Re: [sugar] Activity updates in joyride (was Re: TurtleArt-18)

2008-11-25 Thread Gary C Martin
On 24 Nov 2008, at 13:45, Walter Bender wrote:

> I did update the link in w.l.o/go/Activities/All but I actually was
> hoping for some testing on this rather major intervention before it
> became the defacto version for G1G1.2. I don't know the wiki magic
> regarding controlling which version is included in the updates.

Hi Walter, OK understood, sorry for jumping the gun.

I've installed v18 on 3 XOs here all running release 8.2-767, resumed  
a whole bunch of old activities and created a range of new ones from  
clean. All loaded and displayed just fine, though I do note there now  
seems a very long delay on starting or resuming TurtleArt (~20sec or  
more) where I'm left looking at a half drawn toolbar and canvas as  
TurtleArt sorts it self out (pulsing launchwindow has finished).

I erased TurtleArt-18 and used the control panel to 'update' to v10  
(that's the version G1G1 points to). TurtleArt-10 does also pause  
momentarily at half drawn toolbar and canvas, but it's only for ~2  
seconds. So there's quite a launch time regression with v18. Rendering/ 
caching all those svg tiles?

--Gary

> -walter
>
> On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 6:12 AM, Bert Freudenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> > wrote:
>> Actually, there currently is *no way* to update the wiki with the  
>> latest
>> version of any G1G1 activity *without* affecting the "pegged"  
>> version. I
>> repeatedly pinged the OLPC list but everyone seems to busy to fix  
>> the wiki
>> (and some of the relevant pages pages are locked).
>>
>> The page that 8.2 laptops are updating from is
>>
>>   http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities/G1G1/8.2
>>
>> As you can see this incorrectly points to the *latest* version of  
>> each
>> activity in the G1G1 set. It should point to the *8.2* version of  
>> each
>> activity. To see the mess, click on the "edit" link of any activity  
>> there
>> and then on "what links here".
>>
>> - Bert -
>>
>> On 24.11.2008, at 03:33, Gary C Martin wrote:
>>
>>> Not meaning to pull Walter up on this, but...
>>>
>>> Are the Acitivity wiki pages still not getting version updated  
>>> (yes I
>>> know it's a complicated undocumented mess of wiki spaghetti that no
>>> one has bothered telling the community about)? There's a whole bunch
>>> of activity releases that have floated by the last ~4 weeks or so  
>>> with
>>> almost no one tweaking the auto-update pages :-(
>>>
>>> --Gary (much looking forward to a useful auto-update feature)
>>>
>>> P.S. if it is genuinely too much to fight your way through the wiki
>>> cruft, please do privately ping me with your activity v update xo
>>> bundle link + the release it's been tested with. I'll gladly go try
>>> update/create the relevant wiki pages and insert red hot pokers  
>>> where
>>> necessary (genuine, one time offer)... and I'll even test the change
>>> correctly auto installs on XOs running 767-8.2 (but I can't do  
>>> joyride
>>> only stuff, having no access to jhbuilds).
>>>
>>> On 23 Nov 2008, at 23:40, Walter Bender wrote:
>>>
>>>> Announcing TurtleArt 18:
>>>>
>>>> .XO:
>>>> http://sugarlabs.org/wiki/images/1/1c/TurtleArt-18.xo
>>>> SOURCE:
>>>> http://dev.laptop.org/pub/sugar/sources/TurtleArt/TurtleArt-16.tar.bz2
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Turtle Art has been rebased to use SVG instead of GIF. I made the
>>>> change in order to make it easier to localize. The other changes
>>>> include Finnish language support and improved support for varying
>>>> screen sizes.
>>>>
>>>> Localization teams: please review the translations and report any
>>>> errors or omissions.
>>>>
>>>> -walter
>>>> --
>>>> Walter Bender
>>>> Sugar Labs
>>>> http://www.sugarlabs.org
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>>>
>>> ___
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> -- 
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> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org

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Re: [sugar] [IAEP] list of complaints from sugarcamp community building talk

2008-11-24 Thread Gary C Martin
On 25 Nov 2008, at 00:52, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote:

> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Gary C Martin wrote:
>> Just a nit pick, SciPy is much replaced by Numpy though SciPy still
>> overlaps enough the documentation seems pretty useful.
>
> This is a typo.  You mean that Numeric and Numarray are replaced by  
> NumPy.
> SciPy is NumPy's sister project.  NumPy provides fast array primitives
> for Python, and SciPy uses NumPy to implement a variety of high-level
> sci/math functions such as clustering, quadrature, maximum entropy
> methods, and signal processing.

Thanks Ben, yes my apologies for the confusion. I've just re-read the  
opening chapter to "Guide to NumPy" as a penance (it's all about the  
dev history, forks, and community splits).

--Gary

> - --Ben
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
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>
> iEYEARECAAYFAkkrTEIACgkQUJT6e6HFtqSLewCeKW4C92DSwpVDPjrTLfO6cWVM
> CWQAn1adMk0FP59jQf8Nq6U7bTl9WNvj
> =Js/Z
> -END PGP SIGNATURE-

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Re: [sugar] [IAEP] list of complaints from sugarcamp community building talk

2008-11-24 Thread Gary C Martin

On 24 Nov 2008, at 22:04, Edward Cherlin wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 2:15 AM, Simon Schampijer  
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> Definitely a problem. We are thinking about having a landing page
>>> similar to the one in http://www.eclipse.org/ that hopefully will  
>>> give
>>> a way for everybody to find how to better interact with us depending
>>> on their role. The idea is that a prospecting developer would just
>>> click on one of those icons and would find a simple explanation of  
>>> the
>>> first concepts that need to be grabbed in order to move forward. How
>>> does that sound?
>>>
 olpc-dev list emails are kind of over my head
>>>
>>> Yeah, we should understand better this issue. Is a coder-newbies
>>> mailing list a valid suggestion?
>>
>> Hmmm, I think we should not split those up. In my opinion all we  
>> can do,
>> is to point out clearly that all contributions and questions as  
>> easy or
>> as hard they are, are valid and welcome. We all started there, and I
>> understand it is not always easy to ask 'stupid' questions, but I  
>> think
>> it is important to produce a culture and atmosphere where this is  
>> possible.
>
> A FAQ will help a lot, particularly if somebody takes ownership and
> makes sure to capture questions and get answers from the experts.
>
> A set of introductory programming manuals on Python, PyGame, SciPy,
> and Etoys will help more. We can discuss this with FLOSS Manuals. Let
> Adam Hyde and me know which ones you would like to have, and which
> ones others ask you for.

Just a nit pick, SciPy is much replaced by Numpy though SciPy still  
overlaps enough the documentation seems pretty useful. ~Was  
considering a cellular automata type brick coding activity using  
numpy, sort of turtleart for arrays, and no turtle. Conway's game of  
life being the basic starting sampler.

--Gary

> I am working on creating a newsletter for those interested in joining
> Sugar work. We have two volunteers so far from Olin Coll. of Eng.,
> motivated by the fact that they can't find the news on OLPC (Who can?)
> and that they have had difficulties finding out how to participate.
> Articles on elementary Sugar programming and on opportunities for
> activities will be welcome, as will progress reports whenever you have
> a significant accomplishment or need help. I sent over my links to
> laptop news sources, and some references on a multitude of games that
> people can program if they like. We will collect many other resources.
>
> We will also include suggestions for curriculum, textbooks, and
> content. The idea is that anybody can participate, because everybody
> knows something that the children need. In particular we need
> subject-matter experts (SMEs) in every school subject and every kind
> of business, research, government, or whatever. Also artists, writers,
> reviewers, testers, localizers, translators, and so on and on.
>
>> So I argue, to please use sugar-devel for those discussions.
>
> +1 unless the Sugar Newbies tell us otherwise. We also have other
> lists appropriate for content and the rest.
>
>>   Simon
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>
>
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> The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
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Re: [sugar] TurtleArt-18

2008-11-23 Thread Gary C Martin
Not meaning to pull Walter up on this, but...

Are the Acitivity wiki pages still not getting version updated (yes I  
know it's a complicated undocumented mess of wiki spaghetti that no  
one has bothered telling the community about)? There's a whole bunch  
of activity releases that have floated by the last ~4 weeks or so with  
almost no one tweaking the auto-update pages :-(

--Gary (much looking forward to a useful auto-update feature)

P.S. if it is genuinely too much to fight your way through the wiki  
cruft, please do privately ping me with your activity v update xo  
bundle link + the release it's been tested with. I'll gladly go try  
update/create the relevant wiki pages and insert red hot pokers where  
necessary (genuine, one time offer)... and I'll even test the change  
correctly auto installs on XOs running 767-8.2 (but I can't do joyride  
only stuff, having no access to jhbuilds).

On 23 Nov 2008, at 23:40, Walter Bender wrote:

> Announcing TurtleArt 18:
>
> .XO:
> http://sugarlabs.org/wiki/images/1/1c/TurtleArt-18.xo
> SOURCE:
> http://dev.laptop.org/pub/sugar/sources/TurtleArt/TurtleArt-16.tar.bz2
>
>
> Turtle Art has been rebased to use SVG instead of GIF. I made the
> change in order to make it easier to localize. The other changes
> include Finnish language support and improved support for varying
> screen sizes.
>
> Localization teams: please review the translations and report any
> errors or omissions.
>
> -walter
> -- 
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org
> ___
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[sugar] 8.2-767 Mesh vs. AP on same channel wierdness

2008-11-05 Thread Gary C Martin
Hi,

Just wanted to ping the dev list regarding the current expected  
8.2-767 behaviour for Mesh vs. AP use.

I now have 3 XOs here for testing all running 8.2-767, usually  
trying** to keep all 3 attached to an AP I have here for internet  
access. All 3 also have a blank jabber server set so that I can test  
collaboration locally (via either Mesh or AP without a schoolserver).  
The AP*** is on channel 1, and I've noticed that if two XOs are set to  
Mesh channel 1, they still 'see' the other one XO on the AP, and the  
one XO on the AP still see the two XOs on Mesh channel 1:

- all 3 XO buddies are visible in neighbourhood
- sharing an activity (Chat) shows up in all 3 neighbourhoods
- shared activity can be joined but with some caveats:
   -- all XOs correctly start-up and show all 3 buddy icons in right  
frame
   -- the sharing XO (Mesh1) can only actually chat successfully with  
XO on Mesh1
   -- the XO not on Mesh1 fails to Chat with the others (stays in  
Private mode)

My concern here is that I thought allowing Mesh + AP (though  
technically possible) had been disabled to prevent network storms in  
school installations. It appears that the Mesh is still running  
even when connected to an AP... Also in schools with APs but no  
schoolservers I'd be worried kids will be seeing a lot of sharing  
glitches/bugs because their XO had drifted off the AP (after a suspend  
usually for me).

Can someone point me to a relevant trac ticket (there are so many it's  
hard to know what's relevant), or I'll go open another ;-)

BTW: the above behaviour is the same for 2 XOs on AP ch 1, 1 XO Mesh1;  
and 2 XOs on Mesh1, and 1 XO on AP ch1.

** usually works fine, but suspending almost always kills subsequent  
AP access (neighbourhood icon goes an odd brown colour) and requires a  
reboot before the XO will connect to the AP again.

*** D-Link DSL-G604T just using simple WEP authentication.

 to be clear, the bottom frame is only showing one network device  
so Mesh must be running with no UI hook being shown (I know there are  
other, separate I think, UI bugs where you see multiple network device  
icons down in the frame when trying to change networks).

Sorry for the rambling email,
--Gary
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Re: [sugar] 9.1 proposal: Language learning on the XO.

2008-10-28 Thread Gary C Martin
On 28 Oct 2008, at 23:46, Chris Ball 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.
>
> 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.
>
>   * 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.)
>
>   * 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?
>
> 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.

Still being worked on by Urko, but functioned quite well last time I  
tested on an XO. I set it up with a bunch of pathophysiology term  
flash card type questions/answers:

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

> Thanks,
>
> - Chris.
> -- 
> Chris Ball   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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[sugar] Some Engadget press

2008-10-24 Thread Gary C Martin
Some Engadget press:


http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/24/confirmed-kids-like-sugar-better-than-xp/

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] Announce: Screencast activity.

2008-10-17 Thread Gary C Martin
On 17 Oct 2008, at 14:01, Eben Eliason wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 3:08 AM, Chris Ball <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> * We should avoid having the activity itself be present in the  
>> videos;
>>   perhaps by minimizing it immediately before starting recording,
>>   and then setting up a globally-bound keyboard shortcut for stop?
>
> I'd recommend transitioning immediately to the Home view when
> recording starts, so that screencasts always begin from the same
> familiar place.  This is a natural starting point.  However, is it
> possible for an activity to trigger that event?
>
> I'm even less sure about stopping.  Ideally a stop button would be
> another piece of ever-present, non-recorded info on the screen.  A
> keyboard shortcut might work, but can you bind it globally even if the
> app isn't focused?  Another option is to offer (really basic)
> cropping, with a simple bar beneath the video with two endpoints which
> can be dragged independently, to trim beginning and end of the
> screencast as needed.  If kids didn't bother, at worst they'd have a
> 2-3 second part at the end where they focus the screencast activity
> and press a stop button.
>
> Another alternative is to automatically stop recording when the
> activity is focused, but a) you'd still see the action of selecting
> the activity again and b) this would prevent any screencasts of the
> Screencast activity from being made.

Why not take the easy path ;-) Make the Screencast activity show a  
title page (hide toolbar), big empty (white) page with a large font  
(black) text title, and perhaps a (grey) time counter with subtle stop  
button near by. Kid can then:

* start Screencast activity
* set the title name
* chose a record duration (default could be quite short as in Record)
* hit record, Screencast shows a clean title page, and then triggers  
actual recording
* kid can narrate over title page if they want
* uses frame or keyboard to switch into task to demo
* returns to Screencast instance (see title page again)
* can give end narration if they want, and then hit stop

End up with a nice screencast with a clean title screen at start and  
end.

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] Tagged Journal Proposal

2008-10-15 Thread Gary C Martin

On 16 Oct 2008, at 01:51, C. Scott Ananian wrote:


On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 8:26 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
| Proposal (off the cuff, please poke holes in this): We might beef  
up

| the HIG in the area of tagging, and even suggest a set of canonical
| tags for various types of content. (Localized, of course.)   
Combining

| this with Scott's "path-tags", we might introduce Images/, Videos/,
| Documents/, and Audio/ tags in such a way that we get the best of  
both

| worlds.  The system can "automatically" file things away in a
| reasonable subdirectory of the Journal, but the kids can always  
find

| *anything* they've done, in chronological order, by looking in the
| Journal itself (before selecting one of these path-tags as a  
query).


Please don't conflate a good idea with a bad one.  Activities  
providing
localized metadata (both tags and key:value pairs) automatically  
could be

a very good thing.  Even better would be internationalization: if
Activities use specific machine-readable words, then when objects are
passed around, those words can be localized for each user's Journal.

This is completely independent from the "path tags", which would be  
useful
only when trying to maintain compatibility with non-Journal  
filesystems,

and are tremendously confusing otherwise.


Heh, Ben doesn't like path tags, it looks like. ;-)

As far as I'm concerned, whether it's "Images/" or "Images" is a tiny
implementation detail; I don't care much either way.


More straw men for the fire.

I'm not a fan of lots of little / characters everywhere (fine if a  
user want to type them in the unified text search area to look  
somewhere specific), but you could show entries that came (or are)  
outside of the local datastore by using different shaped tag icons  
that hint at the differences between a path tags, and arbitrary tags:
<>


The first would be for when you're looking a a USB stick (or remote  
network disk etc), the second would be what you'd see if the files was  
copied into the local datastore or created there in the first place.


The main curiosity is what happens of someone tries to manipulate the  
tag path Images/holiday/Edinburgh version (i.e looking at file on  
external file-system). Some options:


* Don't allow them to be manipulated, do nothing

* If clicked, turn it into one full length input area "Images/holiday/ 
Edinburgh" and allow kid to edit the path, once done the file would be  
moved and/or directory tree for it created


* Try to allow them to be manipulated as 3 separate objects, drag  
reorders, deletion (order is maintained), click one to rename that bit  
of the path. After each change update the external file system to match.


Notice, that for my own sanity I'm assuming a Journal view is of a  
specific 'where/place'. In my mind this would be by default the local  
datastore (whatever that may turn into), or a filesystem (usually USB,  
or SD card, but kid could ask for a view of / or /boot). Note that  
you'd either see path tags, xor arbitrary tags, you'd never see both  
in the same view at once (path tags == external support or file  
geeking, arbitrary tags for items copied to local datastore).


I like the way the Journal visually, concretely, presents a USB or SD  
card when one is inserted, not sure how you'd want to represent more  
arbitrary geeky views of /usr/share/sugar/shell for the 0.1% of  
potential kid coders out there. So this makes copying items to and  
from USB, SD, datastore, just like it is now (drag and drop)**, but  
not sure how to cover the UI case where you want to copy to some where  
arbitrary in your file system.


** A datastore object tagged "images  holiday  edinburgh", when copied  
to USB or SD could be put in /images/holiday/edinburgh (datastore  
arbitrary tag order would need to be preserved and manipulatable, that  
also makes moving stuff back and forwards more friendly)


But I'm not convinced that "Images" and "Video" etc are useful tags  
to add; both

of these are already available via the "What" searches (ie, implicit
in mime-type info).  Someone mentioned that facebook adds magic image
tags based on *recognizing the faces of your friends* -- that seems
like a much better working example.  If Record can automatically add a
"Tom" tag to my pictures of Tom, that would *rock*.
 --scott

--
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Re: [sugar] code contributions to Sugar (was Re: Sugar Clock)

2008-10-15 Thread Gary C Martin
On 15 Oct 2008, at 09:30, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 9:27 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> P.S. I think this is a good example of why contributing to Sugar is
>> necessarily hard.  Many small technical contributions from the  
>> community
>> require significant policy decisions by the leaders.  When Sugar's
>> subsystems are as mature and rationalized as the kernel's, then  
>> perhaps we
>> will be able to add small components without needing big decisions,  
>> but
>> that point is still years away.
>
> Anybody has ideas about how we could improve this? One thing that may
> help is the recent refactoring that Marco made in the shell. Adding a
> clock widget to the frame is now a matter of dropping a .py file in
> the extensions/deviceicon directory. What else needs to happen?

