access. Is the practice of completely locking-down the laptops something we'd even want to encourage? Shipping the laptops TiVoized like Uruguay does has put them into serious legal trouble. OLPC should definitely not encourage anybody else to do this. Why bankrupt your project by losing a copyright enforcement lawsuit? Shipping the laptops without root access is a direct violation of the GPLv3 license on a dozen packages (probably 50+ packages in later Fedoras). They have shipped binaries, while using technological means to deny the recipient the practical ability to upgrade or replace them with versions modified or chosen by the recipient. Only an idiot would distribute hundreds of thousands of units while setting themselves up to pay the Free Software Foundation any amount of money they demand. (Given the way OLPC and Uruguay have ignored the notice that they're in violation, for years, I do hope FSF extracts both future compliance, and its next ten years of operating expenses, from these scofflaws.) Or does Uruguay think, Sue us for copyright violation in our own courts -- we'll make sure you lose?? In other words, do they just brazenly steal the GNU Project's software, knowing it's wrong? John Gilmore ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: tap-to-click feedback
I have an old HP laptop with tap-to-click turned on by default when there's no external mouse. It is annoying to be typing text and have your thumb accidentally brush the touchpad and suddenly you're typing in a totally different location in the text, wherever the mouse pointer happened to be aimed.Perhaps adding a touchpad lockout delay that momentarily disables tap-to-click for 1 second, or whatever, after a keyboard key is pressed would help, something like debouncing a switch contact in a driver. A control-panel parameter should be provided to adjust the lockout period -- some kids might need more than a 1 second lockout. On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 7:40 AM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.comwrote: On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 11:34 AM, Sebastian Silva sebast...@fuentelibre.org wrote: BTW how do you disable it? Yeah -- can we disable it easily on F11 builds? 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 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: using XO for Internet Math Tutoring
Hi, Martin, Thanks for your reply. When you said to just install Flash, your brevity actually was helpful. It made me think that maybe getting FlashPlayer to run correctly on Sugar is a non-issue by now. I plan to retry the Flash and browser downloads from the wiki. They seem to have been improved since I first started working on this last year. In any case, I've said my thoughts about Flash on the XO, and probably didn't change anyone's mind about anything. 'Nuf said. You're right about my role. Sonya's the educator. I'm the geek. Let's all get back to making things work, rather than just talking about them. Stan === On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 8:28 PM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.comwrote: Hi, sorry I'm brief (to the unfortunate point of rudeness) -- I am working 30hr days in a 60K deployment. Which happens to want to use Flash. In fact I just helped the local team find adobe.com and we are adding the relevant rpm to the build. I find it puzzling that there is so much over the top drama. Situation is simple. Mainstream users get their XO from a deployment -- it's up to the deployment team to define the OS (inc Flash), and they have no prob rolling it into the image. Other users (those that get OLPC's images) are usually developers... who can hopefully rpm -i MyFaveRuntime-1.2.4.rpm with no problem. Sonya has you as resident geek I can guess, so it is up to you to do the rpm magic -- I have similar duties at home as the resident geek. There is the G1G1 crowd as a 3rd group. If you care about them, get a Flash enthusiasts gang and spin an image with Flash (get Adobe's ok, of course). There is no drama to justify these huge discussions. Let's see the end of this thread. 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 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Flash + AIR on OLPC
Sorry, guys, but I just don't see why the content is somehow corrupted or limited by deployment on the Flash platform.The FlashPlayer implements a virtual machine that is customized by Adobe to run on various hardware and OSs. They're extending it now to ARM-processor-based devices (cell phones). The concept is write-once-run-everywhere. The FlashPlayer runs inside browsers or stand-alone (AIR). The programming language it supports (ActionScript) is now a very capable language, has libraries (both free and not-free) for lots of goodies including very rich graphical interfaces, has a powerful declarative xml-based language (Flex MXML) for building the interfaces and binding data to them, has an open-source free-to-use (from Adobe) compiler, has a free-open-source IDE (FlashDevelop) from a community, has a superb IDE from Adobe that only costs $249 for the standard version which includes a visual drag-and-drop design view mode as well as text mode of programming and lots of features lacking in the FOSS FlashDevelop, etc. One can program and run Flash programs with free-to-use software. I know of a very capable interactive web site (www.vyew.com, try the demo and see) that runs extremely nicely and was built with the open source IDE. Vyew.com runs on my XO, but I had to install the Teapot distribution of Xubuntu on an SD card and run Firefox with FlashPlayer plugin.It runs an interactive whiteboard plus 2-way video and audio on my little XO-1, and it supports plug-in extensions that users can build. If the Vyew developers can do this with free tools, why can't the OLPC community use Flash as a platform? So, please explain why constructionist educational models can't be programmed and run on the Flash platform just as well or better than in Python on Sugar on Fedora. On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 8:31 AM, James Zaki james.z...