Re: [Sugar-devel] Fwd: journal criticism (was Re: Re: Re: [IAEP] [RELEASE] TurtleArt-51)

[James Zaki]

I did not know there was much debate about this, because for me the journal
in its current state made sense for the target audience of sugar.

Understanding hierarchical file structures use the concepts of containers
and recursion with no limits (except for total capacity). It is not
naturally intuitive, like a tree where branches get smaller from the trunk
with fruit/leaves only at the end nodes.

Empirically I've seen many new people approach computers (non-tech
elder-relatives included), and hierarchical structures are not initially
utilised. It was a secondary focus that had to be learnt out of necessity.
At the time I would say this was due to a lack filters at their disposal.

Tools such as GoogleDesktop or, more evidently, OS X  "Spotlight" are
conceptually more approachable to a beginner/non-tech person, and further
defers the need to learn about their tool rather than just using it
effectively immediately.

Perhaps an activity/game could be made that teaches the concepts of a
hierarchical file structure. It could demonstrate inifite recursion with
inifinite capacity at each node, but reward "good" storage somehow. Once
they complete the game to a certain level, then they can unlock heirarchical
file structures in journal?  But I think there is enough on everyone plates
for now before this gets considered.

Cheers,
James



2009/5/27 Tomeu Vizoso 

> [forgot to add IAEP and sugar-devel]
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Tomeu Vizoso 
> Date: Wed, May 27, 2009 at 12:11
> Subject: journal criticism (was Re: Re: Re: [IAEP] [RELEASE] TurtleArt-51)
> To: fors...@ozonline.com.au
> Cc: Walter Bender 
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> see my replies inline below. To everybody who would like to join this
> conversation: please change the subject line accordingly or this
> thread will become hard to follow.
>
> On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 04:54,   wrote:
> > Hi Tomeu & Walter
> >
> > I am happy to expand this to the list. I have raised the journal once or
> twice before but mainly kept quiet not wanting to be trollish.
> >
> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2008-August/001475.html
> > & more but i cant easily find
> >
> >
> > The journal and sharing are probably the two central things that
> distinguish sugar as as a purpose built learning platform. The team have a
> huge investment of time and energy and are rightly proud of their
> achievement. That presents a problem for constructive discussion around the
> journal, the last thing I want to do is be trollish and destructive.
> >
> > For me, the workings behind the journal are hidden and there is a lack of
> tools to make it do different things when the default operation is not what
> you want. Also temporal and tagging is fine as a primary method of storage
> but hierarchical storage is not offered as an alternate method.
> >
> > in addition to today's filename issue, other problems that I can
> remember:
> > altering the filenames and extensions of email attachments
>
> Could you please expand on this use case?
>
> > offline web pages do not navigate because the directory structure is lost
>
> This is scheduled to be addressed in 0.86 by downloading the page as a
> zip file and storing that in the journal.
>
> > can't inspect or alter mime to force something to open
>
> This could be fixed in the journal easily, with no need to refactor or
> throw out anything. We need more people to help us with developing
> Sugar further.
>
> > journal spam
>
> In 0.84 landed several modifications that should improve this somehow,
> have you seen if that helped?
>
> > (I haven't found a way to select a block so every spam item has to be
> individually deleted
>
> Would be awesome to be able to operate on multiple items at once, but
> unfortunately it hasn't been implemented yet.
>
> > resume by default will probably cause students to lose work)
>
> Versioning in the journal is scheduled for 0.86, which should address this
> one.
>
> > accidental overwriting of files through autosave
>
> Same as in the previous one, if I understand it correctly.
>
> >> Thanks for the feedback.
> >>
> >> Adding Tomeu, but we should probably expand the discussion to the list.
> >>
> >> I cannot argue with you that the fact that the Journal hid information
> >> from the user is a problem--really I would characterize it as a bug.
> >> But the goal of the Journal wasn't to simplify (and certainly not to
> >> hide information from the user) as much as it was to provide a
> >> representation of the file system that is first and foremost temporal
> >> rather than hierarchical with an emphasis on annotating, tagging, and
> >> searching rather than browsing. Secondary goals are automatic
> >> recording of actions and objects and the ability to extract from the
> >> Journal highlights. These latter goals could as well be accomplished
> >> using a hierarchical representation, but still would require a
> >> database backend of some sort.
> >>
> >> -walter
> >>
> >> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 7:1

Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Journal criticism

[Albert Cahalan]

Tomeu Vizoso writes:
> On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 20:20, Lucian Branescu
>  wrote:

>> I'm new to Sugar, so I may be horribly wrong.
>>
>> But to me, the Journal seems more of an annoyance than anything else.
>> A lot of the work I see done is towards bringing back some of the
>> properties that regular filesystems have
>>
>> What advantage does it have as opposed to a regular filesystem with
>> support for versioning and metadata? A filesystem would be more
>> compatible with existing software (which could just ignore the
>> metadata), at least.
>
> I can very easily understand that for someone who is used to a regular
> filesystem, the journal may seem as an annoyance when an attempt to
> use it in the same way is done. The same can be said of any other
> diversion in Sugar from how Windows/OSX behave.
>
> Though, interestingly, many people have successfully switched from
> files-in-folders-in-folders email clients to GMail. Maybe it is
> because the journal is not as mature as gmail?

There are big differences in the problem space.

GMail is dealing with text. Text search is somewhat reliable.
Sugar is dealing with all sorts of random data, like video.

GMail can briefly throw **lots** of beefy hardware at the
problem, allowing searches to be fast. Sugar can operate a
single wimpy processor.

Also, lack of folders in GMail is a common complaint. People
put up with it because they like other things about GMail.
I switched partly because Evolution was eating my inbox.

> If I think that something like the journal is worth having, it is:
>
> - because I can easily observe how non-technical users are unable to
> find the files that they stored in folders some time ago, or forget to
> save an important document, or modify a file that Firefox saved to
> /tmp and it got deleted after a reboot, etc,

Now we have equality. The technical users are now also unable to
find their files. :-(

> I think it's very important if we want to keep pushing Sugar that we
> distinguish between design decisions and bugs and unimplemented
> features. If we bring down good design ideas not by themselves but
> because of its implementation status, we risk ending up with nothing
> that brings new value compared to existing desktops.

You say that like it would be a bad thing. The existing desktops
are at least time-tested. Learning to deal with the common features
of modern desktop systems is very valuable for children.

> And btw, the Sugar people aren't alone in this, as GNOME will ship
> with a very similar journal concept in their 3.0 version. You can
> find info in the net and read their own justifications for it.
>
> Would be awesome if the Sugar Journal and the GNOME one could share
> its backend. Could someone check out the current state of the GNOME
> one and compare with our needs?

It looks like a heavy-duty version of "Recent Documents". It's far from
being a Journal clone as far as I can tell, but it certainly deals with
the concerns that led to the creation of the Journal.

Converting the Journal database is possible I think, allowing for an
excellent migration path.
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Journal criticism

[Albert Cahalan]

Tomeu Vizoso writes:
> On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 04:54,   wrote:

>> I am happy to expand this to the list. I have raised the journal once
>> or twice before but mainly kept quiet not wanting to be trollish.
...
>> The journal and sharing are probably the two central things that
>> distinguish sugar as as a purpose built learning platform. The team have
>> a huge investment of time and energy and are rightly proud of their
>> achievement. That presents a problem for constructive discussion around
>> the journal, the last thing I want to do is be trollish and destructive.

You probably would look trollish and upset a few people, but this
can be good for sugar and/or education. If few people ever dare to
point out problems, we have useless groupthink.

I certainly point out problems, but you can't rely on me alone.
It's easy to dismiss one person as a grumpy old troll, but not
so easy to dismiss a variety of unrelated people pointing out
that something isn't right. The more fundamental/core/central
the issue, the more this applies.

>> For me, the workings behind the journal are hidden and there is a lack of
>> tools to make it do different things when the default operation is not
>> what you want. Also temporal and tagging is fine as a primary method of
>> storage but hierarchical storage is not offered as an alternate method.

Instead of trying to add hierarchical storage to the journal,
consider inverting the issue. Modern desktop systems often have
special ways to view particular directories. For example, Windows
does something special with the directory you use for MP3 files.
It also does something special for the font directory.