I guess the other obvious one just now where  a .py + icon could be  
nice drop-ins, would be in adding custom layouts (as currently used by  
the Home view). Walter has some nice Sugar hacking written-up already:

http://en.flossmanuals.net/Sugar/ModifyingSugar

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] Sugar Clock

2008-10-14 Thread Gary C Martin
On 14 Oct 2008, at 18:40, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote:

> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Eben Eliason wrote:
> | On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 6:53 AM, Carlo Falciola  
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> |> Carlo : nowhere in the default GUI there is a clock, even if, in  
> the
> control panel there is a panel to configure it. I think that personal
> watches are maybe not so easily owned by kids around the word, so a
> standard clock could be a little, but welcomed feature. (not talking  
> about
> the clock activity that it is more a "learn to read a clock" thing  
> than an
> everyday tool). any feedback and suggestion regarding how and where to
> put/show it are welcomed.
> |
> | I personally would like to see this built.  I've always thought  
> that a
> | "clock device" would fit perfectly into the bottom edge of the  
> Frame.
> | I'd really like to see us rework the devices a bit so that they are
> | more naturally "pluggable" (at most, the user would only have to add
> | one directory at some location in the system to add a new device).  
> In
> | the future perhaps we can extend this to a user-facing management of
> | installed devices.
> |
> | Apart from the trickiness (and potential CPU hit) of dynamically
> | updating the clock icon (I envision an analog clock here, with  
> digital
> | display and date and/or calendar in the palette, so granularity  
> would
> | be on the order of a minute or so).
>
> There are a few issues here:
>
> 1. The current Sugar icon system is problematic in general, and  
> especially
> in this case.  The Frame Device code does not allow arbitrary widgets.
> Instead, each device must specify a discrete group of SVG icons.  The
> device may then select one of these icons to display.  I tried to  
> build a
> frame device clock, but gave up when I realized it would require
> generating hundreds of different icons.  (The same problem affects the
> "signal strength meter" icons representing each network, which are
> naturally continuous, but are drawn by selecting one of about 10  
> different
> fixed icon shapes.)
>
> Fix: change the frame device system to allow arbitrary widgets, or at
> least arbitrary pixmaps.

When you suggested the clock device icon some time back I thought it  
was a great idea, and great place for it to live. Hmmm, I wonder how  
many tricks the current svg pipeline supports (probably not many),  
animation as part of the svg image definition was quite a core part of  
the original idea. However, I wouldn't be surprised if it's not  
supported in the tool chain we have.

> 2. The current power management system on XO provides no timed  
> wakeups.
> Timed wakeups require significant work in both the kernel and EC.   
> As far
> as I am aware, no one is actively working on this.  Without timed  
> wakeups,
> the system could easily suspend with the clock displayed, freezing the
> time and misleading users as to what time it is.  Until we have  
> timed (or
> periodic) wakeups, a clock cannot be part of the default view,  
> because an
> incorrect clock is worse than none at all.
>
> Fix: Relegate the clock to an Activity, which can inhibit suspend when
> visible, to ensure that the clock updates appropriately.  Work on EC- 
> based
> timed wakeups.  A good intermediate target might be to have the EC  
> wake up
> the system every 60 seconds without hooking into the scheduler at  
> all, so
> that any wakeups scheduled in the previous minute (e.g. from the  
> presence
> service) can fire.

All good points.

> 3. Analog clocks are deprecated.  Outside of the West, clocks vary  
> widely,
> and 12-hour mechanical circular dial clocks are by no means the  
> norm.  In
> Europe, 24-hour digital clocks are the most common type.  Even in  
> the US,
> children often have difficulty reading small analog clocks until  
> late in
> middle school, because virtually all such clocks have been replaced by
> digital displays.  The small XO screen will make an analog clock  
> icon even
> less legible.

I'd want to argue with this somewhat :-) Not that you're wrong, but  
teaching kids to read analogue face clocks helps maths, fractions,  
ideas in geometry etc. I'd also vote that an analogue clock face would  
be much more in keeping with the Sugar UI and HIG. Digital, as I think  
Eben mentioned, could be in the palette pop-up, allowing both analogue  
and digital to be displayed together, again a help for learning how to  
read time.

> Fix: Draw a digital clock to 1-minute precision using a simple GTK  
> text
> display.  Format the time according to strftime's %X or %c.  (See
> http://docs.python.org/library/datetime.html#strftime-behavior)
>
> - --Ben


--Gary
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Re: [sugar] scrolling the journal list view (was Re: alt-tabbing to the Journal)

2008-10-11 Thread Gary C Martin
On 11 Oct 2008, at 22:49, Martin Dengler wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 09:20:56PM +0100, Gary C Martin wrote:
>> On 11 Oct 2008, at 11:34, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
>>> On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 5:27 PM, Eben Eliason wrote:
>
>>>> The main problem here is potential length of the scrolling page.
>>>> [...] we could introduce temporal section headers.  After
>>>> scrolling far enough back in time, there might be sections for
>>>> each month, and further back, for each year, etc.
>>>
>>> Yes, I like this idea and I think it's pretty much doable.
>>
>> [...] the longer the page the smaller the scroll-bar, the more  
>> sensitive
>> it's movement, and the harder it is to navigate in a controlled,
>> refined manner.
>
> We're not preparing kids for the real world:
>
>  http://www.martindengler.com/tmp/journal2.jpg

:-)

> (also an example of: what 1200x900 px can be used for; what temporal
> section headers get chosen for me by the real world;

Oohh that takes me back (shudder).

That 1200x900 UI on the XOs 200dpi screen would be pretty bad on the  
eyesight for something as critical as the Journal, kind'a like using  
Scratch is just now on the XO. Cursor targeting would be frustrating,  
and the 1200x900 is only true for grey pixels, any colour in the UI  
would basically be at 800x600. Also I'm sure there's some faint future  
navel gazing to be done given the XO-2 needing a UI fat enough for  
potentially chubby fingers to poke at ;-)

Nice to see an example of temporal section headers, I guess in this  
example you'd need to fold them all auto closed, except one at a time.  
That would ideally keep displayed entries below some max total, give  
easier scroll bar manipulation, and keep the memory footprint down for  
when I add my 1001'st TurtleArt sqrt Journal entry ;-)

> and how sometimes
> I've given up and created temporal sections myself)


I guess tag's will be the tool here, hmm I wonder if date could be  
part of the search string, say if I typed "2008 lesson plan", where  
lesson and plan could be tag or part of the title, and 2008 matched  
the year (where creation and modification dates could be treated as  
'auto tags' set by the system, a little like activity type can be  
considered a system 'auto tag'). Might be useful for a kid to type in  
"friday" and get all their activities that they've generated for their  
classes on a Friday. Need to watch translation issues though.

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] [IAEP] Narrative.

2008-10-11 Thread Gary C Martin
On 12 Oct 2008, at 01:48, Wade Brainerd wrote:

> On the bad side, you can't run two Wikipedias because they will try  
> to bind webservers to the same port.  Also, if the user removes  
> Browse, Wikipedia will no longer run.
>
> These issues could best be solved by a sugar-webcontent-activity  
> package which is shipped by default.  It would contain the Browse  
> GUI classes plus a template Activity class.  It would also provide a  
> base WebServer class that takes care of finding an unused port and  
> binding to localhost.  Content bundles could use the template  
> Activity class as is without any Python code, or else could subclass  
> it (and optionally the WebServer class as well).

I'm sure I'm missing some obvious rainbow security issue here, but as  
an exercise in putting my foot in my mouth, could the Activity with  
the imbedded browse view not just access its files directly via  
file:// perhaps using some magic to give it the activities installed  
path location?

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] Viewing PDFs from Browse

2008-10-11 Thread Gary C Martin
On 12 Oct 2008, at 00:26, Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:

> I was thinking along similar terms, and here's the screenshot of the
> latest version:
> http://dev.laptop.org/~sayamindu/pdf_embed/Screenshot.png
>
> To get this in your own XO (I used this on a clean install of 767),
> download the install the following two RPMs:
>
> http://dev.laptop.org/~sayamindu/pdf_embed/m4-1.4.10-3.fc9.i386.rpm

I had a minor warning here, but otherwise the installs seems to have  
worked well:

[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ sudo rpm --install m4-1.4.10-3.fc9.i386.rpm
install-info: No such file or directory for /usr/share/info/m4.info

> http://dev.laptop.org/~sayamindu/pdf_embed/mozplugger-1.10.1-4.olpc3.i386.rpm
>
> The viewer has to be downloaded from
> http://dev.laptop.org/~sayamindu/pdf_embed/sugar-pdf-viewer.gz, put in
> /usr/bin, decompressed, and then made executable.
>
> If you click on a link to any PDF file in Browse after this, you
> should get the PDF embedded in the Browse window itself.

Yes, this is great, another big UI improvement!

Now, I did go right for the map pdf content and start zooming way in  
and scrolling around, so I quickly bogged my XO down in CPU and  
memory, but that's just the same as would happen in Read anyway :-)  
Maybe my eyes are cheating me, but the text on the map seems much  
sharper when zoomed in with your new inline pdf viewer, in Read the  
text seemed to get a little softer (like a heavy AA).

I noticed that at start and after a change in zoom, you get very quick  
visual zoom in/out, but if you watch sugar-pdf-viewer (or Read if you  
do the same there) you'll see the process try and hog 100% CPU for  
perhaps 10-20sec (depends on zoom level and pdf size etc). Scrolling  
at this time is obviously painful, I'm assuming it's doing some kind  
of background render of the entire page – hoping to finish the whole  
page before you start scrolling? Just an observation. I wonder if the  
busy wait cursor could be triggered until the hidden background  
grinding has completed so the user has a visual indication that  
something is still working away?

> You can also put the PDFs in the Journal if you want - the "Keep"  
> feature seems to
> work for both local and remote PDF files.


Yes, keep worked for me here, though it gave me a Journal entry called  
803304.ai when I kept the europe.pdf from the WorldFactBookMaps  
bundle. The 803304.ai entry did open correctly in Read by default when  
I clicked it – just thought the name was a little odd.

What with this and your light weight image viewer, you're really  
smoothing off some sharp UI corners, for me at least :-)

Great work!
--Gary
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Re: [sugar] [IAEP] Narrative.

2008-10-11 Thread Gary C Martin
On 11 Oct 2008, at 16:34, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:

> What I wish for is that Content bundles were not second-class
> citizens.  The entire Home View is devoted to presenting Activities
> for launching (or deletion).  But Collections currently are
> presented only within the left-hand panel in Browse.  To be viewed,
> they have to be "downloaded" by Browse to Journal, and then manually
> "launched" (from Journal).  [Deleting of Collections from the panel
> shown by Browse is done only with manually issued CLI commands.]
> Activities are "verbs".  Collections are "nouns".  Sugar should make
> the getting_to/using of "nouns" as easy as that of "verbs".

There seems to be two competing paths running, I'm not sure if one  
will win out over the other.

1) Content bundles are distributed and installed into the default home  
page library. No way to manage these in Sugar once installed (have to  
drop to a command line and know what you're doing).

2) Content is being shipped in an Activity build from a minimal Browse  
template (hopefully sharing as much code as possible). The Wikipedia  
slice and Help are examples in this direction. They can be managed  
within the current Sugar GUI, just like any activity. They are also  
visible (or can be) from the home view. They allow custom icons for  
the content to be accessed. They allow customisations via the Activity  
interface to improve access to information in a Sugar HIG way.

You can probably tell, I'm slanting towards option 2 ;-) and doing  
away with all the extra engineering/resources needed to keep  
supporting option 1. The main benefit of option 1 seems to be down to  
getting any extra features that get added to Browse for free, though  
that also means you get features you may not want***. As long as there  
is a Browse like Activity helloworld template, content creation  
wouldn't be any worse than trying to get content builders jumping  
through the library bundle requirement hoops.

***If I wrote some JavaScript games and/or tools (i.e. spreadsheet  
seems a good case), I'd not want to distribute as library content; I'd  
want them to be peers of the other Activities, with equal control over  
their tool bars icons, palettes, and potentially sharing/collaboration  
features.

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] scrolling the journal list view (was Re: alt-tabbing to the Journal)

2008-10-11 Thread Gary C Martin
On 11 Oct 2008, at 11:34, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 5:27 PM, Eben Eliason  
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 3:26 AM, Gary C Martin  
>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>
>>> - Realtime scrolling so you can just grab, drag, and look as it  
>>> goes past.
>>
>> Indeed.  I have never been satisfied with the row-by-row scrolling,
>> but we couldn't do better in terms of performance before.  In
>> redesigning the Journal, it was very important to us (to me, at the
>> very least) that smooth pixel-scrolling was part of the plan. Tomeu,
>> do you think we can make a transition like this for 9.1?  I think it
>> would be another big boost to using the Journal.
>
> Sure I think we should do something for 9.1, but right now the
> resourcing part is a bit complex. Maybe Scott can comment on this?
>
>> The main problem here is potential length of the scrolling page.  Its
>> unbounded, except by space constraints, right now.  There are two
>> viable options here that we've talked about.  First, we could
>> introduce the notion of paging, so that after scrolling to the bottom
>> of a page in the Journal, you have (older) and (newer) buttons to get
>> to other results.
>>
>> Second, and my preference, we could introduce temporal section
>> headers.  After scrolling far enough back in time, there might be
>> sections for each month, and further back, for each year, etc., with
>> each section being represented by a header only, and a disclosure
>> button.  Clicking on a section would open it inline, closing the
>> currently open section, thus keeping everything in the Journal
>> temporally ordered on a single "infinite" page, but allowing one to
>> dive into it in any range of time.
>
> Yes, I like this idea and I think it's pretty much doable.

Yes, I do like this. This also resolves the issue as found in regular  
desktop UI controls (and current Journal implementation), for where  
you have long a document and try to use the scroll-bar for navigation  
– the longer the page the smaller the scroll-bar, the more sensitive  
it's movement, and the harder it is to navigate in a controlled,  
refined manner.

--Gary

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[sugar] [RELEASE] Moon 8

2008-10-11 Thread Gary C Martin
Hi all,

Just released Moon-8, available from:

sources (thanks to Simon for uploading):

http://dev.laptop.org/pub/sugar/sources/moon-activity/Moon-8.tar.bz2

bundled:

http://wiki.laptop.org/images/5/59/Moon-8.xo

NEWS

* Updated empty NEWS file with actual news
* Added pt_BR.po translation (from Gabriel Menini).
* Corrected some word translations for Spanish.
* Added some revised Spanish translation changes from Gabriel Menini.

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] [IAEP] Narrative.

2008-10-10 Thread Gary C Martin
On 10 Oct 2008, at 14:26, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 3:02 AM, Bill Kerr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 12:27 AM, Michael Stone  
>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>
>>> Bill,
>>>
>>> Here's a short dialogue between myself, Ben Schwartz, Martin  
>>> Dengler,
>>> and Bobby Powers on my interpretation of "narrative" as it might  
>>> apply
>>> to a user interface designed for "engaging children in the world of
>>> learning":
>>>   http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Mstone/Commentaries/Sugar_2
>
> Do we have any proposals of changes to Sugar so it better supports
> learning in light of the reflections on "narrative"?

One random thought that overlaps with some ideas on Activity help...

What if Activity and Content bundles were one and the same. You could  
have bundles that just hold an Activity to install, or just have  
Content for the library, or more interestingly have it hold both an  
Activity and library Content.

For a concrete example, I could see myself writing a handful of web  
pages as part help, and part guide, to viewing and understanding the  
Moon, it's phases, some traditions, stories etc. I do not want to  
bloat out the Moon Activity UI with help tabs, buttons, and pages of  
text and images formatted in some weird GTK encoding. The Activity  
should be clean and light and focused on it's function.

All the 'narrative' material should go into the library as html web  
content (pdf's can be nice but are resource intensive and have  
interaction issues of their own). It would be great if by installing  
Moon.xo, the bundle could also contain some library content.

Actually this is what the Mac OSX does. Applications contain what is  
pretty much some indexed html help files that the system auto adds to  
it's help engine when you install an Application. My MoonDock app uses  
this to provide a page or two of instruction about the Moon.

I guess I could provide something similar today by making two bundles,  
one of html library content, and one of the Activity bundle. Maybe  
there are benefits to this dual bundle arrangement (separate the  
Activity from documentation translation tasks; only install what you  
need to preserve nand space)?

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] journal is hard (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)

2008-10-09 Thread Gary C Martin
On 9 Oct 2008, at 19:57, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:

> Elana Langer wrote from Mongolia:
>> basically when teachers and students try to find their work (write,
>> record, etoys)  in the journal it is hard for them to locate it -
>> especially if it is more than a few days old. This is why everyone is
>> desperate to save their projects on USB keys.
>
> My perception of the above statement is that it is an indictment of
> the ability of Sugar (vs. traditional computing) to be a convincing
> tool for teachers (and for the students those teachers influence).
>
> When users are "desperate to save their projects on USB keys"
> (something that was not a principal intent of Sugar), there is
> something out of whack.

Yes, this is an interesting custom getting started.

I've been installing and running both release and development builds  
on an XO B4 since January. Managed to loose my Journal content just  
once, and that was a development build while I was jumping between old- 
data store and new data-store changes. I still had all the individual  
files but (my best guess), some other necessary custom magic index  
file for the DS had been damaged.

With that said, I've not knowingly lost a Journal entry in all that  
time. I'm tempted to think that in these reported cases, the entries  
are all still in the Journal, and it's the difficulty in locating them  
again that is the primary issue. Given that assumption, making sure  
both teachers and students give their work meaningful titles may make  
a world of difference for them. One thing I like to do is use the  
title to help group entries logically together. Example:

Turtle lesson plan question 1
Turtle lesson plan question 2
Turtle lesson plan question 3
Turtle lesson plan question 4
... etc
Turtle lesson plan question notes
Turtle lesson plan screenshots

I can then switch to Journal and type 'turtle lesson plan' for all of  
this to appear, or 'lesson 2' just for that lesson plan etc.

You could also use the tag field, and/or the description field, but  
they are currently hidden away in the Journal and not quick enough to  
get to or find.

