Re: Pippy and Calculate - Evolution Solution
Albert, Albert Cahalan wrote: Yoshiki Ohshima writes: Hi, Steve, I am a lurker, but this is an interesting discussion. I am a developer in health applications working with current dev release on a B4. Calculate is impressive; Pippy is impressive. They each serve a purpose which I think fits into an OPLC evolutionist philosophy. But, have you actually tried to use Calculate? It could not detect simple errors properly (which is now fixed), takes 10 seconds to calculate 3+4, and digits in a long floating point number are wrapped around, etc.? Errors ought to be detected as typed, with the text changing color at the point where syntax is violated. So this... 7+5-9*4)-5 ...would be highlighted starting from the ')' character. This sounds like a good idea, but I think it could be a little tricky sometimes, so only certain errors should be detected at 'type-time'. Anyway, I'm putting that on my TODO list... It may be good to display the expressions twice, once like a normal (C, Java, C#, C++) programming language for editing and once in a proper (TeX, MathML, textbooks) rendering. I've thought about this too, and indeed it would be a cool improvement for the future! Not sure about the performance of this though... For the math itself, I suggest feeding expressions into the bc program. An interesting suggestion, and in fact I started out by doing this. The bc program, however, is terribly limited in functions and output, and would require lots of parsing and reparsing when putting things in and getting things out. In the end I concluded that it would be easier and more flexible to write a parser myself. Again, this is not a criticism toward Reinier, but rather toward the fact that keeping up with the rate of change that Sugar and the UI guideline is not something a volunteer developer can easily cope with. Calculate is in Python, isn't it? Sugar and UI changes are deadly for the non-Python stuff. First, there are US toys that are remarkably similar to the OLPC in appearance that comprise a simple 4x4 calculator aimed at the under 5 year old crowd. Large keys that do arithmetic. I think the idea of clicking on on-screen buttons is fundamentally defective. The keyboard is far easier to use. I suggest displaying an on-screen copy of that, with the valid keystrokes highlighted. One could still use it with the touchpad, if one wanted to suffer. So in the above example, after 7+5-9*4 the ')' key would not be highlighted. For older children I agree, for the younger ones I'm not sure. The whole keyboard on the screen would be a little crowded I think, although it could be interesting to try. Having such an on-screen representation would make it easy to show letter keys remapped as appropriate. For example, a key might serve as sin() normally or as arcsin() when control is used. (BTW, control might be made sticky) Well, if you consider under 5 years old crowd, then you would oppose to have variables in Calculate? (BTW, OLPC is not aimed at the crowd, I believe.) What do you think about the the use of e-notation in it? How about all these functions available in the tab? Arbitrary named variables are probably not good. Cut-and-paste gives you a variable, and the most recent answer (or two) could implicitly be a variable. If there is a scrolling log of answers, clicking on lines of the log could act as variables. Anything beyond that is probably getting into spreadsheet territory, but there are low-complexity ways to deal with that too: cut-and-paste to a text document, allow drag-and-drop to a saved-data area of the screen, or just scribble on something physical. Imagine if the functions that are available in the Calculate mode (such as sin, sqrt, etc.) are actually defined in a way that kids can understand (for example, the Newton-method for sqrt, or even a graphical version for sin and cos), and if the user goes to the Pippy mode, the user can look inside the definition and modify them? That would be very constructionist. Dear my. I'm all in favor of supporting the bright kids, but that suggestion sounds like grade 12 honors at minimum. Cheers, Reinier ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Pippy and Calculate - Evolution Solution
On 9/9/07, Yoshiki Ohshima [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: To reiterate my point, I think the code behind should be *ideally* presented in different ways that different learners can understand. In Etoys, you can go from visual tile scripting to (say) textual Smalltalk to the Smalltalk parse tree to the stream of virtual instructions (these are all accessible to the user on XO, BTW). I'd love to see demo instructions for this on the wiki somewhere. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Pippy and Calculate - Evolution Solution