Suppose that one directory got a special view called "journal view".
This could be a "My Documents" or "Desktop" directory. Activities
throw stuff in there using the journal API. AFAIK, GNOME's Nautilus
just needs a plug-in to enable a journal view to work there.

 The hiding of the file system was well intended, files and directories
 are probably just a passing phase in computing and they cause some
 confusion to beginners, but they are the system which underlies the
 Journal and the way we interface with the www
>
> I agree that it would be helpful to have hierarchical views of the
> file system in Sugar, though I don't think they should be the default

Given that they are everywhere, it's an educational issue.
This isn't like the particulars of Microsoft Office 2007.
This is something pervasive throughout the world of computing.

> one because IMO a flat view like gmail with good filtering and search
> capabilities is more efficient for users that don't want to spend
> their energy in keeping their data in directories. I understand this
> opinion is very debatable, but it comes from my observation of how
> people around me use their computers and also from the feedback about
> Sugar from the field.

The most interesting feedback from the field was about the kids
teaching each other to wipe the journal with "rm".
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Who wants to adopt the Clock activity?

[Pierre Métras]

...
>
> > Can you tell me who to contact to have this activity adopted?
>
> Congratulations, you got lucky with your first email ;-)
>
> Kind Regards,
> --Gary
>
> > Regards
> > Pierre Métras

I'm quite happy that my pet activity has found a new home. It was feeling 
alone on the old wiki.laptop.org site;-( I hope it will have a bright future 
with children learning to read the time...

Thanks
Pierre Métras
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] [SoaS] Important Schedule Changes - Please Read!

[Walter Bender]

CCing the lists again, which seem to keep following off the thread

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 12:40 PM, Tomeu Vizoso  wrote:
> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 18:38, Sean DALY  wrote:
>>> What we call beta - can't be announced as "is working out of the box".
>> I completely agree... nor can what we call v1 be announced as working
>> out of the box if it can't :-(
>
> On the upside, little non-trivial software can be said to work out of
> the box for the general public.
>
> Regards,
>
> Tomeu

We should be able to say with confidence that SoaS works everywhere
that the Fedora LiveUSB works. No more, no less. And tell a story
around that.

-walter
-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] [SoaS] Important Schedule Changes - Please Read!

[David Farning]

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 11:43 AM, Walter Bender  wrote:
> CCing the lists again, which seem to keep following off the thread
>
> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 12:40 PM, Tomeu Vizoso  wrote:
>> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 18:38, Sean DALY  wrote:
 What we call beta - can't be announced as "is working out of the box".
>>> I completely agree... nor can what we call v1 be announced as working
>>> out of the box if it can't :-(
>>
>> On the upside, little non-trivial software can be said to work out of
>> the box for the general public.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Tomeu
>
> We should be able to say with confidence that SoaS works everywhere
> that the Fedora LiveUSB works. No more, no less. And tell a story
> around that.
>

+1
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Physics activity development

[Asaf Paris Mandoki]

Hi,

I would like to get started adding the play/pause button and the pin button.
Probably the next step is to integrate the activity with the journal. The
only problem is that I haven't been able to get my development environment
working. It seems there are some open issues with ubuntu. My plan right now
is to wait until the Ubuntu issues are fixed. Any suggestions for a better
setup? The only thing I have working now is a virtualbox environment where
i've been testing the activity and found some bugs. I saw a commit with the
"joystick" feature removed. Is the base code ready to start adding the minor
button changes?

Thanks,
Asaf


On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 2:17 AM, Brian Jordan  wrote:

> On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 8:59 PM, Gary C Martin 
> wrote:
> > Hi Brian,
> >
> > On 24 May 2009, at 18:36, Brian Jordan wrote:
> >
> >> Hey all,
> >>
> >> Gary -- when you get a chance, can you add me as a committer on
> >> git.sl.o?  I'd like to help clean things up!
> >
> > You're added! :-)
> >
> > Can I request we try and make small clean commits and try to let others
> know
> > what we are doing. If you want to hack, Gitorious supports quite a nice
> > 'Clone repository' and then 'Request merge' process (no commit rights
> needed
> > for the main project). The alternative, if you know what you are doing,
> is
> > just make your own local git branch to hack on, so you can take care of
> any
> > merge/conflict issues yourself when you fold it back into the current
> > master.
> >
> > I'm far from a git expert, but I can recommend some bed time reading at:
> >
> >
> > http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~cduan/technical/git/
> >
> > and/or
> >
> >http://gitready.com/
> >
>
> Thank you, will devote some to that!  Need to learn to keep my crazy
> features in branches.
>
> > I'd like to get on with Labyrinth work, if you're willing to have an
> initial
> > clean up of the Physics source in the next few days... so what was
> > 'joysitck' feature all about? ;-)
>
> This would probably be best to describe on the wiki page, the idea was
> to make a UI for assigning keys on the XO-1 to impulses or changes on
> certain objects, so simple 2 player physics based games could be made
> from within Physics.
>
> Agreed, though, I will rid that from the code so we have a nice base
> line for crazy-feature branches.
>
> > Once the dev.sugarlabs.org component is added we should add the
> > features/bugs in there to keep them all together. FWIW, from a UI point
> of
> > view I had in mind:
> >
> > 1) remove/disable 'joysitick' feature as I have no idea what it was meant
> to
> > be ;-)
> > 2) build tool buttons correctly using RadioToolButton so they display
> state
> > correctly
> > 3) use set_accelerator to define visible keyboard shortcuts for the tools
> >
> >> Asaf -- do you have a http://git.sugarlabs.org account yet?
> >>
> >> This is some feedback from Asaf (these could fit as enhancements in
> >> http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ ):
> >>
> >>> While playing with the activity I found a "pause" button to stop time
> >>> could be very useful. It's complicated to build elaborate contraptions
> >>> if everything keeps falling. Maybe while everything is paused,
> >>> positions an velocities of objects could be modified.
> >>>
> >>> A minor modification I suggest is to create a separate button for
> >>> adding push pins. It is not intuitive to add them using the link tool.
> >>> If there are plans about creating tutorial levels this isn't that
> >>> necessary although I don't see any harm on adding it.
> >>>
> >>> An other thing I think could be grate is to be able to create
> >>> attractors an repulsors. With stuff like this it gets pretty
> >>> interesting, we could have objects orbiting around the attractors.
> >
> > Yes, all good stuff, there's also a list on
> > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Physics_%28activity%29 as well, but I'd vote
> for
> > cleaning up what we have first, perhaps adding a play/pause, and keeping
> > Journal state so kids can actually keep their Physics creations (and send
> > them to friends when using sugar 0.84).
>
> +1 +1 +1
>
> Brian
>
> >
> > Regards,
> > --Gary
> >
> >> Thanks
> >>
> >> Brian
> >>
> >> On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 4:17 PM, Gary C Martin 
> >> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Hey Brian,
> >>>
> >>> On 24 May 2009, at 13:57, Brian Jordan wrote:
> >>>
>  Hey Gary,
> 
>  First, I'm attaching Asaf Paris Mandoki, who contacted me last week
>  with an interest in developing on the Physics activity, and has great
>  ideas of things to add.  This is a great opportunity!  :)
> 
>  I can handle getting Physics on gitorious, the bug tracker and a.sl.o.
>  I will try to complete this by the end of today.
> >>>
> >>> Having chatted with Alex Levenson, I've already kicked off the
> migration
> >>> for
> >>> Physics (rep is now in Gitorious, trac request is in, and I've started
> to
> >>> poke at the code, running well at least in sugar-jhbuil

Re: [Sugar-devel] Physics activity development

[Alex Levenson]

A little background information. In the process of creating x2o, I created
Physics! sort of as a demo. So a lot of things are further along in x2o
because Physics! was sort of my sandbox for creating x2o. So if you want to
polish off Physics!, please take a look at what I did with x2o, which
integrates with the journal.
Alex