@gmail.com wrote: I'm guilty of spending more time than I probably should at newgrounds.com, their slogan being Everything, by Everyone. Its a melting pot of free content, and what really impresses me are the absolute gems of creativity that one finds from time to time. I dont see flash as the main XO education content maker, but can see the argument for popularity in the short term. James. 2010/4/12 John Watlington w...@laptop.org On Apr 11, 2010, at 8:56 PM, James Cameron wrote: On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 08:51:01PM -0400, Martin Langhoff wrote: But hey. Flash developers want Flash in it. It's gotta be good for something. My guess is that it is handy for repurposing the system for entertainment usage. (I don't have Flash enabled on my systems, so I don't really know what I'm missing). It's all the rage for games these days. My kids constantly astound me with the rendering quality and interactiveness of flash games that they are able to find for free on the web. Deployments that have asked for Flash also point to games as the reason. wad ___ 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 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Flash + AIR on OLPC
You can see the Xubuntu system running on our XO-1 at: Internet Math Tutoring / OLPC Project http://internetmathtutoring.com/olpc/static.php?page=static090711-100100. On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 9:31 AM, Stanley Sokolow overb...@earthlink.netwrote: Sorry, guys, but I just don't see why the content is somehow corrupted or limited by deployment on the Flash platform.The FlashPlayer implements a virtual machine that is customized by Adobe to run on various hardware and OSs. They're extending it now to ARM-processor-based devices (cell phones). The concept is write-once-run-everywhere. The FlashPlayer runs inside browsers or stand-alone (AIR). The programming language it supports (ActionScript) is now a very capable language, has libraries (both free and not-free) for lots of goodies including very rich graphical interfaces, has a powerful declarative xml-based language (Flex MXML) for building the interfaces and binding data to them, has an open-source free-to-use (from Adobe) compiler, has a free-open-source IDE (FlashDevelop) from a community, has a superb IDE from Adobe that only costs $249 for the standard version which includes a visual drag-and-drop design view mode as well as text mode of programming and lots of features lacking in the FOSS FlashDevelop, etc. One can program and run Flash programs with free-to-use software. I know of a very capable interactive web site (www.vyew.com, try the demo and see) that runs extremely nicely and was built with the open source IDE. Vyew.com runs on my XO, but I had to install the Teapot distribution of Xubuntu on an SD card and run Firefox with FlashPlayer plugin.It runs an interactive whiteboard plus 2-way video and audio on my little XO-1, and it supports plug-in extensions that users can build. If the Vyew developers can do this with free tools, why can't the OLPC community use Flash as a platform? So, please explain why constructionist educational models can't be programmed and run on the Flash platform just as well or better than in Python on Sugar on Fedora. On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 8:31 AM, James Zaki james.z...@gmail.com wrote: I'm guilty of spending more time than I probably should at newgrounds.com, their slogan being Everything, by Everyone. Its a melting pot of free content, and what really impresses me are the absolute gems of creativity that one finds from time to time. I dont see flash as the main XO education content maker, but can see the argument for popularity in the short term. James. 2010/4/12 John Watlington w...@laptop.org On Apr 11, 2010, at 8:56 PM, James Cameron wrote: On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 08:51:01PM -0400, Martin Langhoff wrote: But hey. Flash developers want Flash in it. It's gotta be good for something. My guess is that it is handy for repurposing the system for entertainment usage. (I don't have Flash enabled on my systems, so I don't really know what I'm missing). It's all the rage for games these days. My kids constantly astound me with the rendering quality and interactiveness of flash games that they are able to find for free on the web. Deployments that have asked for Flash also point to games as the reason. wad ___ 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 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Flash + AIR on OLPC
That page shows Vyew.com running on Xubuntu on the XO-1. In my experience, Vyew.com is something outstanding for learning with low barriers of entry and no ceiling that Martin asked to see built with Flash. (Stanford University uses Vyew for its Stanford Engineering Everywherehttp://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_viewnewsId=20080917005182newsLang=enplatform, so Stanford agrees that Vyew is worthwhile for a learning/teaching platform.) The Xubuntu (or Fedora) system could be stripped further to make it extremely austere (only the icons and menus you want the student to see), much like Sugar. The point is that a no ceiling application like Vyew, which is a teaching and learning platform on which creative minds can build interactive educational experiences, can be built in Flash to run on an XO. I'm not suggesting that the OLPC developers try to recreate Vyew. I'm saying that Vyew shows how capable the Flash platform is, even using free tools to build and deploy it. From what I've been reading from OLPC contributors, there seems to be a dichotomy between people who want to keep the system pure free-open-source versus others who are more interested in getting something good built even if it incorporates some free but not open source software. I'm a pragmatist. Until FOSS can provide the tools I need to create what I want, I'm not averse to using what I can get now and porting to FOSS later when it catches up. Stan On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 10:22 AM, Paul Fox p...@laptop.org wrote: stanley wrote: You can see the Xubuntu system running on our XO-1 at: Internet Math Tutoring / OLPC Project http://internetmathtutoring.com/olpc/static.php?page=static090711-100100. what does this have to do with flash? On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 9:31 AM, Stanley Sokolow overb...@earthlink.netwrote: ... interfaces and binding data to them, has an open-source free-to-use (from Adobe) compiler, has a free-open-source IDE (FlashDevelop) from a community, does this run on the XO? paul =- paul fox, p...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Flash + AIR on OLPC