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] alt-tabbing to the Journal

2008-10-08 Thread Gary C Martin
On 8 Oct 2008, at 03:51, Walter Bender wrote:

> The bottom line is that, at least as far as the XO is concerned (and
> other machines with limited memory and no swap) the list of activities
> to tab through, with or without the Journal, is going to be a short
> list, so is it really such a pressing issue?

For tabbing, I think one frustration here is the current issue with  
tabbing where the delay is way too short before an Activity you're  
tabbing past is pulled into focus (I'd argue there should be no auto  
delay focus, only focus when alt key is lifted, allowing you to easily  
skip items in the stack). Currently in 8.2, accidentally tabbing the  
'wrong way' through the active instances on the XO and getting shown  
the wrong thing (usually Journal given only having a few activities  
running) is painful enough time wise to distract you from whatever  
goal you had in mind. Example: TurtleArt, and 2 x ImageViewers showing  
some screen shots of different brick code you want to reference.  
Tabbing between TurtleArt and the images you trying to reference is  
constantly intruded upon by the redraw, and update of Journal – if  
you're just mucking around, it's less of a pain, but if you're  
actually trying to 'get stuff done' it can get quite annoying pretty  
quickly.

> I'd love the same passion developed to some of the issues/topics that
> impact the learning. How can we make the Journal better, regardless of
> how we open it and regardless of whether we consider it an activity or
> part of Sugar core?


I guess most interested parties on the sugar list are more technical  
than pedagogical types. Both my parents were teachers, and when  
computers started to make their way into some of their lessons/labs,  
way back when, I seem to remember they would come home somewhat  
bemused, having been handed boxes of cables and computer kit. As an  
~11yr old I would set it up, get things going, and show them how to  
load-up and use the software. It's an interesting generational shift,  
I wonder what new idea is going to come along and be so far from our  
expectations that we'll be too inflexible as adults to really pick it  
up well (here already?). Maybe it's just a personality trait thing and  
not age at all; I guess I know enough people my age who I wouldn't  
trust to safely 'shut down' an operating system without being given a  
lesson or two first ;-)

OK. Journal, and its related use, have some UI improvement  
possibilities that could be targeted (and I think a few might be  
targeted already for work), without having to solve the big 'impact on  
learning' type wider research/study goals. Some things that come to  
mind just now (in no special order and I'm sure most have been  
discussed already at some point):

- Sort view by creation date, not just by last modification date.  
Currently when you resume something, even just  to take a look, it  
pulls it out of the time context of other entries it was created  
alongside. One click, and last weeks essays narrative/reflection is  
lost (the photos you took, the chat discussions you had with  
classmates, the audio you recorded, the picture you painted etc).

- Filter view for starred items only, a single click way to quickly  
hide the unwanted.

- Improve the 'Anything' pop-up UI. It takes me about 4-5sec of  
scrolling to get to the bottom of the Activity and mime file type  
list. And worse, if you do scroll way down, it takes just as long to  
get the Journal back to default after your search. I guess ideally  
this would become a custom palette grid of some kind, perhaps with  
just icons and mouse over text for the full names to save space.  
Another option could be for a short list of the most frequently used N  
activities (or the current Home view favourites), and then a 'more...'  
end item that would reveal a large slide-out, below toolbar dialogue  
with all installed activities and file types listed. Actually, you  
could cut to the chase and have an 'Anything' button that just  
triggers a slide down alert panel with all installed activities.

- Realtime scrolling so you can just grab, drag, and look as it goes  
past. Currently, if what I'm after is not on the first page, and I  
think it's more than a page or two away, it might as well be  
infinitely far away. It's then time to try and remember the activity  
object type, or some text/metadata and start typing until it  
(hopefully) makes it onto page one.

- Text search works reasonably well for me, but as mentioned already,  
some kind of slide-out alert to prompt for an Activity title, tags,  
star, possibly description (though I can't say I've ever meaningfully  
used the description field) would make a large difference in Journal  
entry quality. Think the dialogue will need to auto countdown and  
dismiss with sensible default values where ever possible. This feature  
could be really tough to make work without annoying everyone. Perhaps  
could also do with a "don't

Re: [sugar] alt-tabbing to the Journal

2008-10-07 Thread Gary C Martin
On 7 Oct 2008, at 16:31, Eben Eliason wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 7:43 AM, Martin Dengler <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> > wrote:
>> On Tue, Oct 07, 2008 at 12:21:23PM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
>>> have we reached any consensus on [alt-tabbing to the Journal]?
>>
>> No, based on http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6251

Clearly a contentious issue :-) apparently split somewhat between  
Sugar running on the OLCP XO-1 hardware, vs. running on vanilla PC  
hardware.

>>> Perhaps someone that cares about changing the current behavior could
>>> do a summary of the arguments on each side?
>>
>> *Perhaps* there are only two opposing views; I am biased but will
>> attempt to summarize the pro (removing-from-alt-tab-list) and the
>> con (keep-it-as-is-now) views:
>>
>> Pro:
>>
>> 1. One never wants to Alt-Tab to the journal
>> 2. there is a dedicated key for getting to it
>> 3. the journal should be treated more like a zoom level ("lower" than
>> the home view).
>> 4. Unnecessarily makes itself the active activity when focused, so  
>> now
>> the Activity/F4 key as well as the search key are dedicated to it.
>>
>> Cons:
>> 1. One sometimes wants to Alt-Tab to the journal
>> 2. The journal is positioned like an activity in the Frame and UI
>
> You missed one of my biggest reservations in the cons:
>
> 3. The Journal wouldn't appear beneath the XO at boot.
>
> It's important to me that the Journal be one click (yes, click; not
> just keystroke) away when the child boots the laptop. The current
> activity gets positioned here under the XO, so in the current paradigm
> this happens implicitly.  I suppose you could argue that the Journal
> still gets shown here if no activities are open at all, but then we're
> special casing it a bit.  There may be other ideas for exposing the
> Journal in Home as well, but nothing brought up so far as really dealt
> with this dilemma.

-- snip --

> I'll just toss one more idea out there, for argument's sake.  The
> Journal, as a "place for storing things", might actually be related to
> a device instead (since it's UI may be the same or similar to that for
> USB/SD/etc.).  We could put it down there to meaningfully distinguish
> it.  This still leaves problem 3, of course.

As someone who thinks the Journal is part of the system and NOT and  
Activity, I just wanted to throw yet another idea out there: Make what  
we now call Journal, another view of the Home view. There, darn, now I  
said it out loud...

Some musings:

1) Ideally, the Home view should soon inherit the behaviour that you  
can resume recent Journal entries by default, so cutting away a _lot_  
of the Journal entry cruft that gets added accidently when starting  
fresh activities. This behaviour would be a little like a recent, per  
Activity, activity filter for the Journal, so why not make the current  
full Journal view just another home view? You could think of the  
current Home view as a Journal filtered view of available new  
Activities (supporting some pretty icon layouts).

2) The search key would still switch to Home journal view automatically.

3) It would be one click from boot up (as a new toolbar icon next to  
favourites, and list view). Or could even become the users default  
home view, and be zero clicks away if that's what the kid likes.

4) Current behaviour is a little wired regarding what you are left  
looking at when stopping an Activity. I seem to end up staring at  
either a Home view, the Journal, or some other running Activity.  
Making Journal be a Home view would at least cut down that randomness  
by one ;-)

5) Journal would be off the alt-tab list :-b

6) Journal would be a more core part of the Sugar UI, rather than its  
current special case Activity status sitting among a potential crowded  
top frame.

7) Want to an Activity? Goto the Home view, all (past and future)  
Activities are there.

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] Question from Uruguay

2008-10-06 Thread Gary C Martin
On 6 Oct 2008, at 15:27, Walter Bender wrote:

> I agree that it isn't very obvious from the Activities page how to
> find the Actvities/All page. I can imagine a
> non-native-English-speaking child not having an easy time of it
> either. Seems the pendulum has swung pretty far towards G1G1 and away
> from kids.
>
> -walter

Yea, as an Activity developer it confused me too. Took me a while to  
spot the All link (usually skip past all the -now out of date - noise  
at the top of the Activities page). Still also some what confused  
about where I can edit wiki Activity release versions, as there seem  
to be even more pages with links now, and many are now locked. I guess  
we're in lock-down/panic mode for a while until G1G1v2 details/ 
workflow clears through.

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] content bundle development

2008-10-05 Thread Gary C Martin
On 5 Oct 2008, at 17:48, Walter Bender wrote:

> You should only need an index.html file that points to your PDF.
>
> 
>  content="0;url=file:///home/olpc/Library/[bundle name]/[PDF
> name].pdf">
> 
>
> In the library/library.info file, there should be an activity_start
> entry as per:
>
> activity_start = index.html
>
> In theory, make_index.py reads this line from the info file when
> generating its index.

Philippe, why not just distribute the pdf, as a pdf? What benefit is  
there in making a single pdf into Library bundle (unless you're just  
testing the process)?

I must admit to not liking some of the old Library content, much of it  
Browse just copies into the Journal, then you have to resume the new  
pdf entry with Read, if you forget something is a pdf and have already  
viewed it, you end up with multiple copies in the Journal. Seems a bit  
backwards to me, I guess it makes the Library interface a zip archive  
utility for installing pdfs into the Journal.

Apologies if you were just testing the bundle process.

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] another response time

2008-10-01 Thread Gary C Martin
On 1 Oct 2008, at 13:49, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:

>> as you probably installed previously the Wikipedia activity, my guess
>> is that the jffs2 gc thread was taking most of the CPU.
>
> If I understand correctly, this raises the possibility that other
> actions performed *prior* to the launching of an Activity can
> noticeably affect the time it takes to launch that Activity.
>
> Would someone else please launch XaoS, and see what kind of
> "response time for the launch" they get?
>
> Tried it again, after the XO had sat there overnight (having now
> hopefully done everything it needed to, for jffs2 housekeeping).
> For me, the "launch screen" for XaoS pulsed for 100 seconds before
> the "activity screen" was drawn.  [My guess is that it is
> calculating the fractal picture before showing it.]

Hi Mikus,

XaoS on my XO B4, launches instantly. No seriously, it's absolutely  
the fastest launching activity. Here's the rub, because its so quick,  
it even beats the launcher window getting going, the working activity  
is hidden behind the launcher pulse effect window, which now can't  
tell that the activity is actually already running so does its blind  
'I'll sit here and strobe for a fixed time-out because I have no idea  
what happened.'

Take a look in the frame and you'll see the default grey circle that  
you can switch to.

Worth a ticket if there's not one already, it's an interesting case in  
how quick XO-1 HW really is with the right software (must be and  
absolutely massive price being paid currently for having the Pyhton  
environment I'd guess, but I'm sure there is a whole heap of  
optimisation to be made if/when made a dev cycle focus and team  
resources made available).

Made some great strides for 8.2, fingers crossed for 9.1.

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] Image Viewer Activity

2008-09-30 Thread Gary C Martin
On 29 Sep 2008, at 17:13, Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:

> A screenshot is at
> http://dev.laptop.org/~sayamindu/Captura%20de%20pantalla_1.png
> The code lives in Git:
> http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=users/sayamindu/imageviewer- 
> activity;a=tree
>
> Comments, patches and brickbats are welcome :-).


No brickbats (or patches), but just wanted to report one (very minor)  
Image Viewer misbehaviour. I noticed today that if I open an image,  
and then rename it within Image Viewer, it generates one of those  
"Keep Error" warnings about loosing all changes. The new name does  
actually change correctly. This error seems to crop up on a number of  
activities so I'm not sure if it's a Sugar bug or some common issue  
catching out Activity authors.

Regards,
--Gary

P.S. No one seems to have raised any issues yet with the icon sample I  
posted, so if you're happy with it, and I get no other feedback, I'll  
turn it into a SVG at end of tomorrow (though I may also try a version  
with a looking-glass partially over the image frame).
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Re: [sugar] Image Viewer Activity

2008-09-30 Thread Gary C Martin

On 30 Sep 2008, at 15:58, Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:
On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 7:57 PM, Gary C Martin  
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


P.S. Sayamindu, want an SVG icon to go with it? Or do you have  
something
planned? I was thinking just a rectangular picture frame with a  
very simple

mountain/sun/cloud type thing.


Yeah - an SVG icon would be awesome. My inkscape skills are horrible,
so I did not dare try to modify the icon of the the helloworld
activity ;-).
-sdg-


Just mock-ups for review, these are not svg format yet (I usually hand  
code the svg to keep cruft to a minimum). Any strong opinions out  
there regarding the design? One thing I am on the fence about is  
inclusion of a spy-glass, hanging over the bottom right of frame. That  
would say more 'viewer activity' and less 'image file', which is where  
this is closer to just now. However, adding a spy-glass would make the  
icon more fussy and require I ditch most of the picture detail (ending  
up more of a rectangle + spy-glass and maybe corner of a mountain/sun/ 
something).


<><><>


Feedback welcome (as I don't see much Sugar related visual design  
discussed going on around here).


--Gary

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Re: [sugar] Image Viewer Activity

2008-09-30 Thread Gary C Martin
On 29 Sep 2008, at 19:49, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>
> Am 29.09.2008 um 11:46 schrieb Sayamindu Dasgupta:
>
>> On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 11:57 PM, Gary C Martin
>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> On 29 Sep 2008, at 17:13, Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:
>>>
>>>> A screenshot is at
>>>> http://dev.laptop.org/~sayamindu/Captura%20de%20pantalla_1.png
>>>> The code lives in Git:
>>>> http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=users/sayamindu/imageviewer-activity;a=tree
>>>>
>>>> Comments, patches and brickbats are welcome :-).
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Sayamindu
>>>
>>> Hey, fantastic, thanks! :-)
>>>
>>> --Gary
>>>
>>> P.S. Any hints on changing the default activity that takes charge
>>> of a mime
>>> type?
>>>
>>
>> No clue on how to set the default activity associated with a mimetype
>> :-(. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know :-).
>
>
> /usr/share/sugar/data/mime.defaults

Thanks Bert, that trick works a treat. I guess this needs to be  
exposed at some future point in the Control Panel UI, or at least  
something that can be over-ridden by a local deployment with a  
customisation key. Imave viewing workflow with the Journal just got a  
whole bunch smoother!

--Gary

P.S. Sayamindu, want an SVG icon to go with it? Or do you have  
something planned? I was thinking just a rectangular picture frame  
with a very simple mountain/sun/cloud type thing.

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Re: [sugar] Image Viewer Activity

2008-09-29 Thread Gary C Martin
On 29 Sep 2008, at 17:13, Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I was a little annoyed with having to start up Browse to view images,
> and since I had done a small toy PyGTK based image viewer widget
> sometime back, I decided to put that in an activity over the weekend.
> You can download it from
> http://dev.laptop.org/~sayamindu/bundles/imageviewer/ImageViewer-1.xo
> It can zoom and rotate images. However, it cannot put anything in the
> journal, since a workaround for #8155 would mean eating up a lot of
> storage space (as I would have to create copies of the images for each
> journal entry).
> A screenshot is at
> http://dev.laptop.org/~sayamindu/Captura%20de%20pantalla_1.png
> The code lives in Git:
> http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=users/sayamindu/imageviewer- 
> activity;a=tree
>
> Comments, patches and brickbats are welcome :-).
> Thanks,
> Sayamindu

Hey, fantastic, thanks! :-)

--Gary

P.S. Any hints on changing the default activity that takes charge of a  
mime type?
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Re: [sugar] Any idea why ./setup fix_manifest should auto delete my locale directory?

2008-09-29 Thread Gary C Martin
On 29 Sep 2008, at 09:41, Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 5:58 AM, Gary C Martin  
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> 1) I used the "./setup dev" to try the syn link for testing, for a
>> while, but found it a risky approach. Several times the Sugar UI
>> wouldn't allow me to erase said Activity (no errors, just the  
>> activity
>> icon never went), at least once the UI wiped out all my source, and
>> the rest of the time the UI correctly removed just the sym link . I
>> just sugar-install-bundle now, it's safer :-)
>
> Ouch, we should fix that. Can you open a ticket please?

OK, will retrace my steps and file.

> The advantage of dev is that changes "autoapply". Obviously stuff like
> the locale is not autogenerated, but it still it seem to be an useful
> option.

Is 'autoapply' a git thing?

>> 2) I'm a git beginner, so "./setup release" has done 'wierd' things
>> given my current level of understanding. Apart from failing early due
>> to git, as I seem not to have told it correctly what branch I want to
>> merge from, even though I only have master so far and have nothing to
>> merge anyway (why is it doing a pull?). It 'kindly' auto created me  
>> an
>> unstable branch (which took me a while to realise and remove). So I'm
>> back to a manual workflow.
>
> Weird I'm not sure how release would create a branch. How was the  
> branch named?

Before trying './setup release', 'git branch' listed just 'master'.  
After, it then started listing 'master' and  'unstable', and it had  
moved me to the 'unstable' branch (i.e. had a * next to unstable).  
Luckily I'd only made small code tweaks and not committed anything  
before I noticed, so I just killed the unstable branch and went  
through a commit, push cycle, then elsewhere, cloned and re-checked  
nothing had been borked.

> But yeah, release needs love, it has been sort of abandoned for a
> while. It's one of the things I plan to do before the first 0.83
> release.

OK, understood. Will keep avoiding for now :-)

>> It is nice that "./setup.py" on it's own gives some hints:
>>
>> But the help goes no deeper, so it's just been trial and error from
>> here on :-)
>>
>> Is there any more documentation/cheat-sheet hiding somewhere on this
>> other than grokking the source code?
>
> Nope :( This is one of the pieces of documentation that we really need
> to write. A ticket to remind about it would be great.

OK done, #8713.

Thanks,
--Gary
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Re: [sugar] Any idea why ./setup fix_manifest should auto delete my locale directory?

2008-09-28 Thread Gary C Martin
On 19 Sep 2008, at 08:20, Simon Schampijer wrote:

> Gary C Martin wrote:
>> Any idea why running "./setup fix_manifest" should be auto deleting  
>> my  locale directory? Seems a little mean spirited of it - doesn't  
>> warn me  or anything.
>> --Gary
>
> Hi Gary,
>
> it does it because the builder removes the dir before creating the  
> locale again. 
> http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=sugar-toolkit;a=blob;f=src/sugar/activity/bundlebuilder.py;h=baeb8b63a79fa57b17197e8561d8179e3357b57e;hb=6a5d0c837beb06e34493b809fab58a568fbf2051#l94
>
> We needed it to get rid of the pseudo.po in the locale. Are there  
> any problems with it besides being bit ugly?