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 9:00 PM, Asaf Paris Mandoki wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I would like to get started adding the play/pause button and the pin
> button. Probably the next step is to integrate the activity with the
> journal. The only problem is that I haven't been able to get my development
> environment working. It seems there are some open issues with ubuntu. My
> plan right now is to wait until the Ubuntu issues are fixed. Any suggestions
> for a better setup? The only thing I have working now is a virtualbox
> environment where i've been testing the activity and found some bugs. I saw
> a commit with the "joystick" feature removed. Is the base code ready to
> start adding the minor button changes?
>
> Thanks,
> Asaf
>
>
>
> On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 2:17 AM, Brian Jordan  wrote:
>
>> On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 8:59 PM, Gary C Martin 
>> wrote:
>> > Hi Brian,
>> >
>> > On 24 May 2009, at 18:36, Brian Jordan wrote:
>> >
>> >> Hey all,
>> >>
>> >> Gary -- when you get a chance, can you add me as a committer on
>> >> git.sl.o?  I'd like to help clean things up!
>> >
>> > You're added! :-)
>> >
>> > Can I request we try and make small clean commits and try to let others
>> know
>> > what we are doing. If you want to hack, Gitorious supports quite a nice
>> > 'Clone repository' and then 'Request merge' process (no commit rights
>> needed
>> > for the main project). The alternative, if you know what you are doing,
>> is
>> > just make your own local git branch to hack on, so you can take care of
>> any
>> > merge/conflict issues yourself when you fold it back into the current
>> > master.
>> >
>> > I'm far from a git expert, but I can recommend some bed time reading at:
>> >
>> >
>> > http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~cduan/technical/git/
>> >
>> > and/or
>> >
>> >http://gitready.com/
>> >
>>
>> Thank you, will devote some to that!  Need to learn to keep my crazy
>> features in branches.
>>
>> > I'd like to get on with Labyrinth work, if you're willing to have an
>> initial
>> > clean up of the Physics source in the next few days... so what was
>> > 'joysitck' feature all about? ;-)
>>
>> This would probably be best to describe on the wiki page, the idea was
>> to make a UI for assigning keys on the XO-1 to impulses or changes on
>> certain objects, so simple 2 player physics based games could be made
>> from within Physics.
>>
>> Agreed, though, I will rid that from the code so we have a nice base
>> line for crazy-feature branches.
>>
>> > Once the dev.sugarlabs.org component is added we should add the
>> > features/bugs in there to keep them all together. FWIW, from a UI point
>> of
>> > view I had in mind:
>> >
>> > 1) remove/disable 'joysitick' feature as I have no idea what it was
>> meant to
>> > be ;-)
>> > 2) build tool buttons correctly using RadioToolButton so they display
>> state
>> > correctly
>> > 3) use set_accelerator to define visible keyboard shortcuts for the
>> tools
>> >
>> >> Asaf -- do you have a http://git.sugarlabs.org account yet?
>> >>
>> >> This is some feedback from Asaf (these could fit as enhancements in
>> >> http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ ):
>> >>
>> >>> While playing with the activity I found a "pause" button to stop time
>> >>> could be very useful. It's complicated to build elaborate contraptions
>> >>> if everything keeps falling. Maybe while everything is paused,
>> >>> positions an velocities of objects could be modified.
>> >>>
>> >>> A minor modification I suggest is to create a separate button for
>> >>> adding push pins. It is not intuitive to add them using the link tool.
>> >>> If there are plans about creating tutorial levels this isn't that
>> >>> necessary although I don't see any harm on adding it.
>> >>>
>> >>> An other thing I think could be grate is to be able to create
>> >>> attractors an repulsors. With stuff like this it gets pretty
>> >>> interesting, we could have objects orbiting around the attractors.
>> >
>> > Yes, all good stuff, there's also a list on
>> > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Physics_%28activity%29 as well, but I'd vote
>> for
>> > cleaning up what we have first, perhaps adding a play/pause, and keeping
>> > Journal state so kids can actually keep their Physics creations (and
>> send
>> > them to friends when using sugar 0.84).
>>
>> +1 +1 +1
>>
>> Brian
>>
>> >
>> > Regards,
>> > --Gary
>> >
>> >> Thanks
>> >>
>> >> Brian
>> >>
>> >> On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 4:17 PM, Gary C Martin 
>> >> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> Hey Brian,
>> >>>
>> >>> On 24 May 2009, at 13:57, Brian Jordan wrote:
>> >>>
>>  Hey Gary,
>> 
>>  First, I'm attaching Asaf Paris Mandoki, who contact

Re: [Sugar-devel] Physics activity development

[Alex Levenson]

Oh, and I don't know if it's still around, but jhbuild was pretty useful if
you don't have an xo to work on.
Alex

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 9:15 PM, Alex Levenson wrote:

> A little background information. In the process of creating x2o, I created
> Physics! sort of as a demo. So a lot of things are further along in x2o
> because Physics! was sort of my sandbox for creating x2o. So if you want to
> polish off Physics!, please take a look at what I did with x2o, which
> integrates with the journal.
> Alex
>
>
> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 9:00 PM, Asaf Paris Mandoki wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I would like to get started adding the play/pause button and the pin
>> button. Probably the next step is to integrate the activity with the
>> journal. The only problem is that I haven't been able to get my development
>> environment working. It seems there are some open issues with ubuntu. My
>> plan right now is to wait until the Ubuntu issues are fixed. Any suggestions
>> for a better setup? The only thing I have working now is a virtualbox
>> environment where i've been testing the activity and found some bugs. I saw
>> a commit with the "joystick" feature removed. Is the base code ready to
>> start adding the minor button changes?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Asaf
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 2:17 AM, Brian Jordan  wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 8:59 PM, Gary C Martin 
>>> wrote:
>>> > Hi Brian,
>>> >
>>> > On 24 May 2009, at 18:36, Brian Jordan wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> Hey all,
>>> >>
>>> >> Gary -- when you get a chance, can you add me as a committer on
>>> >> git.sl.o?  I'd like to help clean things up!
>>> >
>>> > You're added! :-)
>>> >
>>> > Can I request we try and make small clean commits and try to let others
>>> know
>>> > what we are doing. If you want to hack, Gitorious supports quite a nice
>>> > 'Clone repository' and then 'Request merge' process (no commit rights
>>> needed
>>> > for the main project). The alternative, if you know what you are doing,
>>> is
>>> > just make your own local git branch to hack on, so you can take care of
>>> any
>>> > merge/conflict issues yourself when you fold it back into the current
>>> > master.
>>> >
>>> > I'm far from a git expert, but I can recommend some bed time reading
>>> at:
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~cduan/technical/git/
>>> >
>>> > and/or
>>> >
>>> >http://gitready.com/
>>> >
>>>
>>> Thank you, will devote some to that!  Need to learn to keep my crazy
>>> features in branches.
>>>
>>> > I'd like to get on with Labyrinth work, if you're willing to have an
>>> initial
>>> > clean up of the Physics source in the next few days... so what was
>>> > 'joysitck' feature all about? ;-)
>>>
>>> This would probably be best to describe on the wiki page, the idea was
>>> to make a UI for assigning keys on the XO-1 to impulses or changes on
>>> certain objects, so simple 2 player physics based games could be made
>>> from within Physics.
>>>
>>> Agreed, though, I will rid that from the code so we have a nice base
>>> line for crazy-feature branches.
>>>
>>> > Once the dev.sugarlabs.org component is added we should add the
>>> > features/bugs in there to keep them all together. FWIW, from a UI point
>>> of
>>> > view I had in mind:
>>> >
>>> > 1) remove/disable 'joysitick' feature as I have no idea what it was
>>> meant to
>>> > be ;-)
>>> > 2) build tool buttons correctly using RadioToolButton so they display
>>> state
>>> > correctly
>>> > 3) use set_accelerator to define visible keyboard shortcuts for the
>>> tools
>>> >
>>> >> Asaf -- do you have a http://git.sugarlabs.org account yet?
>>> >>
>>> >> This is some feedback from Asaf (these could fit as enhancements in
>>> >> http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ ):
>>> >>
>>> >>> While playing with the activity I found a "pause" button to stop time
>>> >>> could be very useful. It's complicated to build elaborate
>>> contraptions
>>> >>> if everything keeps falling. Maybe while everything is paused,
>>> >>> positions an velocities of objects could be modified.
>>> >>>
>>> >>> A minor modification I suggest is to create a separate button for
>>> >>> adding push pins. It is not intuitive to add them using the link
>>> tool.
>>> >>> If there are plans about creating tutorial levels this isn't that
>>> >>> necessary although I don't see any harm on adding it.
>>> >>>
>>> >>> An other thing I think could be grate is to be able to create
>>> >>> attractors an repulsors. With stuff like this it gets pretty
>>> >>> interesting, we could have objects orbiting around the attractors.
>>> >
>>> > Yes, all good stuff, there's also a list on
>>> > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Physics_%28activity%29 as well, but I'd vote
>>> for
>>> > cleaning up what we have first, perhaps adding a play/pause, and
>>> keeping
>>> > Journal state so kids can actually keep their Physics creations (and
>>> send
>>> > them to friends when using sugar 0.84).
>>>
>>> +1 +1 +1
>>>
>>> Brian
>>>