Ivan, There were virtually no widespread public systems of education until the industrial revolution. Once they came about, they came about with a purpose: creating skilled industrial workers. I would say this part is too much generalization, but,,, That's broken. The reason the XO has the potential to change the equation in unimaginable ways is because it decouples teaching and learning, thus fundamentally eroding this brokenness. Suddenly, you can have your cake and eat it too -- if your *teaching* system is great, the XO can happily take the passenger seat and become an invaluable sidekick to the teacher running the show. But hey, if you don't have a teacher AND you're interested, or you simply want to learn more than you're taught, you're no longer out of luck. You get to learn as much as you want, and in whichever way you want -- without having to adhere to someone else's idea of what your capabilities are. I think this describes the big goal nicely. I'm here today doing what I'm doing because I was allowed to install Linux when I was 9. It took me two weeks to get a working machine. By 10, I wrote my first (horrible, never submitted, but entirely working) kernel patch to support a SCSI drive that wasn't working properly. Those 100 lines took three months to write. If someone said what? Linux and a compiler? You don't get to play with that until you're grade 12 honors at a minimum, I wouldn't be where I am. It's that simple. Hehe, did you know this is exceptional? For talented people, especially artist types, the common obstacles such as social pressure, ignorant adults, etc. don't really matter. They would just do it. Hopefully, after the deployment, we will have success stories of normal people (like a successful classroom) as well as for exceptional individuals. Computers in classrooms is not a new concept, and there are a lot of success stories and failures. If we interview those who have experiences, make up honest documents that describes how to use it to teach what, it would be a great thing to distribute with XO. (Ah, wait. I know a group that is trying to do this...) So, about the original suggestion about making the code behind the math operations viewable, I think it's a fantastic one. It leverages the onion model -- expose simplicity by default, but make complexity easily available for those who care. Don't limit those who want more, but don't force anything on those who don't. If that's how most software was built, our industry would be in far, far better shape than it is. You sound like a Smalltalker^^; To reiterate my point, I think the code behind should be *ideally* presented in different ways that different learners can understand. In Etoys, you can go from visual tile scripting to (say) textual Smalltalk to the Smalltalk parse tree to the stream of virtual instructions (these are all accessible to the user on XO, BTW). However, there should be a better view/interface somewhere in between the tiles and Smalltalk code. And, also the parse tree should be uniform and independent from Smalltalk. Yes, getting rid of Smalltalk and make it possible to plug different languages in the middle is one of our longer term goals, as you know. Thank you! -- Yoshiki ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Pippy and Calculate - Evolution Solution
Ivan, You can almost tell that he is pretty much the only guy who is interested in supporting outside developers. That isn't fair. I speak on behalf of the entire OLPC team when I say that we're extremely interested in supporting outside developers. There's no question about it, and there never was. My wording was not right. I didn't mean to say you guys *don't have* the interest, but happen to have not been able to spend time on it. (And, kudos to Bert was my another point.) Sorry about that. Until then, I can only thank everyone who's been bearing with us even if it feels like there's a line in the sand between 1CC and outsiders at times. Communities are hard work, and we're entirely committed to growing a great one around OLPC. Really. Please be patient with us a little longer, and as Wikipedians like to say, assume good faith. Yes, thank you. -- Yoshiki ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Pippy and Calculate - Evolution Solution
On Sep 7, 2007, at 10:05 PM, Yoshiki Ohshima wrote: You can almost tell that he is pretty much the only guy who is interested in supporting outside developers. That isn't fair. I speak on behalf of the entire OLPC team when I say that we're extremely interested in supporting outside developers. There's no question about it, and there never was. What's also true is that -- so far -- we've been in the unenviable position of having to grow a platform (both Sugar and the distro) with heavy low-level development taking place _in parallel_ with high- level activity development. This is extremely difficult to do in any set of circumstances, and doubly so with our resource constraints and timelines. As a result, we haven't been as good as we could be about leveraging the community and outside developers. We're fully aware of this, we know it can be really frustrating for contributors, and we're determined to get better. I expect things will improve significantly in this domain in a couple of months as underlying platform development begins to stabilize and our focus turns increasingly towards activities and other consumers of our platform and APIs. Until then, I can only thank everyone who's been bearing with us even if it feels like there's a line in the sand between 1CC and