I guess I don't understand constructionism. Is it reasonable to require that the development system run on the target machine?If Apple had this requirement, all of the iPhone/iPod/iPad applications would be gone. We wouldn't have any of the millions of devices (mp3 players, routers, modems, fax machines, cell phones, etc.) that have embedded processors not capable of running their development tools. The XO is the target machine. It's unreasonable to restrict development to tools that run on the XO. The FlashPlayer runs on the XO (with appropriate OS underlying it). That's more than sufficient to build rich educational interactive constructionist applications.This is an education project, after all.Developers in countries where the XO is targeted can surely get a little netbook to run the Flash IDE as a development tool.Even as the hardware moves on to better, faster, bigger guts, even with radically different processor architectures, the developed applications will still run once the Flash player is ported to the new computers. Stan On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 10:42 AM, Chris Ball c...@laptop.org wrote: Hi, has a free-open-source IDE (FlashDevelop) from a community, does this run on the XO? Nope. We're to believe that Flash is appropriate for constructionism on the XO even though it doesn't allow XO users to construct anything. - Chris. -- Chris Ball c...@laptop.org One Laptop Per Child ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Fwd: Flash + AIR on OLPC
-- Forwarded message -- From: Stanley Sokolow overb...@earthlink.net Date: Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 12:02 PM Subject: Re: Flash + AIR on OLPC To: Paul Fox p...@laptop.org Sorry, Paul, I just can't accept the idea that the target audience of the OLPC projects must necessarily include kids who are capable and interested in re-programming the software activities they're using.Moreover, would you want to modify and re-compile your application software (for example, Firefox) just to change the way it behaves with respect to which home page, web site filters, cookies, etc. etc.? That's what configuration options are for. Even if you want more versatility, the application can implement rules in xml or an application-specific mini-language or whatever. Rebuilding an application in Python should be a last resort and not even for the 99.% of target users of the system. How do you define constructionism in this context? Stan On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 11:31 AM, Paul Fox p...@laptop.org wrote: stanley wrote: I guess I don't understand constructionism. i think that's right. Is it reasonable to require that the development system run on the target machine? yes. it's one of the reasons most activities, and many of the system, is coded in python. If Apple had this requirement, all of the iPhone/iPod/iPad applications would be gone. We wouldn't have any of the millions of devices (mp3 players, routers, modems, fax machines, cell phones, etc.) that of course. but i don't think any of those would be considered educational tools, let alone embodiments of constructionism. (and nor would you, i'd guess.) have embedded processors not capable of running their development tools. The XO is the target machine. It's unreasonable to restrict development to tools that run on the XO. it's not that unreasonable. kids learn by doing, and exploring. that's kind of the whole point of constructionism. if you give someone a game written using python and pygame, they can (in principle) modify that game to change the playing rules. if you give them that same game written in flash, they can't. it's really as simple as that. whether one agrees with the notion that this is important will vary, of course. paul =- paul fox, p...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Flash + AIR on OLPC
AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) is a desktop application that runs the FlashPlayer virtual machine outside of a browser. You know that Flash is usually thought of as a plug-in to run Flash content inside of a web page being displayed on a browser. To maintain web security, the Flash plug-in enforces restrictions on the Flash programs. For example, a Flash program running within a browser is not allowed to access files on the user's computer, only files that come from the same domain as the Flash program came from off of the web. With AIR, the Flash Player runs as a stand-alone application outside of and independent of any browser. This allows rich Flash interfaces to run just like any application installed on the user's computer. The AIR application is given more freedom -- for example, it can access local files. When a program is being compiled by the IDE, one of the settings the developer chooses is whether to compile it for AIR or for the FlashPlayer plugin.But for the most part, the program will run the same on either platform.This lets developers use the rich Internet application tools to create desktop applications. AIR handles things like the installation, checking for updates, installing updates, automatically without the programmer having to build those services. Go to http://www.adobe.com/products/air/ for examples of AIR applications you can download and run. On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 1:13 PM, Mikus Grinbergs mi...@bga.com wrote: There's been all this discussion of AIR. I am unfamiliar with AIR. My question : Why would I (as an user) __need__ AIR ? I do not mind using a browser, nor do I mind installing a special-purpose plugin into my browser in order to access particular material. But what does AIR provide that for instance the combination of latest Firefox plus latest Adobe Flash plugin would not provide ? Thanks, mikus p.s. People keep showing various Linux platforms (e.g., Ubuntu, Debian, etc) running on the XO. As far as I am concerned, if these people *want* to run Ubuntu, Debian, etc., then buying a modern netbook for that purpose will give them better performance than using the XO. ___ 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