Re: [Sugar-devel] Simplifying sugar-jhbuild

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 02:07, Bastien  wrote:
> Tomeu Vizoso  writes:
>
>> On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 13:31, Bastien  wrote:
>>> +1 on the overall.
>>>
>>> Building Sugar from source should be as easy as:
>>>
>>> ,
>>> | ~$ git://git.sugarlabs.org/sugar-core/mainline.git
>>> | ~$ ./configure
>>> | ~$ make
>>> | ~$ sudo make install
>>> `
>>
>> Well, that works for the sugar shell provided you have all the
>> dependencies installed. The point of jhbuild is precisely to get you
>> an environment where all the dependencies of the software you are
>> interested in are installed without breaking your regular desktop.
>
> Sorry to be dull here... IIUC, what you describe is the main difference
> between jhbuild and, say, apt-get install sugar on Ubuntu: in the later
> case, dependancies are taken care of by the .deb package whereas in the
> jhbuild case they are all integrated in the jhbuild source?  Does that
> make sense?

Agreed, jhbuild is necessary because we cannot expect all the
dependencies are installed in the distro. It would be great if we
could depend on stuff already in distros that are 1 year old, but we
are currently seeing how the rest of the Linux desktop world are
converging more towards our needs, so there's quite a bit of benefit
by staying at the bleeding edge.

Regards,

Tomeu

>> Please note that we don't need to use sudo as all dependencies are
>> installed in a user-writable directory.
>
> Ok.  Thanks for the explanations.
>
> --
>  Bastien
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Progress with SoaS boot-helper

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 16:49, Luke Faraone  wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> This is turning into a larger project than I'd originally imagined.
>
> Since the current process of using LVM loop-mounted partitions prevents us
> from mounting the SoaS filesystem outside of SoaS itself, we had to come up
> with a new method of installing SoaS that *can* be read by a running OS.
> I've done some work on modifying Canonical's Live USB creator to support
> this, but it will take some time.

Hi Luke, can you point us to a link where we can learn more about what
you are trying to accomplish?

Thanks,

Tomeu

> We've decided to set up the partitions on devices as descried on the wiki
> (permalink). This has the additional benefit of additional stability
> (loop-mounted filesystems are inherently more fragile), as well as
> (hopefully) increased compatability with older and odder BIOSes that only
> support USB-ZIP booting, rather than the more modern USB-HDD.
>
> There should be a decently stable version of the USB creator with these
> changes around by mid to late June, however it might need to be pushed back
> until the next SoaS release.
>
> There is little to no risk with implementing it late in the SoaS release
> schedule, if it was to be ready before then, since it is currently a
> non-essential component; there exist many other ways to create a SoaS stick,
> and the creator would be able to work with existing SoaS images without a
> problem.
>
> --
> Luke Faraone
> http://luke.faraone.cc
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] journal criticism

[Albert Cahalan]

James Zaki writes:

> Understanding hierarchical file structures use the concepts of containers
> and recursion with no limits (except for total capacity). It is not
> naturally intuitive, like a tree where branches get smaller from the trunk
> with fruit/leaves only at the end nodes.
>
> Empirically I've seen many new people approach computers (non-tech
> elder-relatives included), and hierarchical structures are not initially
> utilised. It was a secondary focus that had to be learnt out of necessity.

Perhaps the concept is easier to learn as a child. If you've gone
many decades without it ("non-tech elder relatives") and gotten set
in your ways, you may be at a disadvantage.

Let's not leave the next generation at a disadvantage too.

> Perhaps an activity/game could be made that teaches the concepts
> of a hierarchical file structure.

That won't get enough use. Learning to deal with the general features
of modern computing is much of the reason why the XO even exists, yet
the children are denied the opportunity to learn about directories.
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Documentation [WAS: Re: [Localization] Help activity]

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 21:47, Sayamindu Dasgupta  wrote:
> [Jumping into the discussion midway]:
>
> From an l10n point of view, I would highly recommend adopting (and
> perhaps extending) the GNOME documentation framework. It is docbook
> based, which is a format pretty easy to pick up (and I believe
> OpenOffice.org can also export to docbook - though I have never tried
> it out).

Well, I think it was a decision by the people who wrote the manual to
use floss manuals, I guess it would be up to them which tool they use.
And in the same way, translators would choose the tools that best suit
them. I think that floss manuals has already tools for translation and
also think that people have worked on a translation to spanish, Maybe
we should ask to those people which was their experience with the
floss manuals tool set?

Regards,

Tomeu

> Many programmers and documentation people should This would
> easily let us
>
> a) generate PO files out of the documentation files
> b) merge back translations easily
> c) generate multiple format files (PDF, epub, rtf, etc)
>
> It would be even more incredible if our documentation system can be
> integrated with the work being done at http://tutorius.org/ :-)
>
> A random google search brought up the story of a project which had
> used twiki initially, and then had moved on to docbook:
> http://www.ipcop.org/1.2.0/en/authors_guide/html/what-is-docbook.html
>
> Also, converting existing material might not be _that_ difficult: see
> http://deplate.sourceforge.net/
>
>
> Thanks,
> Sayamindu
>
>
> On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 2:29 PM, Tomeu Vizoso  wrote:
>> [forwarding to sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org]
>>
>> 2009/5/14 Diogo Serra @ IPLEIRIA :
>>> Hy there,
>>>
>>> Where i can find the *.po  of Help activity ?
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>> --
>>> Diogo Serra
>>> Programação e Desenvolvimento
>>>
>>> Campus 5 - Rua das Olhalvas
>>> 2414 - 016 Leiria - PORTUGAL
>>> Tel.: (+351) 244 845 052 | Fax: (+351) 244 845 059
>>>  | diogo.se...@ipleiria.pt | http://ued.ipleiria.pt
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ___
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>>> localizat...@lists.laptop.org
>>> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/localization
>>>
>>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Sayamindu Dasgupta
> [http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Journal criticism

[Jonas Smedegaard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: RIPEMD160

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 04:58:17AM -0400, Albert Cahalan wrote:
>Tomeu Vizoso writes:
>> I think it's very important if we want to keep pushing Sugar that we 
>> distinguish between design decisions and bugs and unimplemented 
>> features. If we bring down good design ideas not by themselves but 
>> because of its implementation status, we risk ending up with nothing 
>> that brings new value compared to existing desktops.
>
>You say that like it would be a bad thing. The existing desktops
>are at least time-tested. Learning to deal with the common features
>of modern desktop systems is very valuable for children.

I flat out disagree that Sugar should be a learning experience towards 
using alternative user interfaces.

In that mindset we should mimic Word, Excel and the Windows desktop, not 
for the quality of their interface designs, but simply because they are 
expremely popular so getting acquainted to them is "very valuable for 
children".


Kind regards,

  - Jonas

- -- 
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

  [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Journal criticism

[NoiseEHC]

I think it's very important if we want to keep pushing Sugar that we
distinguish between design decisions and bugs and unimplemented
features. If we bring down good design ideas not by themselves but
because of its implementation status, we risk ending up with nothing
that brings new value compared to existing desktops.



You say that like it would be a bad thing. The existing desktops
are at least time-tested. Learning to deal with the common features
of modern desktop systems is very valuable for children.
  


This relies on the assumption that 8 years from now when children grow 
up we will still use directories. I do not dare to predict the future so 
I will leave it to you... :)


The following things unfortunately cannot be done with a flat filesystem 
view:

1. Revision based view.
2. Tagging.
Of course, these views could be shown as a tree-like structure but it 
does not necessary mean that a filesystem should be the underlying storage.