Thanks, I'm getting a better understanding now. What caught me out was  
trying to pick-up the quick fixes made for the Peru bundle, where the  
locale (I now understand) seems to have been manually created for  
a .linfo file to live in – so Activity names were at least in Spanish.

Now that I have a real po/es.po file, locale structures are auto  
generated and I can pretend the locale files don't exist from a  
development point of view (I think) :-)

The only other curiosity is the "./setup install" it seems to want to  
install in /usr/share/sugar/activities/ which seems a old (?) choice  
these days. I've just switched to using dist_xo to get a .xo, and then  
sugar-install-bundle.

Ooh, I guess there are another couple of queries I still have :-)

1) I used the "./setup dev" to try the syn link for testing, for a  
while, but found it a risky approach. Several times the Sugar UI  
wouldn't allow me to erase said Activity (no errors, just the activity  
icon never went), at least once the UI wiped out all my source, and  
the rest of the time the UI correctly removed just the sym link . I  
just sugar-install-bundle now, it's safer :-)

2) I'm a git beginner, so "./setup release" has done 'wierd' things  
given my current level of understanding. Apart from failing early due  
to git, as I seem not to have told it correctly what branch I want to  
merge from, even though I only have master so far and have nothing to  
merge anyway (why is it doing a pull?). It 'kindly' auto created me an  
unstable branch (which took me a while to realise and remove). So I'm  
back to a manual workflow.

It is nice that "./setup.py" on it's own gives some hints:

Available commands:

buildBuild generated files
dev  Setup for development
dist_xo  Create a xo bundle package
dist_source  Create a tar source package
release  Do a new release of the bundle
fix_manifest Add missing files to the manifest
genpot   Generate the gettext pot file
install  Install the activity in the system

But the help goes no deeper, so it's just been trial and error from  
here on :-)

Is there any more documentation/cheat-sheet hiding somewhere on this  
other than grokking the source code?

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] Another pass through some basic Activity test results

2008-09-27 Thread Gary C Martin
On 26 Sep 2008, at 19:31, Arjun Sarwal wrote:

> Hi,
>
> 2008/9/26 Gary C Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>> Here's a set of basic Activity test results for build 8.2-763, hope  
>> the ASCI
>> art doesn't get too mangled by the list server (need to view with a  
>> fixed
>>   Measure-20 . . - . x x x . x Doesn't sleep when Activity is  
>> in the
>>background (eats 75% cpu). Can't  
>> seem to
>>record anything. Keep error when
>
> -- When Measure is in background and some other Activity comes in
> foreground, then Measure releases sound device - you can record sound
> using any other program/application. In this state Measure also
> doesn't hog CPU.

Just testing with Measure-21 and 8.2-765, yes I see this now. However  
switching to any of the Neighborhood/Group/Home views does not seem  
count as putting Measure into the background, it still consumes the  
cpu and claims the sound input device. I'm guessing this is a Sugar  
behaviour? Is this a bug or a feature (feels like a Sugar bug that  
would make the UI sluggish for no go reason)?

> -- For recording the waveforms, within 'Sound' in toolbar, if 'Now' is
> selected  and the record button next to it is pressed, it will capture
> the current displayed waveform. If you select an interval and then
> press the record button, it will start saving waveforms at the
> specified interval and the record button will change to a 'stop'
> button. It will record a maximum of 10 waveforms.
>
> You will be able to see the waveforms as picture files in the Journal

Ahhh, thanks Arjun, so that's where they go to. I was expecting some  
visual representation within Measure, perhaps like Record does, where  
there is a tray at the bottom of the screen, or Browse and its  
bookmark thumbnails.

Is there a way to capture waveform images without the entire UI also  
appearing in the  screen shot?

> --For recording sensor values, within the 'Sensors' context , when one
> presses the record button it will start writing the sensor values (of
> the sensor connected at Analog Input) at the specified interval.
> You can have multiple recording sessions,i.e. stop it and then resume
> it and stop it again and resume it.
>
> You can see the logged sensor values in the Journal.  They are saved
> in csv format.
> (I am waiting for the spreadsheet activity to come soon! :) )

Thanks, I understand this now as well. I had not noticed that new  
entries were silently being entered in to the Journal. BTW: you can  
resume the CSV file and Write will display the list of values. I also  
tried copying the CSV to the clipboard, but it generated a blank  
clipboard icon and would not paste anywhere (probably a Sugar issue,  
the clipboard isn't very robust yet).

Some quick suggestions:

- The "Start Recording" text could say "Start Recording to Journal",  
that would have pointed me to check in the Journal after clicking  
record.

- The time section menu could say "Every 30 seconds", "Every 2  
minutes" etc. Before you explained, I believed that the times were the  
duration of the sample to be recorded, not the interval between each  
sample. The little toolbar interval icon makes more sense now that I  
know what the menu does ;-)

> Lastly, thanks for the feedback, its really useful. It helped me
> figure out a minor problem in sensor values recording (#8683) and I
> released ver21 that corrects that!


Glad it was of use! I'm a bit of an electronics type, so I'm really  
glad Measure is up and working again.

--Gary

P.S. Any chance of solving the "keep error" bug every time Measure is  
closed? I'm not quite sure what causes them.
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[sugar] [RELEASE] Moon 7

2008-09-26 Thread Gary C Martin
Hi,

Just released (yes I know, another) new version of Moon, main change  
is the inclusion of French language. Thanks go to Bastien Guerry for  
this!

NEWS
  * Added French locale by Bastien Guerry (thanks!)
  * Reduced frame padding to allow more space for longer French strings.
  * Fixed encoding issue affecting one string in the po file for both  
FR and ES.
  * Corrected missing newline from Juliana ES translation string.

If you have Moon already and are running a recent build, Software  
Update will get you a fresh copy. The direct bundle link is:

  http://wiki.laptop.org/images/c/c5/Moon-7.xo

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] [RELEASE] Moon 6

2008-09-26 Thread Gary C Martin
On 26 Sep 2008, at 10:45, Bastien wrote:

> Gary C Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>> Just released a new version of Moon, main change is the inclusion of
>> Spanish language. Thanks go to Gabriel Menini for volunteering her
>> skills!
>
> And here is french.
>
> 
> --  
> Bastien

Hi Bastien, wow, many thanks. I'll make sure this is into the next  
Moon build!

--Gary
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[sugar] [RELEASE] Moon 6

2008-09-25 Thread Gary C Martin
Hi,

Just released a new version of Moon, main change is the inclusion of  
Spanish language. Thanks go to Gabriel Menini for volunteering her  
skills!

NEWS
  * Now has a Spanish locale by Gabriel Menini (many thanks!)
  * Removed service_name from .info, that spec went away a long time  
ago.
  * Change methods from camelcase to make pylint happier...

If you have Moon already and are testing a recent build, Software  
Update will get you a fresh copy. The direct bundle link is:

  http://wiki.laptop.org/images/b/b9/Moon-6.xo

--Gary
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[sugar] Secrete hidden Home view styles

2008-09-25 Thread Gary C Martin
I was hoping the extra view types would have made it into the new  
release, but looks like some official decision to hide them has been  
made. Pitty. I just tested with 50 activities I've been testing, set  
as favourites, and the only 2 views that are usable are  
SUNFLOWER_LAYOUT and the less pretty but still usable RANDOM_LAYOUT.  
In both these views you get icons at full size.
RING_LAYOUT, BOX_LAYOUT and TRIANGLE_LAYOUT all seem to have suffered  
some recent huge allergic reaction to the previous complaint that,  
with many icons, they overlapped a little. Icons are now so small and  
far apart that each seems it could be at least +50% or more in size  
and still not touch each other. Oh well. Swings and roundabouts.
SUNFLOWER_LAYOUT just made it as my fav hack, pity the children of the  
world.
--Gary

P.S. For those kids willing, try http://wiki.laptop.org/go/ 
Hacking_Sugar and get the new builds most usable Home layout enabled :-)
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[sugar] Another pass through some basic Activity test results

2008-09-25 Thread Gary C Martin
Here's a set of basic Activity test results for build 8.2-763, hope  
the ASCI art doesn't get too mangled by the list server (need to view  
with a fixed width font). The Activities are in no specific order, and  
sorry if I missed out yours, but I wanted to post today incase it  
helps with looming/ongoing release decisions.


I do want to note something I think is new in 8.2-763 since my  
previous tests, 5 times during the run through below the XO became  
extremely sluggish, initially I just thought it was the poorly  
performing Activity, but checking top in 4 cases I could the sugar  
shell process eating 30-50% of CPU but apparently doing nothing (was  
not connected to a jabber server), and in the other case I had 2  
rainbow processes eating up 45% cpu each (though the Sugar UI showed  
no Activity instances were running). I am now retesting to try and  
catch the bad behaviour as it happens. Just wanted to warn testers to  
keep an eye on top, if things feel slow, you might have a hung-up  
process burning cycles and need to ctrl-alt-escape.


build 8.2-763   Activity name
| Could start
. = success | | Could stop (all must work ctrl-q alt-esc, toolbar,  
Frame)

- = N/A | | | Sound
x = fail| | | | Journal entry
? = unknown | | | | | Useful resume
* = see note| | | | | | Picks-up Journal entry name change while  
active
| | | | | | | Names Frame palette to match the  
resumed title

| | | | | | | | License entry in activity.info
| | | | | | | | | Using bundle_id in activity.info
| | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |
Browse-98 . . . . . x x . x
  Words-3 . . . . x x . x . Could keep a history of words  
searched for
  Chat-47 . . - . . x x . . Some subtle sound for arival and  
departure

would be very useful.
Firefox-6 . . - x x x x x x Sugar icon times out, left with  
grey circle
in the Frame activity instance  
area.

   Log-14 . . - . x x x . x
   Scratch-11 . . . x x x x * x Missing bundle_id, and  
license .info entry
is some text that points to some  
URL.
 Bounce-6 . . * . . x x x * No sound, not sure if that's a  
bug or is as
intended. Incorrect bundle_id  
string.

 Bridge-2 . . x . x x x . .
   Moon-6 . . - . . x x . .
   News Reader-24 . . - . x x . x x Feeds not remembered between  
sessions.

Record-58 . . . . . x . . x
Implode-5 . . - . . x . . x
 EToys-94 . . . . . . x . x Frame palette name is a rather  
unfriendly
string "/usr/share/etoys/ 
etoys.image".
Colors!-4 . x - . . x x x x Needs to resume showing painting  
end state,
not blank page at time zero.  
Toolbar stop
and ctrl-q fail to stop activity,  
only
alt-esc and Frame instance  
palette work.

  Speak-9 . . . . . x x . .
 Paint-23 . . - . . x . . x Some other tools could use cursor  
event fix.
 PlayGo-4 . . - . . x . . x Would be good if gnugo was  
included in .xo
x2o-5 . . - . . x x x x Main activity tool bar too full,  
keep and
stop icons end up in a hidden  
mini menu.
  Read-52 . . - . . x . . x Should default to setting input  
focus on the

document, not in the toolbar.
Geoquiz-3 . . - . x x x x x Would be nice if you could resume  
from where
you last left off. Needs a  
winning screen
with best times (auto quits  
currently).

 TurtleArt-10 . . - . . x . . x
  Memorize-28 . . . . * x . . x Game state is not saved to  
Journal, but can
create custom tile sets and save  
separately

to Journal.
 Xo IRC-4 . . - . x x x x x Perhaps remember open room tabs  
in Journal
state, nickname and IRC logs as  
well?

Analyze-5 . . - . x x x x x
  StarChart-4 . . - . . x x x x
  Model-8 . . - . * x . x . Stores incomplete diagram state  
to Journal.

  Terminal-18 . . - . x x x . x
TamTamSynthLab-51 . . . . . x x . .
TamTamMini-49 . . . . x x x . . Resuming does not restore the  
setting you
were using during the previous  
session.

 TamTamJam-51 . . . . . x x . .
TamTamEdit-50 . . . . . x . . .
 Pippy-27 . . . . . X . . . Easy to accidently wipe all your  
code by
clicking on example code, no  
warning given.
   Measure-20 . . - . x x x . x Doesn't sleep when Activity is in  
the
   

Re: [sugar] [RELEASE] Calculate 25

2008-09-24 Thread Gary C Martin
Hi Reinier,

On 24 Sep 2008, at 22:20, Reinier Heeres wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I released a new version of Calculate, it's available at:
>
> http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/calculate/Calculate-25.xo
>
> Sources are at:
>
> http://dev.laptop.org/pub/sugar/sources/calculate-activity/Calculate-25.tar.bz2
>
> NEWS entries:
>
> * Spell 'license' correctly
>
> Regards,
>
> --  
> Reinier Heeres

Not sure why but for me SW update is not picking up v25 (I have v24  
installed). I checked the wiky Activities page but you seem to have  
that set fine (SW update looks there by default). I'm wondering if  
your update_url = http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/calculate content is  
working correctly. I've not tried that mechanism yet, I've just been  
playing it safe and relying on the default Activities page search.

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] frame auto-visibility configuration

2008-09-24 Thread Gary C Martin
On 24 Sep 2008, at 18:25, Eduardo H. Silva wrote:

> Wow, just tried Erik's instructions for using xcompmgr, and it's
> amazing how swift the frame slides, and how I don't see any screen
> redraws. The experience is totally more fluid. Does it degrade overall
> performance? If not much, and if that performance degradation could be
> recovered in another area in Sugar (general performanfe improvements),
> I'd vote for this to exist in joyride and even part of future stable
> builds.

Just curious, you guys running on XO hardware?

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] frame auto-visibility configuration

2008-09-24 Thread Gary C Martin
On 24 Sep 2008, at 16:34, Gary C Martin wrote:

> I thought there was a bug with the current implementation that has
> slipped this release cycle. I understood the Frame was to reveal and
> then as you alt-tabbed you could see the focus move between the
> Activity instances (i.e. no switching has yet happened), and when you
> finally release the alt key (on the instance you are really after, not
> the Journal ;-b ), that instance is then focused.


Sorry, didn't describe that well on second read, and I just noticed  
that if you hit the alt-tab like some 1980 track'n field game in the  
arcades, you can select a different activity with out focusing all the  
others on the way there. This IMO is the wrong behaviour, even with a  
longer delay to allow less frenetic tab key hitting, the behaviour  
should be to focus ON RELEASE of the alt key. That way you can take  
all the time in the world scanning the icons and choosing where you  
need to get too.

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] frame auto-visibility configuration

2008-09-24 Thread Gary C Martin
On 24 Sep 2008, at 16:12, Erik Garrison wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 11:03:01AM -0400, Chris Ball wrote:
>> Hi Erik,
>>
>>> Hello all, On tabbing we are currently auto-toggling the frame.
>>> Are we sure that this is necessary?  Could we include a
>>> configuration option to change this?
>>
>> Sounds good, I'd agree with just removing it completely.
>
> Me too.

I thought there was a bug with the current implementation that has  
slipped this release cycle. I understood the Frame was to reveal and  
then as you alt-tabbed you could see the focus move between the  
Activity instances (i.e. no switching has yet happened), and when you  
finally release the alt key (on the instance you are really after, not  
the Journal ;-b ), that instance is then focused.

I agree if you are just tabbing between 2 instances the frame reveal  
is an unnecessary burden, but with 3 activities you'll probably be  
focusing on something you don't want 50% of the time (at least most  
kids will). More than 3 and you really are just ploughing the XO  
through a heap of Activity redraws.

I couldn't find the original trac ticket for this, anyone remember  
(wanted to go see where dev stalled)?

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] frame gets in the way when alt-tabbing

2008-09-23 Thread Gary C Martin
On 23 Sep 2008, at 15:08, Bert Freudenberg wrote:

>
> Am 23.09.2008 um 06:21 schrieb Erik Garrison:
>
>> Both Joyride and 8.2 streams have composition enabled by default.
>>
>> You can test composition by running "xcompmgr -d :0.0" in the
>> terminal.
>
>
> It is available, but the window manager does not use it, afaik.
>
> - Bert -

Not that I could find the "xcompmgr" command anyway, but if you run  
"matchbox-window-manager -?" it lists its compile time options, and  
there is a definite "composite support  no" line in there.

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] [RELEASE] Calculate 24

2008-09-21 Thread Gary C Martin
Hi Reinier,

On 21 Sep 2008, at 21:50, Reinier Heeres wrote:

> I released a new version of Calculate, it's available at:
>
> http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/calculate/Calculate-24.xo

I notice the various wiki Activities links don't point to the new  
version (so the new SW update process doesn't currently see your  
update yet). Is it ok for me to go update the wiki links?

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] G1G1v2 Activities

2008-09-19 Thread Gary C Martin
On 19 Sep 2008, at 22:50, C. Scott Ananian wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 10:01 PM, Gary C Martin  
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> However, any hints would be much appreciated as to what this last
>> remaining setup.py WARNING is trying to tell me?
>>
>>   WARNING:root:bundle_name deprecated, now comes from  
>> activity.info
>>
>> I've not had much luck tracking it down, and I make no reference to
>> bundle_name in my code.
>
> When you call BundleBuilder in setup.py, don't pass in a string in the
> constructor, leave it empty.  It interprets the argument as a
> 'bundle_name' and is complaining that it's going to ignore what you
> passed in and use the name specified in activity.info instead.
>
> Yes, it took me a *long* time to finally realize this.
> --scott

And just like magic, the warning has gone. Thanks scott!

Does anyone disagree with me modifying pages I find on the wiki that  
show this (incase there is some side effect I am unaware of)? So where  
I see:

bundlebuilder.start("HelloWorldActivity")

I'd edit to:

bundlebuilder.start()

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] G1G1 Pre-installed Activities Request for Help Testing

2008-09-19 Thread Gary C Martin
On 20 Sep 2008, at 01:42, jean piche wrote:

>> The only significant change from the original G1G1 set is the
>> TamTam. I think we should include 2 not 4 so as not to over weight
>> them against other activities.
>>
>> Let me know if anyone has comments on that (Jean can you live with
>> that?).
>
> Yes. However,  I think Mini and Edit would be my picks. Your call.