Fwd: Flash + AIR on OLPC
Sorry, I keep forgetting to put the list manager in my addresses. Here's my latest message: -- Forwarded message -- From: Stanley Sokolow overb...@earthlink.net Date: Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 4:05 PM Subject: Re: Flash + AIR on OLPC To: mi...@bga.com I forgot to answer your statement below about Linux on the XO: On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 1:13 PM, Mikus Grinbergs mi...@bga.com wrote: ... p.s. People keep showing various Linux platforms (e.g., Ubuntu, Debian, etc) running on the XO. As far as I am concerned, if these people *want* to run Ubuntu, Debian, etc., then buying a modern netbook for that purpose will give them better performance than using the XO. When I started helping my wife develop an interactive math tutoring capability for the XO we bought from the 2008 G1G1 campaign, I looked at and tried the Sugar activities.None of them were capable of her necessary features: 2-way interactive whiteboard and 2-way interactive video and audio communications.Sure, some activities were in development trying to achieve these capabilities, but they weren't real yet. We tried a web services approach -- looked at various things like Go to Meeting.When we found www.Vyew.com, we saw what we needed. It worked on our PCs. Turning to the XO, the Browse activity with Gnash just couldn't run Vyew. When I installed the version of FlashPlayer that the laptop.org wiki recommended, it didn't work the XOs camera and microphone and didn't even operate the Flash settings dialog properly.Doing more searching, I found a version of Ubuntu that had been adapted to the XO by a user who called himself Teapot on the forum. It's a stripped down, lightweight version that uses Xfce as the window manager (hence it's called a Xubuntu distribution) and incorporates the same kernel that olpc used in the version of Fedora that came on our XO beneath Sugar, so it knows about the XO's unique hardware.After some work, I got it running from an SD card so I didn't have to trash the native operating system.I didn't do this because I wanted to run Linux -- I have other Linux machines -- but rather because it would let me get the job done, the system built with the features necessary for the tutoring project. If the XO comes up to that capability with Browse and Gnash, I'd run the native system.But it's not there, yet. We also tried to use Skype on the native Sugar/Fedora OS, but at that time, you had to do so many hokey work-arounds to fool the software into running Skype, it just wasn't feasible for a deployment with low entry threshold. The 6 to 12 year-old kids that are the prime target of the olpc mission don't care what platform is behind the screen. Just as in the Wizard of Oz, Don't pay any attention to that man behind the curtain. As the laptop.org mission statement says, It’s not a laptop project. It’s an education project. To me that says that the mission is not to empower kids to write programs or tinker inside the system, but rather to use the XO as an educational tool to learn about the world and life and such, to collaborate with each other across the room and around the globe, to explore the depth of knowledge on the Internet, etc. Stan ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Flash + AIR on OLPC
So, I guess you don't install any software that you download and run, like Firefox or OpenOffice.org or Google Earth? An AIR program doesn't just sneak itself onto your system -- the user decides to buy it, or trust the source of it, downloads it, and runs the installer. The point about AIR is that it lets the developer use the same tools to develop rich Internet applications and desktop applications with attractive rich user interfaces. On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 4:30 PM, Mikus Grinbergs mi...@bga.com wrote: The AIR application is given more freedom -- for example, it can access local files. Back when Netscape first came out, I was bitten when a selfish plugin changed my system's defaults without me realizing it. Ever since, I do NOT want a remotely acquired program to be able to access the local files in my system. [The nobody user was invented to limit access.] I'm willing to mess with my local files myself. But if a program from who-knows-where might mess with my local files -- I'd rather deny myself whatever experience that program is supposed to bring -- rather than chance having that program change how I have set up my system to run. Go to http://www.adobe.com/products/air/ for examples of AIR applications you can download and run. I did. Nothing there looks like something I can't live without. mikus ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: using XO for Internet Math Tutoring