It is a totally different problem that the current Journal barely 
implements those things but dropping it in favor of "time-tested" 
solutions is a mistake IMHO. (Note that no filesystem solves those 
problems I have mentioned.)
Another different problem is that Sugar should have a compatibility mode 
for example for USB drives but it will be implemented as I know so 
talking about that is moot.


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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Journal criticism

[Albert Cahalan]

2009/5/28 NoiseEHC :
>
> I think it's very important if we want to keep pushing Sugar that we
> distinguish between design decisions and bugs and unimplemented
> features. If we bring down good design ideas not by themselves but
> because of its implementation status, we risk ending up with nothing
> that brings new value compared to existing desktops.
>
>
> You say that like it would be a bad thing. The existing desktops
> are at least time-tested. Learning to deal with the common features
> of modern desktop systems is very valuable for children.
>
>
> This relies on the assumption that 8 years from now when children grow up we
> will still use directories. I do not dare to predict the future so I will
> leave it to you... :)

In graphical environments alone, directories are over 25 years old.
Since 8 is less than a third of that, there is only one safe bet.

It'd be way more than 25 years, except that we didn't even have
graphical environments much beyond that. Directories go back
about 40 years. 8 years is just another 20%.

This isn't the "Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2" feature set.
This is a concept that is pretty fundamental in computing.
It crosses platforms, it's in our network protocols, and it's even
required for all the programming languages that implement Sugar.

> The following things unfortunately cannot be done with a flat filesystem
> view:
> 1. Revision based view.
> 2. Tagging.

First, I think you didn't mean "flat". That's the Journal.
Second, both flat and tree systems can handle that.

> It is a totally different problem that the current Journal barely implements
> those things but dropping it in favor of "time-tested" solutions is a
> mistake IMHO. (Note that no filesystem solves those problems I have
> mentioned.)

No filesystem should! It looks like GNOME 3.0 will get you those
features on top of a plain old UNIX-style filesystem tree though,
without making the filesystem incompatible with both software
and humans.
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Journal criticism

[Albert Cahalan]

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 5:49 AM, Jonas Smedegaard  wrote:
> On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 04:58:17AM -0400, Albert Cahalan wrote:
>>Tomeu Vizoso writes:

>>> I think it's very important if we want to keep pushing Sugar that we
>>> distinguish between design decisions and bugs and unimplemented
>>> features. If we bring down good design ideas not by themselves but
>>> because of its implementation status, we risk ending up with nothing
>>> that brings new value compared to existing desktops.
>>
>>You say that like it would be a bad thing. The existing desktops
>>are at least time-tested. Learning to deal with the common features
>>of modern desktop systems is very valuable for children.
>
> I flat out disagree that Sugar should be a learning experience towards
> using alternative user interfaces.
>
> In that mindset we should mimic Word, Excel and the Windows desktop, not
> for the quality of their interface designs, but simply because they are
> expremely popular so getting acquainted to them is "very valuable for
> children".

To the extent that there are common features that are highly
unlikely to change across versions or even OSes, definitely.

MacOS System 6, MacOS X, OS/2 Warp, and Windows Vista
have certain basic features in common. It's a safe bet to say that
most of these features will remain in the computers of 2017.
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Kartik - internship outside GSoC

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 14:18, kartik rustagi  wrote:
>
> Hello everyone,
> Sorry for replying after this long a duration. Exams followed by physical
> damage to my machine consumed a lot of time.
> I will like to start my internship under Sugarlabs ASAP. Can any one please
> provide me a link to all the ideas that were discussed at the recent Sugar
> meetup (in Paris I guess) and the results of those discussions if possible.
> I will have a look at those ideas and will like to finalize the one I will
> be working on as soon as possible (in a day or two maximum). The idea
> regarding sharing of activities is also in the loop.

Hi, Kartik,

see http://erikos.sweettimez.de/?p=678

We are still discussing all this and trying to put names to each task,
but those are some ideas of what we would like to work on during this
release.

I would like to propose you one task that will bring enormous value
and that I think could fit well with your previous experience:


Groups

* tagging buddies to build up relations, tagging can happen by a
teacher tagging a class or the learner can tag himself


We have a problem with schools that have thousands of children logged
in their jabber server, as we have very limited functionality for
searching and browsing contacts. This impacts the usability of
collaboration in the classroom.

I think that the presence service is already sending a "tags" property
along the rest of the presence information. I think that we should
have a way for a person to set its own tags, and also for adding tags
to its contacts.

Does this feature interest you?

Regards,

Tomeu

> Thank You
>
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 12:20 AM, David Farning 
> wrote:
>>
>> Kartik,
>> That all looks pretty straightforward.  When you get the project
>> worked out Jameson can sign as training officer.  It looks like the
>> third page should be sent by Jameson directly to your school.
>>
>> thanks
>> david
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 11:25 AM, kartik rustagi 
>> wrote:
>> > Please find the scanned structure of the documents which are required as
>> > a
>> > proof of Internship at my school. It will be best if the documents are
>> > mailed directly to me since that will be the most reliable.
>> >
>> > On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 4:50 AM, kartik rustagi 
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>>
>> >>> My own, completely personal opinion on dissimilar activity
>> >>> collaboration
>> >>> is that it is a solution searching for a problem. I understand that
>> >>> there
>> >>> are real use cases, but I haven't seen one that's nearly as compelling
>> >>> as
>> >>> the viral-activity idea (idea 2 of the ones I sent). This is just me
>> >>> commenting, I hope that others with opposing viewpoints will also
>> >>> comment.
>> >>
>> >> If that is indeed the case then I will go with viral-activity idea. Any
>> >> idea who put up the dissimilar activity collaboration idea on the idea
>> >> list.
>> >> Maybe he/she might have a different outlook towards it. Suggestions on
>> >> this
>> >> are requested :)
>> >>
>> >>>
>> >>> As to Groupthink, I think that it would be ill-advised to try to force
>> >>> you and Bemasc to work together without a very clear delineation of
>> >>> responsibility which minimizes dependencies. I also think it would be
>> >>> very
>> >>> hard to draw such a line, though you're welcome to prove me wrong on
>> >>> this
>> >>> latter point.
>> >>
>> >> I completely agree with you. The reason why I mentioned Groupthink was
>> >> because I seriously appreciated it and wanted to do something like this
>> >> for
>> >> Sugar (according to my capabilities).
>> >> Few more suggestions on the project idea and then I will start making
>> >> the
>> >> proposal.
>> >>
>> 
>>  On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 8:34 PM, Jameson Quinn
>>  
>>  wrote:
>>  > I hope we can do this for you, and would be really happy if it
>>  > comes
>>  > through. However, as much as it pains me, I think you will have to
>>  > go
>>  > through some of the application process over again. We don't need
>>  > to
>>  > interview you again, once is plenty and you did well. But we do
>>  > need a
>>  > specific proposal, with clear deliverables - which could easily
>>  > take a
>>  > week
>>  > or more for you to create - and then at least a few days for us to
>>  > evaluate
>>  > the merits of such a proposal and our ability to support it.
>>  > Otherwise, how
>>  > can we meaningfully evaluate whether you've "completed" your
>>  > internship?
>>  >
>>  > I suspect that we'd be ready to accommodate whatever reasonable
>>  > calendar you
>>  > set up for those steps.
>>  >
>>  > Jameson
>>  >
>>  > 2009/4/26 kartik rustagi 
>>  >>
>>  >> Hi David,
>>  >> I talked to few of my seniors and the Training and Placement Cell
>>  >> at
>>  >> my school and they told me that the only official letter I will be
>>  >> needing are:
>>  >

Re: [Sugar-devel] Open Video with Dailymotion

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 00:15, Benjamin M. Schwartz
 wrote:
> Dailymotion, after creating an Ogg Theora video site optimized for
> Sugar+XO at http://olpc.dailymotion.com/, have gone one step further to
> expand Ogg Theora support across their entire video sharing system.  You
> can try it out at http://openvideo.dailymotion.com/
>
> Dailymotion OpenVideo uses the  tag, which requires Firefox 3.5 or
> similarly recent webkit-based browsers, and it won't work without it.
> What is the status of  in Browse?  If we can get  support,
> then we will have a complete video sharing service at our disposal,
> working out-of-the-box.

Possible integration issues aside, it depends on the xulrunner version
in the underlying distro. Does Sugar ship in any distro which already
has firefox 3.5?