Oh I think Synthlab is great! Think of all those budding sound  
engineers! I know it currently (using ~8.2) starts to stutter if you  
hit more than a few keys at once and wave the mouse about, but it's  
makes some great sounds through an amp if your gentle on the keys. :-)

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] G1G1v2 Activities

2008-09-19 Thread Gary C Martin
On 19 Sep 2008, at 03:49, Douglas Bagnall wrote:

> Gary C Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> Perhaps correcting http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activity_tutorial would
>> help?
>
> Good point -- done, at least for host_version and bundle_id.  As it
> happens the actually published HelloWorld activity is one of the
> worst offenders, having no activity_version.  That might even break
> things.

Fab, thanks.

I guess the trick is to flag wave about the activities that do things  
'right', the only way I got things going was by rooting around in some  
of the existing activity source code, probably picking up all sorts of  
bad habits. Perhaps it could be worth linking to a few Activity source  
trees in git that folks think are a good next steps to investigate  
(for after someone has passed the 'hello world' type level stage)?

>> OK, well... I 'think' Moon-5 can now go on your shiny happy list –
>
> Yes!


:-)

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] Keeping Trac(k)

2008-09-19 Thread Gary C Martin
Hi Bert,

On 19 Sep 2008, at 13:27, Bert Freudenberg wrote:

> For keeping up with new Trac tickets I discovered this RSS feed:
>
> http://dev.laptop.org/timeline?ticket=on&max=50&daysback=7&format=rss
>
> ... which only has entries for opened and closed tickets. This is much
> more bearable than subscribing to the bug notify list.
>
> Even better would be if I could filter that by component :)

I think you can, I just made up a quick track query and my browser  
(Safari) indicates an RSS feed is available, can then subscribe.  
Here's the URI it gave me for new+reopened and Action is test in build:

feed://dev.laptop.org/query?status=new&status=reopened&col=id&col=summary&col=status&col=type&col=priority&col=milestone&col=component&next_action=test+in+build&format=rss

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] G1G1v2 Activities

2008-09-19 Thread Gary C Martin
On 19 Sep 2008, at 09:15, Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 4:01 AM, Gary C Martin  
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> I'm showing my age here, but is bundle_id a replacement for
>> service_name? Seem to be identical.
>
> Yeah, service_name is deprecated but they are basically the same
> thing. bundlebuilder should probably warn about it.
>
> Marco

So I should keep both in my activity.info for backwards compatibility  
with early builds?

Thanks for all the responses, I obviously haven't quite understood the  
way string translations** are designed for yet, will go have another  
read and poke about.

**basically trying to absorb the Moon.activity/locale/es/ 
activity.linfo that was added to Moon-4 for the Peru deployment  
bundle. I'm now assuming this file is being generated (or prevented  
from auto deletion) by something in po which I'm missed.

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] G1G1v2 Activities

2008-09-18 Thread Gary C Martin
On 19 Sep 2008, at 00:13, Douglas Bagnall wrote:

> (AFAICT) we're limited to:
>
> XaoS - org.codewiz.XaoS
> Sokoban  - de.hpi.swa.Sokoban
> Pipes- de.hpi.swa.Pipes
> Bounce   - bounce
> Chat - org.laptop.Chat
> DrGeoII  - org.ofset.DrGeoII
> Breakout - de.hpi.swa.Breakout
> Funtowers- de.hpi.swa.Funtowers
> DiceWars - de.hpi.swa.DiceWars
> X activity   - org.laptop.wiki.XActivity
> StackAttack  - de.hpi.swa.StackAttack
> Joke Machine - org.worldwideworkshop.JokeMachineActivity
> Sokobaenle   - de.hpi.swa.Sokobaenle
> BlockAttack  - de.hpi.swa.BlockAttack
> Abalone  - de.hpi.swa.Abalone
> SameGame - de.hpi.swa.SameGame
>
>
> Not that it really matters, of course.

Meow, ooh ouch ;-)

> Most activities fail by having no bundle_id, and only 36/115 have
> host_version.


Perhaps correcting http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activity_tutorial would  
help?

I'm showing my age here, but is bundle_id a replacement for  
service_name? Seem to be identical.

OK, well... I 'think' Moon-5 can now go on your shiny happy list –  
available from the the Activities wiki page or get it fresh via the  
Control Panel software updater if you already have a previous version.  
However, any hints would be much appreciated as to what this last   
remaining setup.py WARNING is trying to tell me?

WARNING:root:bundle_name deprecated, now comes from activity.info

I've not had much luck tracking it down, and I make no reference to  
bundle_name in my code.

--Gary
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[sugar] Any idea why ./setup fix_manifest should auto delete my locale directory?

2008-09-18 Thread Gary C Martin
Any idea why running "./setup fix_manifest" should be auto deleting my  
locale directory? Seems a little mean spirited of it - doesn't warn me  
or anything.

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] Activity testing on current 8.2 build 759

2008-09-10 Thread Gary C Martin
On 9 Sep 2008, at 21:07, Morgan Collett wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 18:11, Sayamindu Dasgupta  
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 8:39 AM, Erik Garrison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
>> wrote:
>>> On Mon, Sep 08, 2008 at 03:18:29AM +0100, Gary C Martin wrote:
>>>>
>>>> ==
>>>>
>>>> Paint-20
>>>> Could start? Yes
>>>> Could stop? Yes
>>>> Sound: N/A
>>>> Activity resume: Useful state is restored
>>>>
>>>> Note: Very laggy when you try to draw, perhaps 1 to 2 seconds  
>>>> behind
>>>> mouse movement! Currently quite unusable on XO hardware.
>>>>
>>>> ==
>>>>
>>>
>>> I've noticed this on 2263.  Perhaps it's a result of mouse driver
>>> changes?
>>>
>>> Erik
>>
>>
>> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/8285
>> I added a few workarounds to make it usable. Morgan will probably  
>> make
>> a new release (v21) soon with those patches. Once that is out, please
>> provide feedback on how it works.
>> Thanks,
>> Sayamindu
>
> Paint-22 has both of Sayamindu's patches for this, and is definitely  
> better.

Wow, absolutely! Just retested Paint-22 on an XO with 8.2-759 and it's  
a whole world of difference. Control actually now feels more  
responsive than in previous release builds. Really good fix :-)

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] Activity testing on current 8.2 build 759

2008-09-08 Thread Gary C Martin
On 9 Sep 2008, at 04:09, Erik Garrison wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 08, 2008 at 03:18:29AM +0100, Gary C Martin wrote:
>>
>> ==
>>
>> Paint-20
>> Could start? Yes
>> Could stop? Yes
>> Sound: N/A
>> Activity resume: Useful state is restored
>>
>> Note: Very laggy when you try to draw, perhaps 1 to 2 seconds behind
>> mouse movement! Currently quite unusable on XO hardware.
>>
>> ==
>>
>
> I've noticed this on 2263.  Perhaps it's a result of mouse driver
> changes?

Yea, pretty high possibility. It was suggested that with the new  
improved (higher frequency) of mouse tracking event messages, Paint is  
now unable to keep up it's drawing rate. The suggestion being Paints  
design needs a tweak so that it doesn't try to respond to every single  
mouse event. Oh dear I'm now really badly paraphrasing Jim Gettys, of  
all people, so I'll just stand back and point to his email earlier in  
the week incase you missed :-)

http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-September/008100.html

--G
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[sugar] Activity testing on current 8.2 build 759

2008-09-07 Thread Gary C Martin
In no particular order, here's a list of basic activity test results  
for the current 8.2 build 759 on a B4 XO. I've included both success  
and failure so folks know what was tested. I was a little surprised to  
see quite how many activities don't actually keep any useful state in  
the Journal for resuming – though I'm also an offender here if you  
don't count a version in git I haven't .xo bundled yet :-)

==

Log-14
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: N/A
Activity resume: No useful state

Note: What would be a useful state to keep?

==

Scratch-7
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: Works
Activity resume: No journal entry!!

==

Bounce-6
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: Broken
Activity resume: No useful state

==

Bridge-1
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: Broken
Activity resume: No useful state

==

Moon-4
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: N/A
Activity resume: No useful state

==

News Reader-24
Could start? No

Note: Has hard-coded path to old isolation directory that no longer  
exists

==

Record-57
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: N/A
Activity resume: Useful state is restored

==

Implode-4
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: N/A
Activity resume: Useful state is restored

==

EToys-89
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: Works
Activity resume: Useful state is restored

==

Browse-96
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: N/A
Activity resume: Useful state is restored

==

Words-3
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: N/A
Activity resume: No useful state

==

Chat-46
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: N/A
Activity resume: Useful state is restored

==

Firefox-6
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: N/A
Activity resume: No journal entry!!

==

Colors!-4
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Alt-esc only (toolbar stop icon has no effect)
Sound: N/A
Activity resume: Useful state is restored

Note: Needs to resume showing the painting end state, not a blank page  
at time zero.

==

Speak-7
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: Works
Activity resume: Useful state is restored

==

Paint-20
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: N/A
Activity resume: Useful state is restored

Note: Very laggy when you try to draw, perhaps 1 to 2 seconds behind  
mouse movement! Currently quite unusable on XO hardware.

==

PlayGo-3
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: N/A
Activity resume: Useful state is restored

==

x2o-5
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: N/A
Activity resume: Useful state is restored

Note: Main activity tool bar too full, keep and stop icons end up in a  
hidden mini menu.

==

Read-50
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: N/A
Activity resume: No useful state

Note: Expected previous pdf page number to be displayed after a  
resume. Starting an empty read activity from a home view should invoke  
the journal object picker to allow pdf selection.

==

Geoquiz-3
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: N/A
Activity resume: No useful state

Note: Would be nice if you could resume from where you last left off,  
also a winning screen with your top time scores would be good  
(currently the activity just auto quits on success).

==

TurtleArt-9
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: N/A
Activity resume: Useful state is restored

==

Memorize-27
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: Works
Activity resume: No useful state

Note: Current active game state is not saved to journal, though you  
can create custom tile sets and save them separately to the journal  
for later use.

==

Xo IRC-4
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: N/A
Activity resume: No useful state

Note: Perhaps remember any open IRC room tabs in journal state,  
nickname as well?

==

Analyze-5
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: N/A
Activity resume: No useful state

==

StarChart-4
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: N/A
Activity resume: Useful state is restored

==

Model-8
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: N/A
Activity resume: Stores an incomplete diagram state to journal

==

Terminal-15
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: N/A
Activity resume: No useful state

==

TamTamSynthLab-50
Could start? Yes
Could stop? Yes
Sound: Works
Activity resume: Useful state is restored


Re: [sugar] [PATCH] New Activity Launcher

2008-08-23 Thread Gary C Martin
On 22 Aug 2008, at 20:45, Eben Eliason wrote:

> My recent interactions with the launcher have led me to frustration.
> I updated a number of tickets on the subject, and also created an
> aggragator to track them all (http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/8090).  The
> attached patch is an attempt to solve nearly all of the known
> problems.  Testing would be very much appreciated.
>
> The only known issue I've found with this patch is that you can't
> click on the activity level button (in the Frame) while a launcher is
> the selected activity (though you can click on the launcher icon
> directly).  Marco understands this issue, but feels we might be better
> off working in a fix separately, since it could be more invasive.
> Apart from that know bug, I believe that this new launcher yields
> expected behavior everywhere; if you disagree, or find other bugs, let
> me know!

Hi Eben, I applied this to a joyride-2330, on an XO, and initially it  
feels _much_ better.

However, I've also noticed, particularly when test launching  
Calculate-23, if you reveal the frame (mouse corner or key), after  
letting the icon pulse get going, Calculate will fail to start (it's  
logs complain about rainbow**). I've also managed it with Pippy-25  
though not yest with other activities, so it might be a timing issue.  
When the frame is invoked and the activity fails to launch, there's  
quite a bit of screen redraw/flicker, wonder if the frame arrival is  
overlapping the time that the activity is redrawing and focus is going  
astray mid way through. (email if you want some specific testing from  
me)

***The program 'rainbow-daemon' recieved an X Window System error  
(both pippy and calculate logs had this during a launch fail)

Regards,
--Gary

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Re: [sugar] commanding the movement of things on the screen

2008-08-21 Thread Gary C Martin
On 21 Aug 2008, at 20:22, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:

> I use an external USB trackball, and do most of my work in Terminal.
> On numerous occasions, when I have moved the cursor to a scrollbar
> location above the slider, and have left-button clicked ONCE (to
> scroll up one screen's worth) -- the XO has spontaneously scrolled
> up many many screen's worth.
>
> The best explanation I can come up with is that instead of
> "interpreting" a _single_ button-click command, the XO behaved as
> though a whole _series_ of such commands had been presented.
> [I have no reason to believe that the trackball is at fault.]

Yes, I've seen something like this also, specifically while trying to  
scroll one page in the Log activity (XO B4 trackpad, joyride 2301,  
Q2E13), perhaps 4 or 5 times now. I'd assumed I might have been trying  
to scroll at the same moment that 10's of pages of log entries may  
have suddenly arrived, but I'm beginning to doubt that.

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] Please help test our new 8.2.0 weekly beta, joyride-2301!

2008-08-18 Thread Gary C Martin
On 15 Aug 2008, at 09:49, S Page wrote:

> The Firefox icon in Software update and Home view is mysterious ;-)

 From my testing on XO B4 hardware can I courteously suggest you at  
least be wary of running it. It will randomly eat your available CPU  
cycles and available memory. If you watch cpu load with it even open  
on the default mainly blank page you will see it surging resources  
from the system every now and again, for no obvious reason, and if you  
actually use it to start surfing, say perhaps the activities page,  
with perhaps some other activity running, you're fairly sure to bring  
the whole system to a grinding halt; stuttering cursor; and a forced  
reboot.

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] 0.84 goals

2008-08-15 Thread Gary C Martin
On 15 Aug 2008, at 15:57, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:

>>> Why not let accessing of *deferred* Activities be handled by  
>>> Journal ?
>>
>> Because it involves an extra step or two that in practice people  
>> don't
>> take. Personally, I would even go to the extreme that the Home View
>> should by default open the most recent Journal entry.
>
> I'll be the first to admit that the current implementation of
> Journal is cumbersome.  But if it is possible to add palette entries
> to Activity icons on Home view (for resuming something), it ought to
> be possible to add similar "short cuts" on the Journal screen.
>
> I can get to the Home view by pressing the 'Home view' key on the
> keyboard.  I can get to Journal by pressing the 'Journal' key on the
> keyboard.  For me, going to the Journal takes no more steps than
> going to Home View.  [And since Home view provides alternate ways of
> presenting its information, why oughtn't Journal provide alternate
> ways of presenting *its* information (including a clickable "short
> cut" listing of the most recently saved Activities) ?]
>
> I was speaking from the point of view of *defining* the purpose of
> the Home view.  If 'resume' is there, should 'erase' be there also
> -- what if the user mis-positions his click ?
>
> 
>
> I'm a procedure-oriented person, not an object-oriented person.  So
> it has taken me effort to mentally construct a role for the Journal.
> If "short cuts" to the most-recent uses of the Activities are
> provided elsewhere, why bother having a Journal in the first place ?


OK, how about...

Think of an iceberg, where the home view will expose just the tip of  
recent activity; it's the working set of recent work. The journal then  
provides a deep, below the waterline, historical view/context for when  
you need to find that photo/assay/painting from a few days to months  
back; The journal can have the extra UI details needed to perform  
these deep search/filtering, and maintenance activities (add tags,  
description, rename, star, copy to flash mem stick, erase). The home  
view can then keep a clean UI focus on your recent*** working set.

***with the top frame being the immediate view of 'right now'.

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] 0.84 goals

2008-08-14 Thread Gary C Martin
On 14 Aug 2008, at 22:08, Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:

> Here is what I have so far.
>
> * Next generation journal
> * File sharing
> * Collaboration scalability
> * Responsive UI
> * Stable activities API
> * Official Sugar LiveCD
> * Compatibility with desktop applications

Well regarding that last one, my experiences with the latest Firefoxs  
in Joyride on a real XO, have been horrific to say the least, system  
lockups, UI so slow it took 5min+ to show the frame, not able to quit  
(usually have to hard power off). So I'd rather folks focus on elegant  
and needed sugar activities, that are designed for the environment and  
audience, rather than some hard core, geek hacker driven, Linux  
workstation.

> * Quality and reliability

--- snip ---

> I know it's very vague for now. But if something is obvious missing
> please let me know or edit directly.

I'm not sure where this one goes, but I'd love to see the home views  
activity icons and palettes represent the latest N journal entries for  
said activities. I think this will be a great way to leverage the  
Journal benefits by reducing new activity cruft, encouraging folks to  
resume using the home views:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Activity_management-07.jpeg

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] non-colored activity icons in frame

2008-08-14 Thread Gary C Martin
On 14 Aug 2008, at 13:17, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:
> Just tried faster-2301.  In the top bar of the Frame, the icons for
> the currently active Activities were being shown in black-and-white.
>  Looked more aesthetic when they were shown in the user's colors.

Just testing joyride-2301 here: Activity instance icons in the Frame  
top section are correctly appearing in my XO user colours, so perhaps  
it's just something in the faster stream that's being tweaked.

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] Journal view "flips" topmost entries

2008-08-11 Thread Gary C Martin
On 11 Aug 2008, at 18:50, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:

> One problem I have with my XO is that it sometimes is too SLOW for
> my reactions.  Just now had been trying out an Activity.  Ended it.
> Went to the Journal, with the intention of erasing the entry that
> Activity logged there.  Saw that entry at the very top, clicked on
> the little arrow at the right end of the top entry, went to the
> toolbar and clicked on 'Erase', got put back in Journal -- and saw
> the entry I wanted to erase still being shown on the Journal screen.

Mikus, random thought: Did you have any activities shared at the time?  
I've noticed quite a lag when switching between activities or to sugar  
views once you're sharing something. The lag seems to be a long pause  
that ends once the buddy icons in the right frame get updated. I  
haven't filed a ticket yet as I only have one XO for testing and it's  
hard to catch folks to share (xochat.org seems down just now).

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] new 8.2.0 beta joyride - upgrading via control panel ?

2008-08-11 Thread Gary C Martin
On 11 Aug 2008, at 15:13, C. Scott Ananian wrote:

> Please send me sugar logs for any activity update control panel
> failures, along with details on what activity it was attempting to
> download at the time.  Please be sure you are using joyride-2266 or
> later, and that you have suspend turned off.