Martin, Sonya wanted me to reply on her behalf. I have written a brief explanation of our attempts to just install Flash on the XO with the ex-factory, that is, the factory installed, operating system. I just sent it to the developers' list.What someone like Sonya needs is an OS on the XO that has Adobe FlashPlayer installed ex-factory, or easily added by downloading it, but the story of Flash on the XO is not so simple. Since OPLC's developers seem to want nothing to do with the proprietary, but free to use, FlashPlayer, and since Gnash isn't even running a close second place to FlashPlayer, someone who wants to use Flash-based web applications is stuck unless he/she knows enough about computers to go around Sugar and get FlashPlayer and a browser that plays nicely with it. She was hoping to create a tutoring capability that works within Sugar, but building it from scratch using Python and Sugar just isn't feasible nor cost-effective when web apps already exist to do what she needs, just not within Sugar. I'm hoping that when the new version of Fedora for XO-1.5 is released, a backport to XO-1 will also be released, and that it will support FlashPlayer, the real one from Adobe, without requiring the user to be an IT expert. Stan On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 1:37 PM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.comwrote: Hi - just install Flash. You don't need anything from me or OLPC. kind regards, martin On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 3:39 PM, Sonya Sokolow sonyasoko...@gmail.com wrote: 4/12/10 12:40pm CA time Hi Martin, I am Sonya Sokolow, PhD, owner of Internet Math Tutoring (IMT): http://www.internetmathtutoring.com . I also maintain the blog about using XO's in Africa and India for IMT: http://www.internetmathtutoring.com/olpc . In my experience, having a web cam and an interactive white board as tools for internet math tutoring make the teaching very much more effective than having only type chat or delayed email responses. I use http://www.Vyew.com as an interactive whiteboard. It is flash-based. I use an SD card on the XO which my husband Stanley Sokolow made for me. I hope that soon in the future I won't have to use the SD card anymore. That is, I am hoping that the XO's will become compatible with Flash. -- 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 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Updating my prior comments about FlashPlayer on the XO-1
After writing my explanation of why I turned to a Xubuntu system last year to get FlashPlayer going on my XO for my wife's Internet Math Tutoring project, I thought I ought to see what improvements have been made since that decision.I see on the Wiki that there are Sugarized activities now for Opera Firefox FlashPlayer.I'll give them a try. Maybe I can quit using the SD-card-installed Xubuntu system and get back to Sugar as the tutoring platform. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] New release of F11 for the XO-1 - Build11
I've searched the activities at sugarlabs.org for anything about ePub. The only hit to epub is the Newberry activity, which says it requires FBReader, but a search for FBReader comes up empty other than this reference to it. Where is a sugarized version of FBReader available for easy installation? Stan == On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 6:36 AM, Stanley Sokolow overb...@earthlink.netwrote: I wasn't aware of that development effort to add ePub format to the capabilities of Read. According to SugarLabs web site, Read does not yet support ePub: Read is an ebook reader based on Evince. It can display PDF and single page TIFF documents. The link you gave to a blog seems to show good progress, but more needing to be done. Is the working still continuing? Where can I get a beta version with ePub support to try? On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 12:57 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.orgwrote: ... Just for the record, it's the Read activity which supports ePub files. http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings/2009/06/18/read-and-epub-and-beyond/ Regards, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] New release of F11 for the XO-1 - Build11
My thoughts about Firefox. Even if it uses more resources than Midori, it's worth the extra bytes. I am running Xubuntu (Teapot edition) from a 2GB SD card in my XO, and I have Firefox on it. I installed the ePubReader plug-in for Firefox. This runs nicely and allows you to view eBooks in ePub format, which is the up-and-coming open format for books. You can get free ePub eBooks from several free sites, including books.google.com, www.feedbooks.com/publicdomain, and gutenberg.org. Project Gutenberg plain text files can be read on the XO in Sugar using the Read ETexts activity, but that activity says Read Etexts is similar to the original Read activity, but instead of PDFs this activity works with the plain text files created for Project Gutenberg.Plain text versions are inferior to the nicely formatted ePub books. To get the ePubReader plugin, all you do is go to Tools Add-ons Get Add-ons in Firefox and search for ePubReader. It even updates itself when new releases of the plug-in come out. Xubuntu doesn't use Gnome, but instead uses Xfce the light-weight window manager. I would rather give up Gnome's bulk than leave out Firefox. One thing little annoying thing about using the ePubReader on my XO system -- the directional buttons next to the screen don't work (aren't recognized) so I can't turn the screen into tablet mode and still be able to navigate page turns. Does anyone know an easy way to map these keys into up, down, forward, and backward keys? It's been a long time since I played around with keymapping in Linux. Stan Sokolow On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 5:14 PM, rihowa...@gmail.com rihowa...@gmail.comwrote: Some quick observations on F11 for the XO-1 - Build11. ... stuff deleted here Gnome Desktop mode: In previous builds Midori was used as the web browser in gnome now Firefox is being pulled in. Is this an intentional change or a side effect of changing the build system? Midori is general considered to use less resources than Firefox. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: XO-3 super-o-fficial