outsiders at times. Communities are hard work, and we're entirely committed to growing a great one around OLPC. Really. Please be patient with us a little longer, and as Wikipedians like to say, assume good faith. Cheers, Hmmm, 3 months ago I asked either for a physical machine or a telnet account for a locked down physical machine to test the Geode processor (LX). I have expected that I will not get a physical machine since there are a limited number of these kind of machines and my work is very low priority (and I do not have C code right now) but it was a little surprise that so far nothing happened about the account. Since my code depends on the hardware and the Geode manual is close to useless it effectively stemmed my work. I tried to run my little tests via this mailing list and there were some kind people who took the time to help me but it turned out that the Geode is below my worst expectations and so requires a lot more tests than my patience. (Programming via this mailing list is just as productive as scheduling your punch cards in the old mainframe days...) For the record, a Geode LX-433MHz has the MMX performance of a Pentium MMX-133MHz if my tests are right what I simply still cannot believe... So I am aware that you have a lot of work to do right now and I am aware that 3d rendering is not at the top of your priority list but from my viewpoint it is nonexistent developer support. Never mind, it was just my frustration. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Pippy and Calculate - Evolution Solution
On Sep 8, 2007, at 1:20 PM, NoiseEHC wrote: I tried to run my little tests via this mailing list and there were some kind people who took the time to help me but it turned out that the Geode is below my worst expectations and so requires a lot more tests than my patience. Send me your SSH2 pubkey and I'll get you an account. I'm not sure how you went about previously requesting an account; I handled almost all l.o accounts until a few days ago, and I never saw an e-mail from you. For the record, a Geode LX-433MHz has the MMX performance of a Pentium MMX-133MHz if my tests are right what I simply still cannot believe... The Geode is a low-power, embedded CPU. It is neither the gaming platform nor the 3D workstation you're looking for. There's nothing surprising about that. viewpoint it is nonexistent developer support. Never mind, it was just my frustration. Sorry you had a bad experience. I wish you hadn't given up after initially not receiving an account. That bit, at least, we can fix. -- Ivan Krstić [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://radian.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Pippy and Calculate - Evolution Solution
On Sat, 2007-09-08 at 22:36 +0200, NoiseEHC wrote: Wow, fast answer! On Sep 8, 2007, at 1:20 PM, NoiseEHC wrote: I tried to run my little tests via this mailing list and there were some kind people who took the time to help me but it turned out that the Geode is below my worst expectations and so requires a lot more tests than my patience. Send me your SSH2 pubkey and I'll get you an account. I'm not sure how you went about previously requesting an account; I handled almost all l.o accounts until a few days ago, and I never saw an e-mail from you. I have sent an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (as it is written in the wiki) and after that exchanged several emails with Jim Gettys. The conclusion was that he said that when I have something running then we can come back to my request. The problem is that I need to run those tests to start coding in C (I have a proof of concept in C#) so it is a catch-22... SSH2 key: I am not sure whether we are talking about the same thing. I need an account for an XO machine which is connected to the internet so I can access it from here (and I have a feeling that you are talking about a project hosting account but I can be wrong). So if I am right and you have not already set up an XO machine then you have to do the following: 1. Take a developer XO (must be B3 or B4 - LX700 and must have GCC). 2. Plug in an USB-Ethernet adapter and configure it in Linux. 3. Take apart the XO and remove the wireless antennas. 4. Install telnet and FTP. 5. Plug it into your router and either put it outside of your firewall (so it will not be able to access your machines inside of your firewall) or set up the router to forward telnet and FTP but prohibit any outbound packets. 