OK, will do. Can you hint where update control panel will be logging?  
I looked for them in vain when I was having problems with it.

> On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 6:59 AM, Walter Bender <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> > wrote:
>> then one day, it just worked. The usual behavior seems to be that it
>> will succeed to upgrade most of the activities and report failures on
>> a handful, offering to try again (although it is not clear that that
>
> I am not terribly interested in bug reports on this particular
> behavior:

Yea Scott, this really shows, it's hard to know what's at fault when  
things just stop for no obvious reason – but I know you core folks are  
real busy, so I don't take offence and hope the rest of the Activity  
developers don't either.

> this is caused by activity authors giving inconsistent
> information on the Activities wiki page and/or their update url.
> Please file those bugs against the individual activities; I don't
> particularly want to hear about them.


Has any one oficially put out a clear heads message for the Activity  
authors, documenting the change for future release? Or are we all  
meant to go geek through the updater source and try and work out  
what's going on. I read the lists and track pretty closely, I'm sure  
most don't, I think I saw a single paragraph kicking around the  
wiki.laptop.org somewhere – h – OK found it, so this is now the  
official request and we (Activity developers) should pick it up and run?

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activity_bundles#.info_File_Format

info File Format

update_url = ...

URL to retrieve update information; implemented in #4951. The software  
update control panel will attempt to look for information about the  
latest version of the activity by fetching the given url with first  
the core OS build number, then the release number, then the release  
major version number appended, then finally as-is. (For example, if  
your update URL tag has the value 'http://host.net/bundles/FooBar'and  
you are currently running release 8.1.1 (core OS 708), the following  
URLs will be tried, in this order:http://host.net/bundles/FooBar/708, 
http://host.net/bundles/FooBar/8.1.1 
, http://host.net/bundles/FooBar/8.1,http://host.net/bundles/FooBar .)  
The contents of the URLs should be in the activity microformat. If no  
update_url is specified, http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities will be  
used.

--Gary


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Re: [sugar] Reviews report

2008-08-11 Thread Gary C Martin
On 11 Aug 2008, at 13:15, Release Team wrote:

> = Rejected requests =
>
> Palette persist over zoom levels
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/4084
>
> GTK stock icon problems (has patch)
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7641
>
> Greyscreen on home view after looking at list view
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7836
>
> HippoCanvas does not support RTL rendering in RTL locales
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/3108
>
> Presence Service should start even with no interfaces up
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7451
>
> Updates to Browse-92 fail.
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7494
>
> Zoom toolbar button should have a fixed order
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6643
>
> Default home view should be Ring, not Freeform
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7759
>
> Safer to always install, rather than comparing versions
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7534
>
> alt+tab switching is slow because activities are notified unneccessary
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7625
>
> Journal with time filters (most commonly 'past week') scrolling  
> behaviour anomaly
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7234
>
> Sugar shell crashes when threads used.
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7486
>
> ohm and sugar should cooperate to unfreeze dcon
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7357
>
> sugar-shell enters in infinite loop after a failed shutdown
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7566
>
> cp: Inconsistent behavior after changing the xo color
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7560
>
> No feedback from 'register' request.
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6136
>
> Speaker device has inconsistent behavior
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7248
>
> react gracefully to dbus services being restarted
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7740

H, all the review reports upto now seemed to make sense (and was  
useful to see), but this one's got me confused... I recognise quite a  
few of these rejected request as items already fixed, tested and  
working in the joyride builds. Are we just down to release timing cuts  
now to try and make the 8.2.0 official branch?

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] Please help test our new 8.2.0 weekly beta, joyride-2263!

2008-08-08 Thread Gary C Martin
On 8 Aug 2008, at 16:21, Daniel Drake wrote:

> On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 15:45 +0200, NoiseEHC wrote:
>> Speak cannot be started (the icon blinks for a long time and then the
>> application stops starting).
>
> Please file a ticket.

Already there, this one is down to package changes (Numeric in this  
case). There was some talk about a trivial one line fix in these  
broken activities (numpy related I vaguely remember). Did anyone  
making these package changes actually officially email the activity  
owners to let them know?

http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7852

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] Question about write from Niue -OLPC training

2008-08-08 Thread Gary C Martin
Hi Greg,

On 7 Aug 2008, at 12:16, Greg Smith wrote:

> For the list, I don't know what version of Write or Browse I have on
> this XO. How do I determine that?

Hmmm, no one else seems to have answered you here yet, so here's an  
old (and quite long) single line Terminal command I had generated a  
while back to list all Activity versions installed anywhere on an XO,  
hope it's of help (feel free to post it to a wiki somewhere if you  
think it may be useful to others, though obviously not needed on newer  
os images thanks to the home page list view):

sudo find / -name activity.info -exec grep -H activity_version {} \;  
2> /dev/null | sed 's/\.activity\/activity\/activity 
\.info:activity_version = /-/' | sed 's/.*\///' | sort

This will show something like the below output; note that you may see  
some duplicate activities when they are stored out of the olpc home  
directory (i.e down in /usr/share/sugar/), this is due to the run and  
pristine file system hard link alternate boot image trickery, see 
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Filesystem 
  for some pretty pictures.

AcousticMeasure-12
Analyze-5
Bounce-5
Browse-95
Calculate-23
Chat-45
Colors-3
Develop-34
Etoys-87
Journal-96
Journal-96
Log-13
Maze-5
Measure-17
Model-8
Moon-3
NewsReader-24
Paint-19
Pippy-25
Read-49
Record-56
Speak-5
StarChart-4
TamTamEdit-49
TamTamJam-50
TamTamMini-48
TamTamSynthLab-50
Terminal-15
TurtleArt-7
Words-2
Write-57

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] New joyride build 2258

2008-08-06 Thread Gary C Martin
On 6 Aug 2008, at 14:47, Eben Eliason wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 7:10 AM, Build Announcer v2  
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> --- Changes for sugar 0.81.8-2.20080806git0fc57309f3.olpc3 from  
>> 0.81.8-1.fc9 ---
>> + 7495 open cp software-updater on first boot after an update
>
> I don't want this!  I keep shouting about it and no one seems to be
> listening!  Home absolutely needs to be home base, especially after an
> update.  I'm fine with tossing up a non-modal alert at boot which
> prompts the user to update right away, with a button which reveals the
> software update control panel module, but I'm NOT OK with anything
> which, unbeknownst to the user, flits them away to some other part of
> the system without his/her consent.

+1

Just installed 2258 here, my first impression was that home page had  
hung/locked-up, noticed no Journal, tried to click an activity to  
launch something and then was dragged away into the control panel auto  
update. One of those non-modal alerts (horizontal black strip that  
pops out from below the toolbar) would be more friendly. The XOs been  
downloading updates for 10+min now. BTW: I do really like the standard  
updater (progress bar still needs some tweaking so it keep a grey  
outline and isn't all white fill), just would be nice to alow the user  
to trigger it***

***I also felt the the behaviour where software update starts as soon  
as you click on the control panel icon was a little off. Would be more  
user friendly to display the updater interface with a button to  
clearly initiate the update process. Currently, if a kid goes poking  
about the control panel UI (a good thing), they are going to be  
triggering unintended update attempts for sure – on all kinds of slow  
network topologies...

--G
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Re: [sugar] Question about clipboard service

2008-08-05 Thread Gary C Martin
On 5 Aug 2008, at 16:50, Eben Eliason wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 3:44 AM, Greg Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
> wrote:
>> 7 - Is cut supported? How do you remove things from the clipboard?  
>> How
>> many items can it hold?
>
> Cut is definitely supported, and will remain mapped to the Ctrl-X
> shortcut familiar to many, however it will not retain the same name.
> Instead, we've applied the notion of "cut" as "copy and erase", which
> makes clear that the result of the action is twofold: first it
> performs a copy action, and second it erases the item selected.  Since
> these semantics make "cut" an alternate form of the copy action, "copy
> and erase" will actually appear as a secondary option in the palette
> for the "copy" button itself.

Random though; could there also be potential for a "paste and erase"?  
The intention being I could be reading a web article, perform several  
copy actions of separate text paragraphs I want to quote, then switch  
to write and perform several "paste and erase" actions to pop the  
clippings off the stack. Basically an easy way of unwinding the  
clipboard stack into another Activity. This could also go hand in hand  
with a potential keyboard modifier (Alt?) to allow a drag and erase of  
an clipping out of the clipboard in one step**

**usually you only paste an item once, so this extra function would  
reduce the management steps a kid needs to do to erase each used  
clipping.

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] How do I connect to a Jabber server ?

2008-08-05 Thread Gary C Martin
On 5 Aug 2008, at 09:46, Morgan Collett wrote:

>> The xochat.org jabber server is the one I seem to reliably attach to
>> for my XO testing, though I'd love to see an official developer  
>> jabber
>> server, so as not to pester real G1G1 users with my tests, and so we
>> can 'eat our own dogfood' in a dev environment**. Connecting to a
>> remote jabber server is currently the way to see and share with other
>> remote users*** in the neighborhood.
>>
>> ** perhaps Sugar Labs could run such an environment?
>
> Collabora run a server which is the default setting for jhbuild:
> olpc.collabora.co.uk

That's good to hear re-confirmed, but I've not seen any buddies/ 
activities shared on olpc.collabora.co.uk for weeks/months. I'd just  
assumed your server was always borked by lots of connections, or in  
some unstable dev status, so I had switched over to xochat.org which  
always seems to respond and have buddies showing.

Using your recent "nc olpc.collabora.co.uk 5222" trick I can now see  
olpc.collabora.co.uk is responding with some xml just fine. So, is no  
one else using it, or should I do some debugging? Are you running a  
dev version of a jabber server that's doing something different?

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] How do I connect to a Jabber server ?

2008-08-04 Thread Gary C Martin
On 4 Aug 2008, at 23:40, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:
> My _wish_ is simple:  I want a chance to contact (for Chat, or for
> collaboration) another XO at a different location.  Basically, for
> me to initiate that, that other XO's icon needs to be shown in my
> Neighborhood view.
>
> Currently, only icons from the LOCAL mesh to which I am connected
> will show up in my Neighborhood view.  My question in this topic is:
> "What do I need to do to have icons from REMOTE locations show up ?"

If gabble fails to get to a named jabber server (set in the control  
panel) it defaults to salute. This may be via an access point (if  
you've attached to one) or via the mesh (if it has no luck with an  
AP). Once it's looking at the mesh it tries each of the 3 slices of  
spectrum available (1, 6 & 11) looking for a school server. If it find  
none it seems to default to go sit on mesh, channel 1, hoping to meet  
another XO there (though it may re-scan occasionally).

Now the scanning sequence used to be as stated above (previous  
official releases), but in recent joyrides I find my XO immediately  
attaches to my preferred AP and doesn't waist time sniffing the mesh  
(I like this, but 3 kids under a tree may not).

The xochat.org jabber server is the one I seem to reliably attach to  
for my XO testing, though I'd love to see an official developer jabber  
server, so as not to pester real G1G1 users with my tests, and so we  
can 'eat our own dogfood' in a dev environment**. Connecting to a  
remote jabber server is currently the way to see and share with other  
remote users*** in the neighborhood.

** perhaps Sugar Labs could run such an environment?

*** recently, can even work with non XO jabber clients, though I've  
not been able to test properly yet.

Note: current joyrides past 2241seem to have a broken eth0 networking,  
allegedly the (local) msh0 is still working but I have no way to test  
that side of things with a single XO.

--Gary


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[sugar] SOM posted for July Sugar list activity

2008-08-01 Thread Gary C Martin
For those curious, I just posted the Sugar Self Organising Map (SOM)  
for the month of July:

http://sugarlabs.org/go/Community/SOM#Sugar_Mailing_List

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] joyride-weekly: joyride-2230

2008-07-31 Thread Gary C Martin
On 31 Jul 2008, at 14:44, Bert Freudenberg wrote:

> On 31.07.2008, at 15:14, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>
>> On 31.07.2008, at 02:41, Michael Stone wrote:
>>
>>> Dear world,
>>>
>>> This week's 'please test this joyride' is joyride-2230. Test group
>>> release notes, care of Charlie, are available at
>>>
>>> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/
>>> Test_Group_Release_Notes#Build_Joyride_2230
>>
>>
>> olpc-update thinks that build does not exist.
>
>
> The error actually is "unexpected server greeting: fakeroot"

Glad it's not just me then. I thought I had some random intermittent  
network issue (for the last week or two) so had given up with olpc- 
updates rsync attempts to the server. I defaulted back to manually  
downloading the .toc and .usb files from the web server, sticking them  
on a USB stick and using olpc-update --usb.

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] specifying what services Activities may use

2008-07-29 Thread Gary C Martin
Hi Mikus,

On 29 Jul 2008, at 22:09, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:

>> Please ensure that you have filed tickets for each and every one of  
>> them
>
> What good will that do?
>
> At the beginning of this year, I wrote a ticket saying an Activity
> would not start.  Without notifying me, someone re-assigned *me* as
> the owner of that ticket -- presumably making it my responsibility
> to fix that Activity so it would start.

Just assign the damn things back if that happens and hope you get a  
better triage next time around. I've not had this happen to me yet,  
but as mstone enjoys saying, "be bold"... I must say there is quite  
some guilt filing bugs this close to a release knowing the lack of  
resources, but reporting is kind'a the whole point close to release I  
guess. Very satisfying when you can catch something reproducible and  
one of the team can get the bug squished.

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] Joyride 2201 blocker

2008-07-23 Thread Gary C Martin
Just added a ticket for this myself:

http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7617

Seems to affect quite a number of keys – at least on my XO B4 with  
Spanish overlay (worked fine in 2174). I'd previously added ticket  
(Journal search and frame key have no effect):

http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7616

But am now assuming some keyboard mapping has gone wonky in the latest  
Joyrides (it's been about a week since Joyride was available to the  
non-hardcore dev so 2174 was last I could install).

--Gary

On 24 Jul 2008, at 01:28, Daniel Drake wrote:

> On Wed, 2008-07-23 at 19:20 -0400, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:
>> I do most of my work with CLI from the Terminal.
>>
>> On my XO with Joyride 2201 there is no "bash history" accessible in
>> Terminal -- hitting up-arrow at the prompt does NOT call up what had
>> been previously entered at the prompt.  ["bash history" is
>> accessible from the text console (alt-ctl-F1).]
>
> Please file a ticket, and also let us know which joyride version this
> did work with (if known).
>
> Thanks,
> Daniel
>
>
> ___
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[sugar] Record-55 issue was B4 hardware failure (Was: Design Question)

2008-07-20 Thread Gary C Martin
On 20 Jul 2008, at 13:40, Bobby Powers wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 7:19 AM, Tomeu Vizoso  
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Works quite well here in a MP with last joyride. Just did some light
>> testing, though.
>
> I've also tested it (lightly) on 3 machines running Joyride ~2170.
>
>> Tomeu
>>
>> On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 1:06 PM, Walter Bender <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
>> > wrote:
>>> Not good news. I don't recall that anything should have changed
>>> between B4 and the C series that would have impacted Record. I'll  
>>> have
>>> to check it out on more machines...
>>>
>>> -walter
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 1:14 AM, Gary C Martin  
>>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>> On 19 Jul 2008, at 00:18, Walter Bender wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> (Now that we have a reasonably stable joyride-with a working  
>>>>> Record
>>>>> activity again-I'll try to get a quick user study pulled  
>>>>> together in
>>>>> Peru on this topic by someone less bias than myself.)
>>>>
>>>> Hmmm, not convinced Record-55 is working well enough yet  
>>>> (Joyride-2174),
>>>> unless it's just failing on my B4 hardware. I get everything from  
>>>> a black
>>>> feed, to a green/purple stripy feed. Not managed to actually  
>>>> record anything
>>>> with it yet. Doesn't seem to help launching Record first after a  
>>>> reboot and
>>>> with no other activities (think that was one of the open bugs).
>
> just did that (boot then launch record) and it worked alright for me
> (on a MP machine).
>
> bobby

Thanks for all the feedback.

OK, after a lot of testing and looking through logs I finally  
accidently stumbled on the problem. It seems to be a HW fault on my  
B4. Perhaps a dry solder joint, cracked pcb or camera component not  
seated correctly. If I squeeze the right side of the screen, just  
below the camera lense, Record-55 starts displaying the video image,  
sometimes blank, sometimes green/purple, sometimes back to normal.  
Managed to successfully recorded a video clip while the image was good.

I'm reasonably handy with a soldering iron so I'll open up the unit  
and see if I can see the specific cause. Is there a specific place I  
should report this HW issue incase it is more than single an unlucky  
occurrence?

--Gary


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Re: [sugar] Design Question

2008-07-18 Thread Gary C Martin
On 19 Jul 2008, at 00:18, Walter Bender wrote:

> (Now that we have a reasonably stable joyride-with a working Record
> activity again-I'll try to get a quick user study pulled together in
> Peru on this topic by someone less bias than myself.)

Hmmm, not convinced Record-55 is working well enough yet  
(Joyride-2174), unless it's just failing on my B4 hardware. I get  
everything from a black feed, to a green/purple stripy feed. Not  
managed to actually record anything with it yet. Doesn't seem to help  
launching Record first after a reboot and with no other activities  
(think that was one of the open bugs).

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] Programming environments on the XO

2008-07-17 Thread Gary C Martin
On 18 Jul 2008, at 02:25, Martin Sevior wrote:

>> 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.


The codingmonkeys with their great SubEthaEdit also made very good use  
out of background colour tints to indicate authorship. Works really  
well:

http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/images/sessionbig.png

As I remember, there is a button to toggle the background colours on  
and off depending what you want to see (and I think mouse over pop-ups  
in addition to show the authorship of a text block).

Now if I actually had other friends to work with, SubEthaEdit, would  
have been my editor of choice ;-)

--Gary


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Re: [sugar] Display warnings in sugar

2008-07-17 Thread Gary C Martin
On 17 Jul 2008, at 20:39, Michael Stone wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 10:27:21AM -0300, Emiliano Pastorino wrote:
>
> Emiliano,
>
> I'm not sure of the right way to help you in the long term, but if you
> want a quick hack, you might try something like:
>
>   1. Install a cronjob that runs every few minutes.
>   2. When it runs, it should check the available space.
>   3. If it concludes that space is low, pop up a warning.
>
>  Warnings can be simple X or pygtk programs (see the 'dialog'  
> Linux
>  scripts for ideas). To get this hooked up to the running X  
> display,
>  you'll need to set some environment variables:
>
>   DISPLAY=:0
>   XAUTHORITY=/home/olpc/.Xauthority
>
> Ask if you need more help.