I'm with Bert. What problems has Android solved that Sugar was created to solve, in your opinion? On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 6:04 AM, Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.dewrote: On 24.12.2009, at 12:59, NoiseEHC wrote: You know, Android OS solves exactly the same problems Sugar has been created to solve O RLY? - Bert - ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: XO-3 official
My personal experience tells me that it wouldn't help to have this piece of vaporware come into being.The limiting factor in bringing computing to the poor masses on this planet is the high cost of connecting them to the Internet. Even wireless service is beyond the reach of rural villages without massive government help, not likely to come about where it is needed most. Negroponte should now focus OLPC's attention on connectivity cost, not on making claims (which I doubt will come to fruition) about ultra low cost tablet devices. On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 9:11 AM, Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu wrote: On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 1:23 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz bmsch...@fas.harvard.edu wrote: http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/22/tablet-computer-negroponte-technology-cio-network-olpc.html It aims to make its tablet PC highly durable, all plastic, waterproof, half the thickness of an iPhone and use less than a watt of power, despite an 8-gigaherz processor. The price: an unprecedented $75. Well, that's cool. Deciphering OLPC press releases sometimes feels like I'm playing chess with Picasso, and he keeps breaking the rules, and I can't tell whether this is some kind of art or he's just cheating. --Ben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel More than anything I find this quote amusing: We don't necessarily need to build it, Negroponte told Forbes. We just need to threaten to build it. I suppose we could threaten to code the OS, threaten to support it, threaten to create content... :-) Hey, its Festivus. Air out the grievances!!! Sameer ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [OT] Test run of 2009/05/25 image
Mikus, I've been using the Ubuntu version customized for the XO for a couple of days now. (See www.olpcnews.com for info about Teapot's XO-customized Ubuntu 8.10 release.) It is a little slow compared with my other computers, as expected for a computer running at less than .5 GHz, but much more comfortable and responsive than running the standard Sugar/Fedora system on the XO. I personally can't stand some of the human interface aspects of Sugar, such as the time delay before a menu appears instead of right-clicking to get a popup menu in context and especially the annoyance of the frame appearing when I get too close to the trigger point in the upper left corner, not being able to use non-full-screen windowing to see multiple programs at same time, etc.. All together the stripped down xfce4 based version of Ubuntu with Firefox, FlashPlayer10 plugin, OpenOffice writer,impress, draw, and other utilities, occupies about 1.7 GB of a 2.0 GB SD chip in the XO's slot. It is fast enough not to annoy me, unlike the Sugar/Fedora system on the XO. I can even do 2-way video and 2-way audio web conferencing with whiteboard using www.vyew.com, a FlashPlayer-based web application. I could not do that with the XO's standard operating system. This all fits on and runs well from a cheap (US$6) SD card that I got at my local office supply store. What the XO hardware has over the netbooks is its great screen -- high resolution, color or monochrome reflective for outdoor viewing, with matte finish instead of the highly glare-producing high-gloss screens that are almost universal these days. Personally, I feel it is a mistake for the OLPC project to continue with the concept of the Sugar platform as its exclusive model for an educational computer.The Sugar applications (activities) could just as well be run from the Ubuntu desktop. Then students would actually be learning in an environment that can take them into the real-world that grown-ups occupy on computers, when they are ready to go beyond the Sugar applications. The knowledge of the operating system's interface would be transferrable to other Linux/Mac/Windows systems when they outgrow the XO. A Linux desktop is not harder to learn than Sugar and it's a heck of a lot more comfortable to use. Moreover, there isa lot of educational software available for it that won't run in the Sugar environment. Stan Sokolow On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 6:37 AM, Mikus Grinbergs mi...@bga.com wrote: Disclaimer: This post contains Off-Topic meta discussion Conclusion: fedora-olpc, to be a sucess, needs a much slimmer UI than that of GNOME. Success needs to be defined. Seems to me the OLPC was envisioned mainly for a single-application environment. Except for being slow at processing, I think it succeeds admirably. I'm not talking about the sugar interface, which is what you're talking about. Non-sugar interface is something I'm also interested. The reason for my enthusiasm: I think the OLPC offers the bringing of technological assistance to economically disadvantaged locations. I think that people who focus on slimming the OLPC are missing the point. What they end up with is a slow, small Linux system. But if what they want is a small Linux system, today's 'netbooks' offer more capability (and as netbooks continue to be produced by the millions, I expect tomorrow's models to cost less than the OLPC). For those who are interested in using the OLPC to bring conventional applications to people who already have access to technology - why not work with a netbook instead? For those who think the OLPC *is* suited to the environments in which it is being deployed - let's work on developing OLPC-scale applications to assist 'the things people do' wherever such computerization could improve matters. mikus ___ 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
Problems with Adobe Flash player on the XO.