6. Email me the passwords for telnet FTP. (2 and 3 are needed if I am an evil hacker since I am not sure if wireless can be firewalled adequately.) We haven't had the cycles to set up a OLPC system for normal development; however, we have recently hired a system manager, and can put it on his queue to set up. - Jim If it turns out that we are talking about the same thing (and you have already set up such a machine) then I will need some time since I am a Windows programmer and have no idea how to connect from Windows to Linux via SSH... (If somebody reads this then I would appreciate some links to a howto.) For the record, a Geode LX-433MHz has the MMX performance of a Pentium MMX-133MHz if my tests are right what I simply still cannot believe... The Geode is a low-power, embedded CPU. It is neither the gaming platform nor the 3D workstation you're looking for. There's nothing surprising about that. There is. If my tests are correct then it is the first time in history when somebody created a processor which runs MMX slower than integer instructions. See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Geode I have downloaded the MediaGX guide (the predecessor of the Geode) and in that guide at least both the latency and throughput were defined. According to the tests the Geode LX has half the performance than the MediaGX clock by clock. I have found that surprising (and forced me to redo all my assembly). viewpoint it is nonexistent developer support. Never mind, it was just my frustration. Sorry you had a bad experience. I wish you hadn't given up after initially not receiving an account. That bit, at least, we can fix. I hope so. :) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Jim Gettys One Laptop Per Child ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Pippy and Calculate - Evolution Solution
Yoshiki Ohshima writes: Hi, Steve, I am a lurker, but this is an interesting discussion. I am a developer in health applications working with current dev release on a B4. Calculate is impressive; Pippy is impressive. They each serve a purpose which I think fits into an OPLC evolutionist philosophy. But, have you actually tried to use Calculate? It could not detect simple errors properly (which is now fixed), takes 10 seconds to calculate 3+4, and digits in a long floating point number are wrapped around, etc.? Errors ought to be detected as typed, with the text changing color at the point where syntax is violated. So this... 7+5-9*4)-5 ...would be highlighted starting from the ')' character. It may be good to display the expressions twice, once like a normal (C, Java, C#, C++) programming language for editing and once in a proper (TeX, MathML, textbooks) rendering. For the math itself, I suggest feeding expressions into the bc program. Again, this is not a criticism toward Reinier, but rather toward the fact that keeping up with the rate of change that Sugar and the UI guideline is not something a volunteer developer can easily cope with. Calculate is in Python, isn't it? Sugar and UI changes are deadly for the non-Python stuff. First, there are US toys that are remarkably similar to the OLPC in appearance that comprise a simple 4x4 calculator aimed at the under 5 year old crowd. Large keys that do arithmetic. I think the idea of clicking on on-screen buttons is fundamentally defective. The keyboard is far easier to use. I suggest displaying an on-screen copy of that, with the valid keystrokes highlighted. One could still use it with the touchpad, if one wanted to suffer. So in the above example, after 7+5-9*4 the ')' key would not be highlighted. Having such an on-screen representation would make it easy to show letter keys remapped as appropriate. For example, a key might serve as sin() normally or as arcsin() when control is used. (BTW, control might be made sticky) Well, if you consider under 5 years old crowd, then you would oppose to have variables in Calculate? (BTW, OLPC is not aimed at the crowd, I believe.) What do you think about the the use of e-notation in it? How about all these functions available in the tab? Arbitrary named variables are probably not good. Cut-and-paste gives you a variable, and the most recent answer (or two) could implicitly be a variable. If there is a scrolling log of answers, clicking on lines of the log could act as variables. Anything beyond that is probably getting into spreadsheet territory, but there are low-complexity ways to deal with that too: cut-and-paste to a text document, allow drag-and-drop to a saved-data area of the screen, or just scribble on something physical. Imagine if the functions that are available in the Calculate mode (such as sin, sqrt, etc.) are actually defined in a way that kids can understand (for example, the Newton-method for sqrt, or even a graphical version for sin and cos), and if the user goes to the Pippy mode, the user can look inside the definition and modify them? That would be very constructionist. Dear my. I'm all in favor of supporting the bright kids, but that suggestion sounds like grade 12 honors at minimum. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Pippy and Calculate - Evolution Solution