Just out of interest, where is the code that raises the AP network  
authentication name/pass request? That feels like a pretty close  
template fit to such a critical warning.

I must just say I'm not 100% convinced about how successful a warning  
will be (but it is better than nothing). I've hit the issue a couple  
of times and it was not some slow incremental case where I could take  
sensible action. Both times, as I recall, I was downloading some  
~large library or binary which maxed out the space in one go before I  
realised the size.

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] Write needs your help (was Re: Programming environments on the XO)

2008-07-17 Thread Gary C Martin
On 17 Jul 2008, at 20:37, C. Scott Ananian wrote:

> $0.01: we shouldn't feel like shipping unsugarized apps is a failure:
> better an working app w/ crappy UI than no working app at all!

Sorry to disagree Scott. I'm not so sure... One 'crappy' UI or weak  
security riddled activity, leads to a dozen more, and then suddenly no  
one bothers and it's just a rush to slam in every random feature under  
the sun – I see a bunch of deviants creeping in and drifting from the  
Sugar spec already (won't mention names). I understand many hard core  
developers don't have much interest UI wise, that they think it just  
visual 'fluff' around their efficient set of classes (I blame badly  
taught CS classes and different personality types), but UI has a very  
large impact on user experience, and it is a good chunk of the reason  
that most *nix desktops have taken __SO__ damn long to get to  
mainstream (and perhaps why Apple are riding such a good wave just now).

As they say, one rotten apple can put you off the rest of the basket.

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] 8.2.0 Release Notes

2008-07-17 Thread Gary C Martin
On 17 Jul 2008, at 14:33, Greg Smith wrote:

> I need the latest, final, definitive screen shots and documentation on
> new Sugar GUI planned for 8.2.0 in the release notes ASAP.
>
> I plan to send release notes to deployment leads to see if they are
> interested in using 8.2.0. I will say that the release notes are  
> subject
> to change but it should be as correct as possible.
>
> I especially want to remove incorrect info and ideas that didn't make
> the release.
>
> See the GUI section of the release notes at:
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_Notes/8.2.0#GUI_and_Usability_Improvements
>
> I believe the control panel section is correct except for the Software
> Updates section.
> Please confirm.
>
> Scott, can you write a brief blurb on software updates?
>
> I need a link to additional approved documentation on the control  
> panel.
> If we don't have one, this release notes will be all you get!
>
> The big gap is Home View and Frame Redesign
>
> Who can give me final screen shots and blurbs on all the elements in  
> that?

I've uploaded some current Joyride screen grabs and min notes on the  
new Home ring/freeform/list view. Just a start, and I am no authority  
on what will be shipping in 8.2 other than what I see in Joyride (I  
realise the 8.2 stream was split off a ~week ago with an eye on only  
pulling in happy/shiny changes).

> I posted the links I have but they may include features which will not
> make the release.
>
> I want to send pre-release Release Notes out at the beginning of next
> week so please respond ASAP.
>
> Let me know if you have any questions. I'll do whatever leg work is
> needed if I know who/where I can get verified information.


I was about to upload a screen shot of the brand new 'erase' activity  
feature (so kids can free up space taken by unused activities), anyone  
confirm if the intention is still to ship this in 8.2?

--Gary


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Re: [sugar] Activity versioning schema

2008-07-15 Thread Gary C Martin
On 16 Jul 2008, at 00:03, Martin Langhoff wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 10:51 AM, Gary C Martin  
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Version (activity_version) is just some sortable entity to be agreed
>
> Please do read back on this - now lenghty - discussion. Unfortunately,
> any monotonically increasing version does _not_ work, thanks to the
> magic of maintenance releases. Let us bow collectively to the wisdom
> of distro maintainers who are smart and have been doing this job for
> far longer than us.
>
> In other words, let us do the same thing that rpm and dpkg do.
>
> It gives you both more expressive power, and a stupid "1.1.0.9z is
> older than 2.0-alpha" cmp function for whenever you need it.

OK, sorry, I've clearly accidentally wandered in to a room full of  
hardcore gun toting bit heads – I'm now backing slowly towards the  
exit, my hands clearly raised. Please do be sure to post whatever (I'm  
sure excellent) final outcome is, clearly and somewhere public  
(perhaps http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activity_bundles *** would be a  
start), so us external activity developers don't have to be part of  
this bit punk talk.

*** Salient quotes: "Each activity.info file must have a  
"activity_version" key. The version is a single positive integer.  
Larger versions are considered "newer". The value assigned to this key  
should be considered opaque to the activity; the only requirement of  
the activity is that it must be larger for new activity builds." And:  
"Each activity.info file must have a "host_version" key. The version  
is a single positive integer. This specifies the version of the Sugar  
environment which the activity is compatible with. (fixme: need to  
specify sugar versions somewhere. Obviously we start with 1.)" 

 if this is incorrect, please, PLEASE (!!) remove it from the f$# 
%ing bit rot wiki!

--Gary


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Re: [sugar] Activity versioning schema

2008-07-15 Thread Gary C Martin
On 15 Jul 2008, at 20:15, Eben Eliason wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 2:57 PM, C. Scott Ananian  
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> 2008/7/15 Jameson Chema Quinn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>>> If you have a better idea of how Glucose should handle these issues,
>> please
>>> share it. Simplifying assumptions are good, even if they're not 100%
>> valid.
>>
>> Versions in activity.info files are either plain integers, or
>> RPM-standard version strings, with no pretense that these correspond
>> in any way to sugar major releases or anything at all, except that
>> they are ordered: if the activity updater sees that you have version
>> N, and there is a version M announced[*] as compatible with your  
>> build
>> where M > N, then it will suggest that you upgrade to M.  All other
>> meanings are encoded with other mechanisms.
>> --scott
>>
>
> How can you argue this and still argue that we can get away with  
> integer
> version numbers?  According to this logic, a when brand new  
> activity(x) for
> OS(y) is released at time (t) and a bugfix activity(x+1) for OS(y-1)  
> is
> released at time (t+1), anyone on OS(y) is going to try to update to  
> the
> "newer", larger, activity(x+1) version, with none of the new features.


Random thought, should there be an additional .info line in addition  
to version, related just to release build compatibility? Version  
(activity_version) is just some sortable entity to be agreed, integer  
is fine with me (indicating the developers best and shiniest release  
effort to date). A new .info entry for release compatibility would be  
added (release_version) holding the Sugar version last tested against.  
Sugar auto updaters would assume compatibility based on >=  
release_version. Release_versions could be (more) easily extracted for  
auto update scripts (control panel) so as to download the best and  
latest compatible code.

--Gary


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Re: [sugar] [PATCH] #447: grab/scroll key

2008-07-13 Thread Gary C Martin
On 13 Jul 2008, at 16:19, Eben Eliason wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 11:03 AM, Brian Jordan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
> wrote:
>> For all to consider: there are two grab buttons. What if one tended  
>> to
>> grab + move *objects*, and the other grabs + moves
>> *scenes/backgrounds*? From what I've heard, kids tend to have a hard
>> time left-clicking and dragging with their same hand (as with the
>> touchpad). So, for applications like Browse, both grab buttons could
>> still just scroll up/down. But for graphical editors (e.g., layout
>> programs, Physics, Model, anything with a scene and objects), this UI
>> behavior may be a real time saver and fun to use. This would require
>> giving applications the ability to process events from these two
>> scroll buttons in a way that identifies them separately.
>
> That's an interesting idea.  However, the reason there are two keys is
> so that interaction works well for both left- and right-handed users,
> without the need for them to cross their arms to scroll around.  What
> we might be able to do, though, is map an SHIFT-HAND shortcut to a
> drag/drop action instead. (I suggest shift because it's the only
> modified which is present on both sides of our keyboard, for the same
> reason as above.)

SHIFT-HAND would be a good direct alternative to the trackpad left  
button. It would then be useful in many existing places/activities for  
drag'n'drop operations while leaving the primary HAND use for  
scrolling. I'd probably use SHIFT-HAND instead of the trackpad button  
for clicking – it's already usually a two handed operation for me to  
avoid confusing the touch pad.

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] Graphical Sugar Control Panel

2008-07-10 Thread Gary C Martin
On 10 Jul 2008, at 17:39, Simon Schampijer wrote:

> Chris Ball wrote:
>> Hi Greg,
>>
>>> I'm looking for a list of what can be set in it and any screen
>>> shots or other background on what it provides for end users.
>>
>> Have you considered running it?  It's been in Joyride for a few  
>> weeks.
>> That's no good if you want formal documentation, of course, but it
>> would answer your questions about what's there.
>>
>> - Chris.
>
> I put on my todo list to extend the wiki pages.

Just added screen shots of all the current Joyride control panels,  
hope that helps.


http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_Notes/8.2.0#Graphical_Sugar_Control_Panel

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] frame activation

2008-06-10 Thread Gary C Martin
On 10 Jun 2008, at 11:15, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:

> do we have any feedback regarding frame activation and the new control
> panel option?
>
> Is it ok to ship with hot corners on by default and let the users
> change it if they wish?

Have settled for about 500ms for the corners. I found warm edges too  
obtrusive even with a max delay, specifically scroll bar interaction  
was the main false activation. I could see me enabling specific warm  
edges (top being most useful).

OT: Also trying to keep in the back of my mind a possible future UI  
metaphor where the whole input may be touch screen based, but as a  
well known tech put it recently, most existing UI's with a touch input  
layer added are like lipstick on a pig. It'll need to be an extensive  
redesign at that stage (sorry Eben). I guess Apple with their UI fork  
have more than a clue for us here.

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] Browse v86 rainbow issue on update 1-706?

2008-06-01 Thread Gary C Martin
On 29 May 2008, at 03:58, Martin Dengler wrote:

> On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 03:42:55AM +0100, Gary C Martin wrote:
>> On 28 May 2008, at 18:55, Martin Dengler wrote:
>>> Is this rainbow racing with X, or is that in joyride only?
>>
>> Sorry, not sure. I'm back on joyride now and Browse seems quite happy
>> there.
>
> I was away from the web earlier and couldn't look up the trac for what
> I was referring to: http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6797 (in case it
> happens again).


Martin, thanks for your suggestion.

OK, I've just gone back and re-installed 706 again on the B4 I have  
here to give this another try.

Browse v86 is still failing to launch after repeated reboots. I've  
added the content of its log file to the end of this email. BTW: using  
cat on the file was a good hint as you get to see its content color  
coded, pity Log activity doesn't interpret them the same way (Log  
shows all the nasty console escape codes).

No idea if "rainbow racing with X" was a red-herring or not, ticket  
6797 didn't say what to expect to see from such a condition, or how to  
test for it. Seeing as Browse consistently fails to launch, a race  
condition seems less plausible to me, I'd expect a race condition to  
occasionally have a different outcome.

Couple of quick notes/questions:

1) Who is 706 actually targeted at? G1G1? One of the country installs?  
I can't find any public description of who this is meant for, or what  
set of base activities to test against. No reference to 706 on the  
wiki or where to post test results (hence me blindly emailing the list).

2) Could someone clarify version naming. Is the 706 build leading to  
"update-1.1" and how does this tie in with the upstream 81.x and 82.x  
work from the SugarLabs side? Does the roadmap at http://dev.laptop.org/roadmap 
  still have any worth? It seems a fairly random collection of slipped  
dates and misc features these days.

3) Did update-1 ever formally happen? It never seemed to get  
announced, there was a request for testing 703, and then it all went  
quiet.

Apologies if I'm raining on someone's parade here.

--Gary

P.S. Here's the failed WebActivity log for 706:

groupadd: group 10001 exists
useradd: warning: the home directory already exists.
Not copying any file from skel directory into it.
---
Traceback (most recent call  
last)

/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/rainbow/service.py in  
CreateActivity(self=,  
log_path=dbus.UTF8String('/home/olpc/.sugar/default/logs/ 
org.laptop.WebActivity-1.log'),  
env=dbus.Dictionary({dbus.UTF8String('LANG'):  
dbus.U...c/.Xauthority')}, signature=dbus.Signature('ss')),  
argv=dbus.Array([dbus.UTF8String('sugar-activity'),  
d...f6c06344ec478b')], signature=dbus.Signature('s')),  
bundle_path=dbus.UTF8String('/home/olpc/Activities/Web.activity'),  
bundle_id=dbus.UTF8String('org.laptop.WebActivity'),  
success_cont= at 0x82fef7c>, error_cont= at 0x82fefb4>)
  58 ret = inject.run(log, SPOOL, env, argv,  
env['SUGAR_BUNDLE_PATH'], (1, 2),
  59 env.get('RAINBOW_STRACE_LOG'),  
500, 500, bundle_path, bundle_id,
---> 60 env.get('RAINBOW_CONSTANT_UID'))
 env.get = 
  61 except Exception, e:
  62 util.trace()

/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/rainbow/inject.py in  
run(log=, spool='/home/olpc/isolation/1',  
env=dbus.Dictionary({dbus.UTF8String('LANG'):  
dbus.U...c/.Xauthority')}, signature=dbus.Signature('ss')),  
argv=dbus.Array([dbus.UTF8String('sugar-activity'),  
d...f6c06344ec478b')], signature=dbus.Signature('s')),  
cwd=dbus.UTF8String('/home/olpc/Activities/Web.activity'),  
safe_fds=(1, 2), strace_hint=None, owner_uid=500, owner_gid=500,  
bundle_path=dbus.UTF8String('/home/olpc/Activities/Web.activity'),  
bundle_id=dbus.UTF8String('org.laptop.WebActivity'),  
constant_uid=dbus.UTF8String('yes'))
 267 check_home_dirs(uid, gid, home)
 268 check_home_dirs(owner_uid, owner_gid, home)
--> 269 check_home(uid, gid, home)
 global check_home = 
 uid = 10001
 gid = 10001
 home = '/home/olpc/isolation/1/uid_to_home_dir/10001'
 270 check_bundle_path(uid, gid, bundle_path)
 271

/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/rainbow/inject.py in  
check_home(uid=10001, gid=10001, home='/home/olpc/isolation/1/ 
uid_to_home_dir/10001')
 246 ck = Checker(home, uid, gid)
 247 assert ck.positive(R_OK | X_OK, S_IFDIR)
--> 248 assert ck.negative(W_OK, 0)
 ck.negative = >
 global W_OK = 2
 249
 250 def run(log, spool, env, argv, cwd, safe_fds, strace_hint,

:


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Re: [sugar] Browse v86 rainbow issue on update 1-706?

2008-05-28 Thread Gary C Martin
On 28 May 2008, at 18:55, Martin Dengler wrote:

> - original message -
>> Subject: Browse v86 rainbow issue on update 1-706?
>> From:    Gary C Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> Date:2008-05-28 17:42
>> Looking at the
>> log for Web activity seems to point to rainbow/service.py, but it's
>> hard to tell as the log is mainly full of junk console formatting
>> characters/escape codes.
>
> Is this rainbow racing with X, or is that in joyride only?

Sorry, not sure. I'm back on joyride now and Browse seems quite happy  
there.

> If I cat rather than more the logs the formatting gets in the way  
> less.

Thanks for the tip, I usually just use the Log viewer activity. I'll  
go try cat next time I see crufty log content.

--Gary

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[sugar] Browse v86 rainbow issue on update 1-706?

2008-05-28 Thread Gary C Martin
On 28 May 2008, at 05:18, Michael Stone wrote:

> build 706 (which everyone ought to
> test; olpc-update -f update.1-706)

Hi Michael, Just a quick heads up. Just did an insecure usb update on  
an XO B4 (the olpc-update command is not usually reliable enough for  
me). I notice that Browse (v86) is failing to launch, though (a random  
selection of) other activities seem to run fine so far. Looking at the  
log for Web activity seems to point to rainbow/service.py, but it's  
hard to tell as the log is mainly full of junk console formatting  
characters/escape codes.

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] Journal 89 released

2008-05-21 Thread Gary C Martin
On 21 May 2008, at 21:11, Bert Freudenberg wrote:

> On 21.05.2008, at 20:23, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> a new version of the journal has been released:
>>
>> http://dev.laptop.org/pub/sugar/sources/journal-activity/journal-activity-89.tar.bz2
>
> Looks like I missed a change in development policy again. So
> activities are now released as tar.bz2 on some web page?
>
> - Bert -


:-)

Well seeing that the blasted joyride and faster builds have been off  
air now almost a week!!! Thank goodness I say (thanks Tomeu, I  
rsynch'ed the changes to my Xo B4 to have a test).

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] Report on OLPC in Ethiopia

2008-05-20 Thread Gary C Martin
On 20 May 2008, at 08:46, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:

> what about stemming the words? You may be able to use an english
> stemmer from xapian using the python bindings (not sure though).

Thanks Tomeu,

Yes, I was doing some very rudimentary stemming in my text parsing for  
specific cases, but I was still undecided as some of the other texts  
I've mapped have interesting usage patterns with the stems left as is.

I've just had a quick google and found the standard Porter Stemming  
Algorithm written in Python by Vivake Gupta, I'll plug it in and see  
how it goes – mail list and wiki type texts are probably less 'edited'  
and more noisy than the other texts I've been experimenting with :-)

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] Report on OLPC in Ethiopia

2008-05-19 Thread Gary C Martin
Hi Yamandu,

I fed this into my self organising map (SOM) code. Here's the summary  
map generated for the report content:

http://garycmartin.com/som/ethiopiareport_080227a-mh.jpg

Oh, I was asked for a legend (on another list):

http://garycmartin.com/som/SOM_legend.jpg

--Gary

On 9 May 2008, at 19:34, Yamandu Ploskonka wrote:

> AFAIK this is the first published report in a format somewhat akin to
> what people want to see when they ask for documented proof on how OLPC
> is actually operating in the field.  I contrast that to blogs and PR
> efforts around the day of distribution of XOs.
>
> http://www.eduvision.ch/en/meta/documents/ethiopiareport_080227a- 
> mh.pdf
>
> The producer is a for-profit (?) consulting firm in Switzerland.
>
> Ed Cherlin has mentioned he has access to some other unpublished  
> reports
> that might give a more complete picture
>
> Yama
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Re: [sugar] [PATCH] (Incomplete) Activity Launch Feedback

2008-05-18 Thread Gary C Martin
Hi Eben/Tomeu,

On 18 May 2008, at 15:37, Eben Eliason wrote:

> Attached,with launchbox.py included.
>
> - Eben


I'm trying to apply you patch directly to an Xo with joyride 1946 (I  
don't have access to any other build environment so my tests are  
limited to patching an Xo B4). The patch seems to be mainly happy,  
except a few of failed hunks in model/homemodel.py and view/frame/ 
activitiestray.py.