Hi, I'm having problems: Adobe FlashPlayer doesn't detect the XO's built-in webcam so it can't transmit video out to the Internet on Flash-enabled web sites, and the Adobe Flash player on the XO freezes the popup right-click control panel. Gnash didn't work at all with a Flash-based web site we're interested in, so I went to the real FlashPlayer, latest version. I've been lurking here watching the comments on Gnash versus Flash while I tried to get my wife's XO playing nicely with a Flash-based RIA (rich internet application) site called www.vyew.com .(That's pronounced like view.) Vyew is a collaborative whiteboard application with video, voice, and text chatting features in addition to the whiteboard. By whiteboard, I mean that several users can connect to the same page and collaborate on drawing sketches and typing text on the same screen, which is visible to all of the connected people.They can also activate their camera and microphone (if they exist) to carry on two-way conversations like Skype. She wants to use this for a remote tutoring activity where she interacts with students about math problems.We tried to get Paint and Colors activities to play nicely with various Sugar emulators (LiveCD, Sugar on Ubuntu, Sugar on Windows Vista) but they all had various problems seeing (presence detection) or collaborating. So we found this web site, Vyew. The Vyew site didn't load the Flash content on the web page with Browse and Gnash, so I installed the real Adobe Flash player on the XO. We have been largely successful with Vyew and Adobe FlashPlayer on the XO. Both computers can see each other's drawings collaboratively on the same page, but we ran into one problem that relates to Flash on the XO. The XO browser can see the webcam video stream from our Dell laptop running Vyew on the Dell's Vista browsers (MS IE Firefox) and can hear the audio stream from the Dell, but I can't get Flash to activate the XO's camera.When I right-click on the Flash box in the web page, the Flash popup menu appears. I click the settings item. Adobe Flash Player control panel pops up as it should, but it is just frozen. I can't get it to flip to the other tabs to set the camera microphone permissions. In fact, the panel won't even quit when I click the Close button. Nothing gets rid of it except reloading or leaving the web page. This was while running on the XO's Browse activity. I thought that maybe Opera for the XO would do better. No luck. Opera as installed from the wiki.laptop.org/opera instructions does not even play the Flash on the Adobe web site: www.adobe.com/products/flash/about , nor any other Flash embedded in a web page. All that Opera shows is a gray rectangle where the Flash should be, no text saying to click to play the Flash. This is apparently a problem of Opera not interacting well with FlashPlayer, because the Opera plugin directories point to the very same plugin program file by symbolic linkage, so it's not a bad plugin file -- the Adobe plugin plays the Flash .swf embedded element with Browse, just not perfectly, but Opera doesn't play it at all. I submitted a comment to the Opera programmer who maintains the Opera blog about the OLPC version, but that blog has had very little activity in the past year so I'm not hopeful of any results from the Opera people.Has anyone here tried to run a recent release of Opera on the XO, not the very old version that was customized for the XO according to our wiki? For the record, here are the various versions I'm running: XO has build 767 of Sugar, the XO is one recently received from the G1G1 program through Amazon, the FlashPlayer is the one recommended on the wiki.laptop.org page: http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/flash-plugin-10.0.15.3-release.i386.rpm , the about Flash page reports the correct release 10,0,15,3 and so does the README in the flash-plugin folder on the XO, and uname reports that my XO's Linux version is 2.6.25-20080925.1.olpc.f10b654367d7065. Even without the 2-way video streaming, www.vyew.com is a nice application for collaboration over the Internet. Try it. Stan Sokolow ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
[Fwd: Problems with Adobe Flash player on the XO.]
Regarding my prior message, I just found this bug report at Adobe regarding camera not working with FlashPlayer on Linux, but it says that FlashPlayer 10 should resolve the problem. Apparently it didn't on the XO. https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-137 Stan Original Message Subject: Problems with Adobe Flash player on the XO. Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:20:38 -0800 From: Stanley Sokolow overb...@earthlink.net To: Nirbheek Chauhan nirbheek.chau...@gmail.com CC: devel@lists.laptop.org References: 8b4c83ad0901010046rc055feaw7b82db5c1de2e...@mail.gmail.com Hi, I'm having problems: Adobe FlashPlayer doesn't detect the XO's built-in webcam so it can't transmit video out to the Internet on Flash-enabled web sites, and the Adobe Flash player on the XO freezes the popup right-click control panel. Gnash didn't work at all with a Flash-based web site we're interested in, so I went to the real FlashPlayer, latest version. I've been lurking here watching the comments on Gnash versus Flash while I tried to get my wife's XO playing nicely with a Flash-based RIA (rich internet application) site called www.vyew.com .