Albert, Oh, good. You weren't simply trying to flame the discussion after all^^; For now, let me just jump to the last part... Imagine if the functions that are available in the Calculate mode (such as sin, sqrt, etc.) are actually defined in a way that kids can understand (for example, the Newton-method for sqrt, or even a graphical version for sin and cos), and if the user goes to the Pippy mode, the user can look inside the definition and modify them? That would be very constructionist. Dear my. I'm all in favor of supporting the bright kids, but that suggestion sounds like grade 12 honors at minimum. No no. Do you have any reason to believe that cannot be done under grade 12? (You can't really mean 12th graders... You mean 12 years old, right?) I happen to have a chat with my boss on this topic, and he told me an interesting experience with a HyperCard stack called the function machine done by a elementary school teacher in LA. This HyperCard stack basically has a funny looking picture of machines. This machine sucks a number, does something on it and spits out another number. Kids are first to guess what the machine does inside. First graders could do simple additions, and often could do linear relation and with linear relation with additive part. Of course, then kids get to open the machine and write the function (symbolically) in it. Now, this becomes a sort of quiz; kids exchange their machines and play with machines made by friends. This was largely sucessful with kids from 1st to 4th graders. The Newton-method, etc. may be too early for 4th graders, but understanding the concept of functions is not that magical. You can imagine to make a machine with other machines, etc. Remember the famous quote from Jerome Bruner: We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development. To make this hypothesis stand, the environment and the form have to be carefully thought out, but like teaching differential vector geometry with Logo, there are a lot of evidences. -- Yoshiki ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Pippy and Calculate - Evolution Solution
Yoshiki Ohshima wrote: Remember the famous quote from Jerome Bruner: We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development. Sounds more like a statement of faith than a falsifiable hypothesis. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Pippy and Calculate - Evolution Solution
Mitch, Remember the famous quote from Jerome Bruner: We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development. Sounds more like a statement of faith than a falsifiable hypothesis. Well, if you just take this statement without knowing what he has done to support it, I might agree that it looks like a simple non-falsifiable hypothesis. To talk about childhood education and constructivist theory in education, Jerry's books are must-read, whether you agree with him or not (to say the least. Actually, he is one of *the* guys.) -- Yoshiki ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Pippy and Calculate - Evolution Solution
Albert, Again, this is not a criticism toward Reinier, but rather toward the fact that keeping up with the rate of change that Sugar and the UI guideline is not something a volunteer developer can easily cope with. Calculate is in Python, isn't it? Sugar and UI changes are deadly for the non-Python stuff. And why? If you follow the development in past several months, you probably found that the difference of language used to write an activity has very little correlation with when and how often the activity stopped working. (A high-level messaging/component model usually cuts the dependency to a particular implementation language.) It seems that what it matters is *person* than language. In that regard, we should give Bert (Freudenberg), who has been doing the Sugar integration part of Etoys, big kudos. He's been corresponding with core developers, not only keeping up with the changes but also give back a lot of good suggestions. Take a look at the history of Sugar on Fedora 7 page on the wiki. (http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php?title=Sugar_on_Fedora_7action=history) You can almost tell that he is pretty much the only guy who is interested in supporting outside developers. Yes, he is dedicated to do so. That certainly does the trick. -- Yoshiki ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Pippy and Calculate - Evolution Solution
Hi, James, I'm in Australia. In our school system we use lowest common denominator, class based teaching ... advancement in knowledge and skill beyond the plan for the year is socially punished. Wow. Sounds like Japan. Bright kids learned to hide their ability. However, even with that, I have met 5 to 9 year old kids who could do the math that was to be learned at age 15. So I have no trouble with the idea of revealing the details of these function derivations. At worst we'll create a generation who know math better than anyone else ... and where's the problem with that? A little problem is that we would like to get 80% of students to go beyond a threshold. May or may not be so high threshold, but reasonably high. Definitely we should try to make curriculum that fit almost everyone in a class except a few hopeless, not a few talented. -- Yoshiki ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Pippy and Calculate - Evolution Solution
On Fri, Sep 07, 2007 at 03:34:18PM -0700, Yoshiki Ohshima wrote: No no. Do you have any reason to believe that cannot be done under grade 12? (You can't really mean 12th graders... You mean 12 years old, right?) I'm in Australia. In our school system we use lowest common denominator, class based teaching ... advancement in knowledge and skill beyond the plan for the year is socially punished. Bright kids learned to hide their ability. However, even with that, I have met 5 to 9 year old kids who could do the math that was to be learned at age 15. So I have no trouble with the idea of revealing the details of these function derivations. At worst we'll create a generation who know math better than anyone else ... and where's the problem with that? -- James Cameronmailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://quozl.netrek.org/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Pippy and Calculate - Evolution Solution