Now I'm pretty sure you don't work on like this on an Xo, but any  
suggestions? I didn't notice any relevant changes between joyride 1946  
and the most recent 1950, or have I misunderstood the source stream  
you guys work from?

Is the git source and a custom Fedora build server the only way to be  
involved? I'm hoping it's just that joyride has got a little behind  
the git source due to the current missing builds due to disk space.

Thanks for any help..

--Gary

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Re: [sugar] An OLPC Development Model

2008-05-08 Thread Gary C Martin
On 9 May 2008, at 00:42, Samuel Klein wrote:

> On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 11:55 AM, C. Scott Ananian
>
>> ps. SJ, there are no 'core activities' that we ship.  There is only
>> one security-privileged activity (Journal), which we currently ship  
>> in the
>> core build because (a) Sugar breaks otherwise, and (b) Rainbow's
>> activity-signing stuff is incomplete.  I hope we can fix both of  
>> these
>> in time, and stabilize the APIs enough that we can eventually  
>> unbundle even
>> Journal.
>

H, sorry, run that past me again. I thought the intention was that  
the Journal was an integral part of the Sugar UI, and the plan was  
that the Journal code was going to be integrated to the Sugar Shell  
for (I think) security and performance – or did the world just turn  
around yet again while I was looking the other way?

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] perceived sugar performance

2008-05-02 Thread Gary C Martin
On 2 May 2008, at 10:57, Samuel Klein wrote:

> SJ,
> who still wants the "hand" buttons to be mapped to the right and left
> mouse-clicks in addition to any other keymapping.

Sorry, not me – I **really** want the hand keys implemented with the  
original intended scrolling behaviour. Perhaps once the Sugar GUI  
control panel is fully implemented you could submit a patch for this  
as an alternate behaviour.

I do agree that the current 2 trackpad buttons** are less than great,  
but easy scrolling/panning of documents is a bigger win I think  
especially given the jumpy trackpad issues. Perhaps for XO-2 hardware  
the trackpad buttons could be dropped and replaced with new real keys?  
I find I usually need to use two hands already with the current set- 
up, especially for drag'n'drop operations, or when testing paint type  
'hold the button down and move at the same time'. Maybe it's just my  
adult size hands/fingers, would be good to get some real kids feedback  
here from some of the live sites – but I'm guessing kids are having  
the same problem as me.

** what was the decision behind having 2 buttons considering the  
available physical space and additional UI complexity? It's not like  
there are legacy educational applications that require 2 buttons.

Regards,
G
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Re: [sugar] perceived sugar performance

2008-05-01 Thread Gary C Martin
On 1 May 2008, at 16:24, Albert Cahalan wrote:

> For other reasons (GUI complexity and the OOM killer), the ability
> to launch multiple activities should be disabled by default.


Do you mean 2+ instances of one activity, or multiple activities?

I do agree that UIs that support multiple activities (and switching)  
will be more complex than one that is completely modal. The iPhone and  
iPod Touch are the best current examples I can think of, though they  
clearly have some areas still to solve in terms of using several  
applications together to achieve something no single one could alone.  
Current lack of Copy/Paste is a well cited complaint (but I can see  
Apple solving/fixing that at some point, at least I hope so). There's  
also the whole conversation going on about will Apple allow developers  
to create background applications. These devices are currently more  
about accessing than creating, the XO is about creating and accessing  
– I think that changes the UI game enough to warrant activity instance  
switching.

Preventing multiple activities on the XO would be too extreme, I  
think, though it would be the next logical step down for UI  
simplification. For the younger end of the target audience I can see  
this being a positive (an assumption, I have no proof), but it would  
reduce the utility of the XO over a range of learning usage scenarios  
for everyone else. You loose much of the combinatorial effect of using  
several activities to achieve an end goal – can you imaging trying to  
write homework that need a photo added, images from the web, reading a  
pdf with the homework assignment/questions, or how an invitation to  
participative in another's activity would be very disruptive (say a  
friend wanted to use chat and ask you something about the homework  
assignment you were doing).

Preventing 2+ instances of the same activity would be less disruptive,  
but would not solve kids launching multiple other activities as they  
click about with the interface.

Devils advocate: Now if activity launch + state restoration, and  
activity closing + state saving, was as fast as iPhone/iPod Touch,  
then my opinion could** start to swing in favour of a UI that  
presented a, one activity running at a time, view. You wouldn't so  
much quit an activity, as return to the Home view. Switching via the  
frame would be gone, you'd just return to the Home view.

** I say 'could' because some actions that require two or more  
activities to complete would still be sub optimal relative to a UI  
that allowed instant switching between running instances (example,  
trying writing an essay about a Shakespeare play you have in pdf  
format, lot's of back and forwards referencing and copy/paste).

--Gary
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Re: [sugar] On improving Sugar performance

2008-04-28 Thread Gary C Martin
First, thanks Tomeu (and others involved), that's a fab list that may  
be coming down the pipe. I'd followed some of those items through  
joyride, but others were silent runners for me. Great to hear about  
them!

On 28 Apr 2008, at 17:09, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:

>> Anyone is of course welcome to join us with questions, answers and
>> proposals.  To keep the discussion relaxed, we do not require backing
>> each and every idea with benchmark results, which in some cases are
>> hard to obtain.  Nevertheless, measuring is a useful tool, especially
>> when there there's disagreement on how effective each solution  
>> might be.
>
> Sure, but rather than a useful tool, I would call measuring as the
> only possible base on which decide actual work that needs to be done.
> We could be refactoring and recoding for years and don't get any
> noticeable improvement, if we don't measure.


Not that I want to start a CS grad war here, but with more than one  
foot in the UI camp, I just wanted to request that more than just  
'clock watching'  is done when selecting/implementing optomisations –  
though 'clock watching' is a very good place to start.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001058.html

Catering for subjective human response is tricky, but once you've  
passed some minimum threshold for utility** you can often win more  
hearts and minds going for the subjective. A concrete example I'd  
point to is smooth animation; activity switching with no nasty redraw  
flicker; pulsing icons with no visible strobe; and frame/notification  
transitions that glide smoothly onto the display giving the illusion  
of effortlessness.

**how many hours must I have spent as a kid, excitedly waiting for  
some software to load up off a magnetic tape, only to have it fail a  
fair portion of the time and have to start the tape over again... and  
some folks here moan about a ~6sec launch time for an activity. Though  
it's true to argue that those old machines did have instant on, even  
if you were left to ponder a BASIC prompt and spend the next 5min  
trying to tune your TV in to get a clear signal :-)

- Gary
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Re: [sugar] Copy/Paste icon colour (Re: A Sugar TODO List, of Sorts)

2008-04-22 Thread Gary C Martin
On 22 Apr 2008, at 17:56, Eben Eliason wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 10:47 PM, Gary C Martin  
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> On 7 Apr 2008, at 20:00, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
>>
>>>> • Color copy/paste buttons in activities
>>> Which colors should take? Just the local colors?
>>
>> I've always been unclear about the purpose of this, and have not seen
>> an explanation – always thought the coloured icon looked out of place
>> in the toolbar. Anyone know the reason/metaphor that makes colouring
>> it so important?
>
> When a clipping is made, it appears in the Frame as an icon, rendered
> in a specific XO color pair.  Having clippings in various colors can
> help to make the clipboard a bit more engaging, and aid in identifying
> the correct one in the absence of (much needed) previews.  The basic
> approach to coloring would be to color the copy button in the color of
> the activity it resides in, and color the paste button the color of
> the currently selected clipping in the Frame.
>
> However, the greater potential is reached when activities support it
> directly.  For instance, the Record activity might turn the copy
> button to the colors of the currently selected photo.  Should the
> Write activity ever keep track of exactly who wrote what, it could
> color the icon the colors of the person who wrote the selected block
> of text. In the case of a "multiple selection", the colors would
> revert back to those of the activity.  It might also be useful to
> return the button to white when there is no selection at all...

H, you haven't really sold me the real end utility for all the  
effort needed to make that feature work reliably :-) It would need to  
be consistent across all activities to be discoverable, and even then  
perhaps 90%+ of the time the clipping will default to your local XO  
colour.

So – just to check I understand – if I join a record activity with 2  
others, the activity icon I see will be the colour of whoever's XO  
started the activity; copy will be the colour of whoever's media I  
currently have selected; and paste would be the colour of the last  
clipping made.

If the plan was to also support sharable** clippings, I would  
understand the extra need for colorising – but that's probably just  
another feature to slow down other much more critical dev work.

**hovering over a clipping could reveal an option for "share with..."  
could act as a way to transfer all kinds of things depending on what  
Sugar allowed you to clip (perhaps even an activity or an activity  
bundle from the Journal***).

***question, will .xo bundles continue to appear in the new Journal  
Design like they used to (always though that looked a little messy),  
or will downloaded .xo bundles only appear in the Home view ring/list?

- Gary
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Re: [sugar] VoiceThreads ... a very interesting education service

2008-04-15 Thread Gary C Martin
Wow, thanks for posting that link – what a lovely site. It actually  
already feels pretty close to a possible Sugar activity, and would fit  
right in with the XO's hardware features. Actually, I think Record is  
already pretty close to a whole bunch of these features** with its  
shared and annotated images/audio/movies, it could be used in a  
similar way***.

** except for the (my opinion) design flaw where you can't share  
existing recordings, only ones you record after  someone else joins a  
shared session – so no point taking a bunch of photos of things and  
then clicking share – no one sees anything. For a test, a while back,  
I set up a Record session, named it 'View out your window', took a  
couple of photos, and turned sharing on. A bunch of folks joined over  
an hour or so and left photos of their view, but they couldn't see my  
photos, and I could only see a thumbnail of their photos (gave a  
network time-out error if I tried to click a thumb). Still a  
fascinating exercise even if it didn't quite go to plan (showed the  
potential).

*** If you could resume a pre-recorded Record activity *AND* then  
share it out, it could be a good way to do photo journal type homework  
or research. Perhaps needs a better playback mode (text notes and  
images shown at once; ability to reorder the items in the bottom pane;  
ability to take a photo, then record audio associated with it).

Maybe if Journal item sharing arrives as some point, this will be a  
practical way of generating and sharing similar content.

Gary

On 16 Apr 2008, at 03:00, Carol Lerche wrote:

> http://voicethread.com/
>
> Check out the educational community...http://ed.voicethread.com/  It  
> is
> described in their blog link.  There ought to be synergy here, or at  
> least
> we could learn from what they are doing and create an open version,  
> if they
> aren't interested in collaboration.  The UI  seems to fall into the  
> request
> made for blogging software in a sideways kind of way.  Wouldn't it  
> be neat
> to collaborate either just with XOs or on the school server with a  
> function
> like this?
>
> Carol Lerche
> ___
> Devel mailing list
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel


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Re: [sugar] Clipboard Notification

2008-04-14 Thread Gary C Martin
On 14 Apr 2008, at 15:04, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:

> Personal note:  Been running the "new look" Sugar/Joyride for a
> while.  [It does what you describe when an Activity is launched.]
>
> I've now trained myself to notice the pulsing icon in the top left
> hand corner -- but I think that is an easily-overlooked location
> (particularly since current notification icons have the same
> background color as the "border" in which they sit).

I also find the new 'activity launch notification' less than  
satisfying. Launching an activity is a very distinct action  taken by  
a user, and the current pulsing notification is not enough of an  
indication of the result. It's also odd if you do happen to have the  
frame open as you see 2 pulsing icons for the launching activity (one  
the notification and one in the actual frame).

I'd like to suggest, again, that the activity launching metaphor be  
one where:

1) Kid clicks on activity icon to launch
2) Sugar immediately opens a fullscreen canvas with just the large  
pulsing icon (i.e a activity zoom view)
3) Canvas is occupied by the activity once it has loaded

This provides:

- immediate and clear feedback to the kid that an activity is indeed  
launching
- prevents casual/impatient clicks on other activity icons while the  
first loads
- allows access to the frame, and for the kid to switch back to  
neighbourhood/group/home if needed
- if the kid does intentionally switch away, the background activity  
launch does not suddenly drag them back once complete
- the slide out launch notification is not needed, but the pulsing  
frame activity icon would stay

If at some future point we get usable Sugar compositing, a nice zoom  
animation could be added to the launched activity so that from where  
ever it was clicked, it scales up and into the centre of the screen  
and starts to pulse, while the rest of the screen content fades out.

Gary

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Re: [sugar] Mini-Conference Proposal: Toolbars & Tabs (or lack thereof)

2008-04-07 Thread Gary C Martin
On 5 Apr 2008, at 16:44, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:

> What if on rollover would appear a normal palette with all the buttons
> that would be in the subtoolbar? This palette would have an option for
> pinning it, and that would mean inserting a subtoolbar between the
> toolbar and the canvas like in the mockups.
>
> Benefits:
>
> - palettes don't disturb the layout of the underlying window,
> - existing UI component,
> - buttons are grouped closer to the main button, requiring less  
> mouse travel,
> - buttons are in an area not as thin, making easier to move the mouse
> without going out (thus hiding the palette),
> - we could keep the toolbar label.
>
> Thoughts?


Hmmm, a regular palette pop-up will often end up being way too tall,  
with the (usual) screen orientation a full row of buttons would not  
fit. And it gets messy when the buttons are not simple square icons,  
say like in Write where font size is represented by two element (an  
icon and a pop-up size list), or the font family picker (a wide pop-up  
text list). Trying to arrange these vertically in a pallet is going to  
fill up a good chunk of the display with mainly empty black space  
padding.

After much musing, I think Eben's designs at 
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Designs/Toolbars 
  are a good compromise, but they would need to (as mentioned by  
another list member):

A) On mouse hover over a tab button, float the new toolbar over the  
existing activity canvas (obscuring some content), and not moving/ 
resizing the activity canvas area.
B) A click on a tab icon would lock it in place (pinning), and than  
cause the main canvas to reflow/resize.

Sub toolbar buttons still get to have their mouse over textual hints,  
but the top level tab buttons have none – I know this is an issue for  
some folks... I guess, and it's a flakey guess, with the above A&B  
alteration, you could; during hover state A, show an extra horizontal  
strip with the tab name below the new toolbar strip; then after click  
state B, you'd just insert the new toolbar strip and loose the extra  
text row to save space.

Does anyone build working prototypes of these kind'a interactions?  
makes all the difference (usually a pretty instant, yuck or fine  
reaction). Would be quick to do, Eben is that me I hear you  
volunteering??

Gary
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[sugar] Copy/Paste icon colour (Re: A Sugar TODO List, of Sorts)

2008-04-07 Thread Gary C Martin
On 7 Apr 2008, at 20:00, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:

>>  • Color copy/paste buttons in activities
> Which colors should take? Just the local colors?

I've always been unclear about the purpose of this, and have not seen  
an explanation – always thought the coloured icon looked out of place  
in the toolbar. Anyone know the reason/metaphor that makes colouring  
it so important?

Gary
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Re: [sugar] Choosing "defaults" for the activity ring

2008-04-05 Thread Gary C Martin
Hi Eben,

On 5 Apr 2008, at 07:16, Eben Eliason wrote:

>> Another slightly different option for a 'fallback' mode – for when no
>> favourites have been set – could be simply to default the home view  
>> to the
>> list mode when no favourite activities are set. It would also be  
>> good if the
>
> I personally feel that the ring view will be both a friendlier
> interface, as well as a more welcoming one for kids just starting out.
> Additionally, I absolutlely want to make sure that the XO remains in
> the center up front, since this is the first thing a child will see
> when booting her laptop for the first time.
>
> Additionally, I anticipate that having both starred and unstarred
> activities to begin with may help make the favorites system easier to
> grasp.  Empty views are often confusing.

Yes, I agree about the ring view being potentially more welcoming –  
this was just a fallback suggestion so that no one would ever be  
presented with a blank home – some decision on default favourites  
during updates/installs would be needed.

Talking of favourite defaults, why not have all activities initially  
installed, or manually installed, appear as favourites by default. If  
I went to browse and downloaded an .xo or .xo pack, I'd definitely  
expect to see the home ring updated with the new downloads.

Regards,
Gary
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Re: [sugar] XO experience in the classroom - Carol Lerche's daughter

2008-04-04 Thread Gary C Martin
On 5 Apr 2008, at 03:18, Carol Lerche wrote:

> They were so excited when they went to use
> them, they couldn't wait until they started up to start pressing all  
> the
> buttons. Each group had four kids at a time, and my mom was constantly
> supervising them so if they had any problems, she could  
> troubleshoot. Which
> happened quite a lot, as they are very impatient. Their main problem  
> was
> that they didn't want to wait for the programs to come up; when it  
> didn't
> pop up immediately, they would click on something else to try it,  
> which of
> course made it start even slower, and so they got very frustrated  
> and my mom
> had to close out everything before they would be able to try again.


Thanks for taking the time to write this up Robin – I've heard very  
little front line feedback like this so far so it's great to read.

So... a suggestion to improve the new Sugar UI launching behaviour:  
When an activity is launched, immediately take over the full display  
with 'fake' activity placeholder, while the real activity is launched.  
The display would be a plain white (or black maybe), with a large,  
pulsing icon for the activity in its centre (large XO icon size as  
you're now at a  close-up activity zoom level).

No other buttons immediately visible to click, though the frame would  
continue to be accessible if a user really needed to switch away and  
do something else.

If we do get to have an efficient compositor at some point, sugar  
could do a lovely icon zoom transition, from where ever it had been  
launched from, to the large centred display, and fade out the rest of  
the display content.  Think that extra eye candy can wait a while for  
now though ;-)

Regards,
Gary
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