Regards,

Tomeu

> --Ben
>
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] journal criticism

[James Zaki]

Not sure where my complete email went... something to do with awaiting
approval I think.
But just for clarity to all, I said the arrowed ">" text.



2009/5/28 Albert Cahalan 

> James Zaki writes:
>
> > Understanding hierarchical file structures use the concepts of containers
> > and recursion with no limits (except for total capacity). It is not
> > naturally intuitive, like a tree where branches get smaller from the
> trunk
> > with fruit/leaves only at the end nodes.
> >
> > Empirically I've seen many new people approach computers (non-tech
> > elder-relatives included), and hierarchical structures are not initially
> > utilised. It was a secondary focus that had to be learnt out of
> necessity.
>
> Perhaps the concept is easier to learn as a child. If you've gone
> many decades without it ("non-tech elder relatives") and gotten set
> in your ways, you may be at a disadvantage.
>
> Let's not leave the next generation at a disadvantage too.
>
> > Perhaps an activity/game could be made that teaches the concepts
> > of a hierarchical file structure.
>
> That won't get enough use. Learning to deal with the general features
> of modern computing is much of the reason why the XO even exists, yet
> the children are denied the opportunity to learn about directories.
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Gears in Browse

[Tomeu Vizoso]

2009/5/28 Lucian Branescu :
> For both Webified and Karma, Gears support in Browse is necessary (or
> at least preferred), but AFAIK there is currently no strategy to get
> it running.

I have managed to get it running in Browse some months ago by
expanding the .xpi and installing the files in a couple of different
directories. I could help you find which are those dirs.

> Since Browse uses xulrunner, it should be possible to use the Firefox
> version of Gears, with possible modifications. However, I could not
> find any documentation about XUL/Firefox extensions running on Browse.

Not all extensions can run in Browse, as some will use stuff only
present in firefox, thunderbird, etc. But Google Gears only depends on
stuff in xulrunner so it works fine once it's properly installed.

> On a related note, Sebastian Dzillas has done some work on packaging
> Gears in a .rpm for Firefox. The work is not complete, as the
> extension tries to write in places owned by root, instead of the local
> user profile. My project would probably need to be able to
> move/edit/delete the Gears profile for Journal integration (search
> your .mozilla default profile for the folder 'Google Gears for
> Firefox' after installing Gears in Firefox).

You mean that GG tries to write in /usr if it has been installed in
/usr? That sounds wrong and may be configurable or fixable.

Regards,

Tomeu

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] classroom presenter, iTalc for sugar (possible ports for LinuxTag Berlin showoff)

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 08:17, David Van Assche  wrote:
> Hi,
>    At LinuxTag Berlin, there are 3 areas that are of particular interest to
> me, and might be considered novelties in the way sugar can/will be presented
> there. From one side, I will be representing sugar packaging on the openSUSE
> platform, and being part of the opensuse-edu team, we will show off not only
> the live suse sugar cd/usb stick, but also the tight integration (including
> desktop launch icon) of sugar within the openSUSE 11.1 educational spin.
> Since kiwi-ltsp (A mature variant of LTSP 5) is quite integrated in the
> educational desktop, as is ejabberd, we will show off LTSP sugarised, with
> the approximately 50 sugar activities that have been packaged for openSUSE.
> Within the LTSP framework, we often use an application called iTalc, which
> allows for the remote administration (vnc on steroids) of desktop sessions,
> locking of sessions, passing around of sessions (for the classroom
> environment) as well as, intra station messaging (in case a particular
> station needs administrative help/training/support.) Right now, it runs
> great on the administrator machine, which doesn't need to and won't run
> Sugar. Basically from this view one can see screenshots of each desktop and
> by clicking on the desktop in question, one takes over or shares that
> session with that particular sugar user. There is more explanation and
> screenshots here: http://italc.sourceforge.net/
> On the client side, it would be nice for someone to study how hard it would
> be to port to sugar. Its not massively important since it runs from gnome,
> but for scenarios where sugar is the only Desktop Environment, it would be
> nice to have this kind of controlling mechanism for the teacher/admin. For
> example, the teacher could collaboratively work on one session connected to
> a projector, and pass that session on friom student to student, with each of
> them carrying out some task. I have seen it used this way under Gnome with
> great success, and as Sugar is collaborative by nature, it seems like a
> perfect fit. So any sugar porting takers?
>
> On another note, I have successfully tested the home made whiteboard option
> using a wiimote and infra red pens. This approach allows for the building of
> an interactive whiteboard for under 50 euros. Unfortunately, the best
> software to use for something like this is classroom presenter, originally
> windows software allowing one to open a powerpoint/impress presenation and
> then draw upon that using the infra red pen. Classroom presenter was ported
> to sugar at one point. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Classroom_Presenter , but
> I'm not sure about its current status, only that it doesn't currently work.
> Again, it would be nice to fix this activity so we can show it off at
> LinuxTag and show people how to create a cheap sugarised interactive
> whiteboard for under 50 euros. If someone is interested in getting this
> activity working again for Sugar, that would be great.

Maybe the activity team needs to adopt Classroom presenter? Or we
could reactivate its original developers?

Regards,

Tomeu

> kind Regards,
> David (nubae) Van Assche
> www.nubae.com
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Fwd: journal criticism (was Re: Re: Re: [IAEP] [RELEASE] TurtleArt-51)

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 10:41, James Zaki  wrote:
> I did not know there was much debate about this, because for me the journal
> in its current state made sense for the target audience of sugar.
>
> Understanding hierarchical file structures use the concepts of containers
> and recursion with no limits (except for total capacity). It is not
> naturally intuitive, like a tree where branches get smaller from the trunk
> with fruit/leaves only at the end nodes.

I guess there are some concepts that may take some time to grasp, but
what I'm most concerned is not about not being able to understand
those, rather that for someone who is putting all her energy on music
creation or geometry exploring, having to set aside some of her mind
into keeping track of where the files are put may not be so great.
Even more when computers can help a lot with information finding and
retrieval.

I like to think that Sugar is not striving towards "simplicity" but
rather to remove as many obstacles as possible in the path to
learning. Data handling is an area where current computers are failing
people and where we can do much better.

Regards,

Tomeu

> Empirically I've seen many new people approach computers (non-tech
> elder-relatives included), and hierarchical structures are not initially
> utilised. It was a secondary focus that had to be learnt out of necessity.
> At the time I would say this was due to a lack filters at their disposal.
>
> Tools such as GoogleDesktop or, more evidently, OS X  "Spotlight" are
> conceptually more approachable to a beginner/non-tech person, and further
> defers the need to learn about their tool rather than just using it
> effectively immediately.
>
> Perhaps an activity/game could be made that teaches the concepts of a
> hierarchical file structure. It could demonstrate inifite recursion with
> inifinite capacity at each node, but reward "good" storage somehow. Once
> they complete the game to a certain level, then they can unlock heirarchical
> file structures in journal?  But I think there is enough on everyone plates
> for now before this gets considered.
>
> Cheers,
> James
>
>
>
> 2009/5/27 Tomeu Vizoso 
>>
>> [forgot to add IAEP and sugar-devel]
>>
>> -- Forwarded message --
>> From: Tomeu Vizoso 
>> Date: Wed, May 27, 2009 at 12:11
>> Subject: journal criticism (was Re: Re: Re: [IAEP] [RELEASE] TurtleArt-51)
>> To: fors...@ozonline.com.au
>> Cc: Walter Bender 
>>
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> see my replies inline below. To everybody who would like to join this
>> conversation: please change the subject line accordingly or this
>> thread will become hard to follow.
>>
>> On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 04:54,   wrote:
>> > Hi Tomeu & Walter
>> >
>> > I am happy to expand this to the list. I have raised the journal once or
>> > twice before but mainly kept quiet not wanting to be trollish.
>> >
>> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2008-August/001475.html
>> > & more but i cant easily find
>> >
>> >
>> > The journal and sharing are probably the two central things that
>> > distinguish sugar as as a purpose built learning platform. The team have a
>> > huge investment of time and energy and are rightly proud of their
>> > achievement. That presents a problem for constructive discussion around the
>> > journal, the last thing I want to do is be trollish and destructive.
>> >
>> > For me, the workings behind the journal are hidden and there is a lack
>> > of tools to make it do different things when the default operation is not
>> > what you want. Also temporal and tagging is fine as a primary method of
>> > storage but hierarchical storage is not offered as an alternate method.
>> >
>> > in addition to today's filename issue, other problems that I can
>> > remember:
>> > altering the filenames and extensions of email attachments
>>
>> Could you please expand on this use case?
>>
>> > offline web pages do not navigate because the directory structure is
>> > lost
>>
>> This is scheduled to be addressed in 0.86 by downloading the page as a
>> zip file and storing that in the journal.
>>
>> > can't inspect or alter mime to force something to open
>>
>> This could be fixed in the journal easily, with no need to refactor or
>> throw out anything. We need more people to help us with developing
>> Sugar further.
>>
>> > journal spam
>>
>> In 0.84 landed several modifications that should improve this somehow,
>> have you seen if that helped?
>>
>> > (I haven't found a way to select a block so every spam item has to be
>> > individually deleted
>>
>> Would be awesome to be able to operate on multiple items at once, but
>> unfortunately it hasn't been implemented yet.
>>
>> > resume by default will probably cause students to lose work)
>>
>> Versioning in the journal is scheduled for 0.86, which should address this
>> one.
>>
>> > accidental overwriting of files through autosave
>>
>> Same as in the previous one, if I understand it correctly.
>>
>> >> Thanks for the feedback.
>> >>
>> >> Addi

Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Journal criticism

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 12:07, Albert Cahalan  wrote:
> 2009/5/28 NoiseEHC :
>>
>> I think it's very important if we want to keep pushing Sugar that we
>> distinguish between design decisions and bugs and unimplemented
>> features. If we bring down good design ideas not by themselves but
>> because of its implementation status, we risk ending up with nothing
>> that brings new value compared to existing desktops.
>>
>>
>> You say that like it would be a bad thing. The existing desktops
>> are at least time-tested. Learning to deal with the common features
>> of modern desktop systems is very valuable for children.
>>
>>
>> This relies on the assumption that 8 years from now when children grow up we
>> will still use directories. I do not dare to predict the future so I will
>> leave it to you... :)
>
> In graphical environments alone, directories are over 25 years old.
> Since 8 is less than a third of that, there is only one safe bet.
>
> It'd be way more than 25 years, except that we didn't even have
> graphical environments much beyond that. Directories go back
> about 40 years. 8 years is just another 20%.
>
> This isn't the "Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2" feature set.
> This is a concept that is pretty fundamental in computing.
> It crosses platforms, it's in our network protocols, and it's even
> required for all the programming languages that implement Sugar.
>
>> The following things unfortunately cannot be done with a flat filesystem
>> view:
>> 1. Revision based view.
>> 2. Tagging.
>
> First, I think you didn't mean "flat". That's the Journal.
> Second, both flat and tree systems can handle that.
>
>> It is a totally different problem that the current Journal barely implements
>> those things but dropping it in favor of "time-tested" solutions is a
>> mistake IMHO. (Note that no filesystem solves those problems I have
>> mentioned.)
>
> No filesystem should! It looks like GNOME 3.0 will get you those
> features on top of a plain old UNIX-style filesystem tree though,
> without making the filesystem incompatible with both software
> and humans.

As I said earlier, I would like to see hierarchical views of
filesystems in Sugar. They are waiting for someone to implement them.

I think we are beating a dead horse here.

http://coreygilmore.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/beating_a_dead_horse.jpg

Regards,

Tomeu
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] journal criticism

[Jonas Smedegaard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: RIPEMD160

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 12:29:23PM +0200, James Zaki wrote:
>Not sure where my complete email went... something to do with awaiting
>approval I think.

[actual content snipped]

Please subscribe to the lists that you post to, to bypass our spam 
screening process which causes delays and risk of lost emails.


Kind regards,

Jonas (one of only two list moderators - more volunteers appreciated!)

- -- 
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Journal criticism

[Jonas Smedegaard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: RIPEMD160

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 06:18:35AM -0400, Albert Cahalan wrote:
>On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 5:49 AM, Jonas Smedegaard  wrote:
>> On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 04:58:17AM -0400, Albert Cahalan wrote:
>>>Tomeu Vizoso writes:
>
 I think it's very important if we want to keep pushing Sugar that 
 we distinguish between design decisions and bugs and unimplemented 
 features. If we bring down good design ideas not by themselves but 
 because of its implementation status, we risk ending up with 
 nothing that brings new value compared to existing desktops.
>>>
>>>You say that like it would be a bad thing. The existing desktops are 
>>>at least time-tested. Learning to deal with the common features of 
>>>modern desktop systems is very valuable for children.
>>
>> I flat out disagree that Sugar should be a learning experience 
>> towards using alternative user interfaces.
>>
>> In that mindset we should mimic Word, Excel and the Windows desktop, 
>> not for the quality of their interface designs, but simply because 
>> they are expremely popular so getting acquainted to them is "very 
>> valuable for children".
>
>To the extent that there are common features that are highly
>unlikely to change across versions or even OSes, definitely.
>
>MacOS System 6, MacOS X, OS/2 Warp, and Windows Vista
>have certain basic features in common. It's a safe bet to say that
>most of these features will remain in the computers of 2017.

Actually, I am not so sure about that: I suspect user interfaces (as 
well as many other features of our society) do not evolve linear, but 
more and more rapidly transform.

So I am willing to challenge you in that bet. :-D

I suggest, for simplicity sake in our later judgement, that we limit the 
bet to "do all popular computer desktop environments still use (and 
directly expose to the edn user) a hierarchical file system in 2017, as 
they did in 2009?"

And I propose a symbolic item from looser to winner, with a fun 
punishment twist added: One bottle of bewerage of the winner's choosing, 
delivered personally at the winner's door step.

How does that sound?


Kind regards,

  - Jonas

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Re: [Sugar-devel] classroom presenter, iTalc for sugar (possible ports for LinuxTag Berlin showoff)

[James Zaki]

I am very interested in the digital whiteboard at LinuxTag. I will be going,
and would love to be a part of it if you need some help.

Once I get my system(s) back up (tagging fedora bugs along the way). I will
try take a look into the Classroom presenter activity.


2009/5/28 David Van Assche 

> Hi,
>At LinuxTag Berlin, there are 3 areas that are of particular interest to
> me, and might be considered novelties in the way sugar can/will be presented
> there. From one side, I will be representing sugar packaging on the openSUSE
> platform, and being part of the opensuse-edu team, we will show off not only
> the live suse sugar cd/usb stick, but also the tight integration (including
> desktop launch icon) of sugar within the openSUSE 11.1 educational spin.
> Since kiwi-ltsp (A mature variant of LTSP 5) is quite integrated in the
> educational desktop, as is ejabberd, we will show off LTSP sugarised, with
> the approximately 50 sugar activities that have been packaged for openSUSE.
> Within the LTSP framework, we often use an application called iTalc, which
> allows for the remote administration (vnc on steroids) of desktop sessions,
> locking of sessions, passing around of sessions (for the classroom
> environment) as well as, intra station messaging (in case a particular
> station needs administrative help/training/support.) Right now, it runs
> great on the administrator machine, which doesn't need to and won't run
> Sugar. Basically from this view one can see screenshots of each desktop and
> by clicking on the desktop in question, one takes over or shares that
> session with that particular sugar user. There is more explanation and
> screenshots here: http://italc.sourceforge.net/
> On the client side, it would be nice for someone to study how hard it would
> be to port to sugar. Its not massively important since it runs from gnome,
> but for scenarios where sugar is the only Desktop Environment, it would be
> nice to have this kind of controlling mechanism for the teacher/admin. For
> example, the teacher could collaboratively work on one session connected to
> a projector, and pass that session on friom student to student, with each of
> them carrying out some task. I have seen it used this way under Gnome with
> great success, and as Sugar is collaborative by nature, it seems like a
> perfect fit. So any sugar porting takers?
>
> On another note, I have successfully tested the home made whiteboard option
> using a wiimote and infra red pens. This approach allows for the building of
> an interactive whiteboard for under 50 euros. Unfortunately, the best
> software to use for something like this is classroom presenter, originally
> windows software allowing one to open a powerpoint/impress presenation and
> then draw upon that using the infra red pen. Classroom presenter was ported
> to sugar at one point. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Classroom_Presenter , but
> I'm not sure about its current status, only that it doesn't currently work.
> Again, it would be nice to fix this activity so we can show it off at
> LinuxTag and show people how to create a cheap sugarised interactive
> whiteboard for under 50 euros. If someone is interested in getting this
> activity working again for Sugar, that would be great.
>
> kind Regards,
> David (nubae) Van Assche
> www.nubae.com
>
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[Sugar-devel] LinuxDay Conference?