(That's pronounced like "view".) Vyew is a collaborative whiteboard application with video, voice, and text chatting features in addition to the whiteboard. By whiteboard, I mean that several users can connect to the same page and collaborate on drawing sketches and typing text on the same screen, which is visible to all of the connected people.They can also activate their camera and microphone (if they exist) to carry on two-way conversations like Skype. She wants to use this for a remote tutoring activity where she interacts with students about math problems.We tried to get Paint and Colors activities to play nicely with various Sugar emulators (LiveCD, Sugar on Ubuntu, Sugar on Windows Vista) but they all had various problems seeing (presence detection) or collaborating. So we found this web site, Vyew. The Vyew site didn't load the Flash content on the web page with Browse and Gnash, so I installed the real Adobe Flash player on the XO. We have been largely successful with Vyew and Adobe FlashPlayer on the XO. Both computers can see each other's drawings collaboratively on the same page, but we ran into one problem that relates to Flash on the XO. The XO browser can see the webcam video stream from our Dell laptop running Vyew on the Dell's Vista browsers (MS IE Firefox) and can hear the audio stream from the Dell, but I can't get Flash to activate the XO's camera.When I right-click on the Flash box in the web page, the Flash popup menu appears. I click the "settings" item. Adobe Flash Player control panel pops up as it should, but it is just frozen. I can't get it to flip to the other tabs to set the camera microphone permissions. In fact, the panel won't even quit when I click the Close button. Nothing gets rid of it except reloading or leaving the web page. This was while running on the XO's Browse activity. I thought that maybe Opera for the XO would do better. No luck. Opera as installed from the wiki.laptop.org/opera instructions does not even play the Flash on the Adobe web site: www.adobe.com/products/flash/about , nor any other Flash embedded in a web page. All that Opera shows is a gray rectangle where the Flash should be, no text saying to click to play the Flash. This is apparently a problem of Opera not interacting well with FlashPlayer, because the Opera plugin directories point to the very same plugin program file by symbolic linkage, so it's not a bad plugin file -- the Adobe plugin plays the Flash .swf embedded element with Browse, just not perfectly, but Opera doesn't play it at all. I submitted a comment to the Opera programmer who maintains the Opera blog about the OLPC version, but that blog has had very little activity in the past year so I'm not hopeful of any results from the Opera people.Has anyone here tried to run a recent release of Opera on the XO, not the very old version that was customized for the XO according to our wiki? For the record, here are the various versions I'm running: XO has build 767 of Sugar, the XO is one recently received from the G1G1 program through Amazon, the FlashPlayer is the one recommended on the wiki.laptop.org page: http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/flash-plugin-10.0.15.3-release.i386.rpm , the "about" Flash page reports the correct release 10,0,15,3 and so does the README in the flash-plugin folder on the XO, and uname reports that my XO's Linux version is 2.6.25-20080925.1.olpc.f10b654367d7065. Even without the 2-way video streaming, www.vyew.com is a nice application for collaboration over the In
Re: [Sugar-devel] Wacom Bamboo with XO?
I tried the new installation instructions on the wiki, first installing the Colors activity, then running the new shell script as per the wiki: wget http://dev.laptop.org/~wadeb/setupwacom.sh sudo sh setupwacom.sh It seemed to run ok without errors. I restarted the XO. Colors installed ok and works with the mouse, but the Wacom Bamboo tablet does not work, neither in Colors nor anywhere else. Looking at the /dev/input directory, I don't see the wacom device that should be there. When I rerun the shell script, it confirms that the linuxwacom package is already installed.The X11 configuration file contains the Wacom devices, so it's the right conf file. I'm stuck. Has anyone had success with the new instructions? By the way, when I tried the old instructions yesterday, the repomd.xml file was corrupted. (Actually, it was a perl script, not an xml file.) So, yum wouldn't run. Someone apparently fixed that problem.It's an xml file now and yum seems to run ok using it. Stan -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Wacom-Bamboo-with-XO--tp1508107p1634938.html Sent from the Software development mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Wacom Bamboo with XO?
Wade, I tried: sudo depmod sudo modprobe wacom but all I got was an error from the modprobe: FATAL:nbsp; Module wacom not found. I then tried: sudo modprobe linuxwacom and got the same error. Stan - Wade Brainerd-2 (via Nabble) wrote: Hi Stan, Try a 'depmod' and then 'modprobe wacom' from the Terminal, and see if that helps.nbsp; Feel free to grab me on IRC (as wadeb), I can help troubleshoot it. -Wade On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 9:34 AM, Stanley Sokolow lt; [EMAIL PROTECTED] gt; wrote: I tried the new installation instructions on the wiki, first installing the Colors activity, then running the new shell script as per the wiki: wget http://dev.laptop.org/~wadeb/setupwacom.sh sudo sh setupwacom.sh It seemed to run ok without errors. nbsp;I restarted the XO. nbsp;Colors installed ok and works with the mouse, but the Wacom Bamboo tablet does not work, neither in Colors nor anywhere else. nbsp; Looking at the /dev/input directory, I don't see the wacom device that should be there. nbsp; When I rerun the shell script, it confirms that the linuxwacom package is already installed. nbsp; nbsp;The X11 configuration file contains the Wacom devices, so it's the right conf file. nbsp; I'm stuck. Has anyone had success with the new instructions? By the way, when I tried the old instructions yesterday, the repomd.xml file was corrupted. nbsp; (Actually, it was a perl script, not an xml file.) nbsp;So, yum wouldn't run. nbsp;Someone apparently fixed that problem. nbsp; nbsp;It's an xml file now and yum seems to run ok using it. Stan -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Wacom-Bamboo-with-XO--tp1508107p1634938.html Sent from the Software development mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel This email is a reply to your post @ http://n2.nabble.com/Wacom-Bamboo-with-XO--tp1508107p1634998.html You can reply by email or by visting the link above. -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Wacom-Bamboo-with-XO--tp1508107p1635054.html Sent from the Software development mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