Hi All, I am a lurker, but this is an interesting discussion. I am a developer in health applications working with current dev release on a B4. Calculate is impressive; Pippy is impressive. They each serve a purpose which I think fits into an OPLC evolutionist philosophy. First, there are US toys that are remarkably similar to the OLPC in appearance that comprise a simple 4x4 calculator aimed at the under 5 year old crowd. Large keys that do arithmetic. Guido in his wisdom, incorporated and uses in his tutorial the calculator attributes of python to convey --- not arithmetic --- but the meaning of interpretive to a neophyte programmer. I think both activities have a place, and further, should/could be seamlessly integrated so that a child in the Ivory Coast who learns arithmetic using Calculate can discover Pippy and say: Zoot alors! Je peux faire la même chose dans Pippy ! or something like that. Very constructionist. A intellectual bridge to understanding and learning python prior to being able to comprehend a Fibonacci series (although we want kids to get there as quickly as possible.) As a very simple example of seamlessness, I would change the enter key in the Calculate activity to mimic exactly in size/shape the enter key on the OLPC keyboard -- e.g. square with check box symbol and maybe do the same in Pippy in place of the print key that Yoshiki suggests? I don't think we can escape the fact that the OLPC activity suite will ultimately have to be configurable at the national, school, teacher, and pupil levels. I think there is a reason and purpose for both Calculate and Pippy. Some p.s. thoughts --- Many Applications/Activity developers seem to have a natural inclination to add complexity as the activity evolves --- witness MS Windows. In the OLPC I would suggest that we strive to add simplicity. Will millions of children who grew up using Sugar want to transition to MS Windows when they come of age? I think/hope not. /Steve On 9/5/07, Yoshiki Ohshima [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, Chris, (I'm the Pippy author.) (We didn't have much time to discuss with you while I was in Cambridge two weeks ago...) Imagine if Pippy has a button called Print!, which would be located right next to the Run! button. And, if Print! prints out the results of running the program into the bottom pane, that is pretty much all we need. (For the record, the workspace in Etoys has been there from day one for this purpose.) This is a useful idea, thanks. At the moment, Pippy doesn't keep any variable/program state inbetween Run!s (each run is a new Python interpreter), so there is no way to do Ans*2-style calculations. It sounds like you want Print! to keep a single interpreter that reinterprets the source pane at each click. I didn't think about that aspect, but keeping state will be useful. The first version of Pippy used a single Python interpreter that executed the program source code in this way, without losing state, but that makes it possible to write programs that will not run on a fresh interpreter later (as they refer to state that was generated as a result of code that no longer exists, or a previous run of the code), so I decided against keeping that. Yeh, that can happen in a typical workspace programming. But in Pippy's setting, it would not be much of a problem. Keep button can store the state altogether into a journal entry. Oh! We could have an example in Pippy that, when run, gives you a Python interactive shell. That should work well; it gives you the mode you want (without requiring an extra button), and is useful in any case. I'll do that. I don't think Python's evaluations are useful as a calculator to a child, though. You would have to explain this: 2+2 4 3/4 0 I would like to add a simple graphics screen to Pippy, but I don't intend it to get many more features past that -- I'd like to keep it at a simple introduction to input/output programming. Yeah, I was aware of the division (/) problem (when I see the last digit in Calculate falls off to the next line. It would be nice if you can override the division operator... We have a real problem of shortage of man-power, so replacing smaller activities that take more time to maintain and document with more powerful ones is probably a good thing. Just a note that Reinier Heeres is a volunteer, so isn't pulling OLPC man-power away from any other projects. Well, a volunteer can certainly contribute one of OLPC projects, right? I now see that the timeframe and practical matters will probably prevent us going to the nice merging point between these different projects. However, I still contend that similarity is close enough. So, for example Pippy doesn't have to be confined this is a Python thing mind, but take advantage of similarity. -- Yoshiki