[Bastien]

http://2009.linuxdays.ch/fr/content/programme

Clearly business-oriented, but they have a thematic on Education 
where Sugar could sneak in.

PS: Btw, I have the feeling this list is not the right place for such
announcements.  Do we have something like a marketing list?  Or shall I
sent this to Sean so that he filters/dispatch the info more accurately
than I would do?

-- 
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Re: [Sugar-devel] LinuxDay Conference?

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 13:32, Bastien  wrote:
> http://2009.linuxdays.ch/fr/content/programme
>
> Clearly business-oriented, but they have a thematic on Education
> where Sugar could sneak in.
>
> PS: Btw, I have the feeling this list is not the right place for such
> announcements.  Do we have something like a marketing list?  Or shall I
> sent this to Sean so that he filters/dispatch the info more accurately
> than I would do?

You have the right feeling ;)

General: http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Marketing: http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing

Regards,

Tomeu

> --
>  Bastien
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] classroom presenter, iTalc for sugar (possible ports for LinuxTag Berlin showoff)

[Sean DALY]

Very interesting David, thanks

I can't wait to see that at LinuxTag.

Sean


On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 8:17 AM, David Van Assche  wrote:
> Hi,
>At LinuxTag Berlin, there are 3 areas that are of particular interest to
> me, and might be considered novelties in the way sugar can/will be presented
> there. From one side, I will be representing sugar packaging on the openSUSE
> platform, and being part of the opensuse-edu team, we will show off not only
> the live suse sugar cd/usb stick, but also the tight integration (including
> desktop launch icon) of sugar within the openSUSE 11.1 educational spin.
> Since kiwi-ltsp (A mature variant of LTSP 5) is quite integrated in the
> educational desktop, as is ejabberd, we will show off LTSP sugarised, with
> the approximately 50 sugar activities that have been packaged for openSUSE.
> Within the LTSP framework, we often use an application called iTalc, which
> allows for the remote administration (vnc on steroids) of desktop sessions,
> locking of sessions, passing around of sessions (for the classroom
> environment) as well as, intra station messaging (in case a particular
> station needs administrative help/training/support.) Right now, it runs
> great on the administrator machine, which doesn't need to and won't run
> Sugar. Basically from this view one can see screenshots of each desktop and
> by clicking on the desktop in question, one takes over or shares that
> session with that particular sugar user. There is more explanation and
> screenshots here: http://italc.sourceforge.net/
> On the client side, it would be nice for someone to study how hard it would
> be to port to sugar. Its not massively important since it runs from gnome,
> but for scenarios where sugar is the only Desktop Environment, it would be
> nice to have this kind of controlling mechanism for the teacher/admin. For
> example, the teacher could collaboratively work on one session connected to
> a projector, and pass that session on friom student to student, with each of
> them carrying out some task. I have seen it used this way under Gnome with
> great success, and as Sugar is collaborative by nature, it seems like a
> perfect fit. So any sugar porting takers?
>
> On another note, I have successfully tested the home made whiteboard option
> using a wiimote and infra red pens. This approach allows for the building of
> an interactive whiteboard for under 50 euros. Unfortunately, the best
> software to use for something like this is classroom presenter, originally
> windows software allowing one to open a powerpoint/impress presenation and
> then draw upon that using the infra red pen. Classroom presenter was ported
> to sugar at one point. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Classroom_Presenter , but
> I'm not sure about its current status, only that it doesn't currently work.
> Again, it would be nice to fix this activity so we can show it off at
> LinuxTag and show people how to create a cheap sugarised interactive
> whiteboard for under 50 euros. If someone is interested in getting this
> activity working again for Sugar, that would be great.
>
> kind Regards,
> David (nubae) Van Assche
> www.nubae.com
>
> ___
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> i...@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] classroom presenter, iTalc for sugar (possible ports for LinuxTag Berlin showoff)

[Caroline Meeks]

+1 on the importance of iTalc like functionality.  If that is something
Windows/Apple can do and Sugar  can't its going to hurt adoption.

It would be cool if students could also become the presenters so the teacher
could ask a student in the room to explain how a problem was done and pass
control over to that student for a while.

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 2:17 AM, David Van Assche wrote:

> Hi,
>At LinuxTag Berlin, there are 3 areas that are of particular interest to
> me, and might be considered novelties in the way sugar can/will be presented
> there. From one side, I will be representing sugar packaging on the openSUSE
> platform, and being part of the opensuse-edu team, we will show off not only
> the live suse sugar cd/usb stick, but also the tight integration (including
> desktop launch icon) of sugar within the openSUSE 11.1 educational spin.
> Since kiwi-ltsp (A mature variant of LTSP 5) is quite integrated in the
> educational desktop, as is ejabberd, we will show off LTSP sugarised, with
> the approximately 50 sugar activities that have been packaged for openSUSE.
> Within the LTSP framework, we often use an application called iTalc, which
> allows for the remote administration (vnc on steroids) of desktop sessions,
> locking of sessions, passing around of sessions (for the classroom
> environment) as well as, intra station messaging (in case a particular
> station needs administrative help/training/support.) Right now, it runs
> great on the administrator machine, which doesn't need to and won't run
> Sugar. Basically from this view one can see screenshots of each desktop and
> by clicking on the desktop in question, one takes over or shares that
> session with that particular sugar user. There is more explanation and
> screenshots here: http://italc.sourceforge.net/
> On the client side, it would be nice for someone to study how hard it would
> be to port to sugar. Its not massively important since it runs from gnome,
> but for scenarios where sugar is the only Desktop Environment, it would be
> nice to have this kind of controlling mechanism for the teacher/admin. For
> example, the teacher could collaboratively work on one session connected to
> a projector, and pass that session on friom student to student, with each of
> them carrying out some task. I have seen it used this way under Gnome with
> great success, and as Sugar is collaborative by nature, it seems like a
> perfect fit. So any sugar porting takers?
>
> On another note, I have successfully tested the home made whiteboard option
> using a wiimote and infra red pens. This approach allows for the building of
> an interactive whiteboard for under 50 euros. Unfortunately, the best
> software to use for something like this is classroom presenter, originally
> windows software allowing one to open a powerpoint/impress presenation and
> then draw upon that using the infra red pen. Classroom presenter was ported
> to sugar at one point. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Classroom_Presenter , but
> I'm not sure about its current status, only that it doesn't currently work.
> Again, it would be nice to fix this activity so we can show it off at
> LinuxTag and show people how to create a cheap sugarised interactive
> whiteboard for under 50 euros. If someone is interested in getting this
> activity working again for Sugar, that would be great.
>
> kind Regards,
> David (nubae) Van Assche
> www.nubae.com
>
> ___
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> i...@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>



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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] journal criticism

[Eben Eliason]

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 5:34 AM, Albert Cahalan  wrote:
> James Zaki writes:
>
>> Understanding hierarchical file structures use the concepts of containers
>> and recursion with no limits (except for total capacity). It is not
>> naturally intuitive, like a tree where branches get smaller from the trunk
>> with fruit/leaves only at the end nodes.
>>
>> Empirically I've seen many new people approach computers (non-tech
>> elder-relatives included), and hierarchical structures are not initially
>> utilised. It was a secondary focus that had to be learnt out of necessity.
>
> Perhaps the concept is easier to learn as a child. If you've gone
> many decades without it ("non-tech elder relatives") and gotten set
> in your ways, you may be at a disadvantage.
>
> Let's not leave the next generation at a disadvantage too.
>
>> Perhaps an activity/game could be made that teaches the concepts
>> of a hierarchical file structure.
>
> That won't get enough use. Learning to deal with the general features
> of modern computing is much of the reason why the XO even exists, yet

I'm pretty sure most of us agree, and that you already know, that this
is precisely not the case. Sugar was not designed so kids could learn
to use computers. It was designed so kids could learn. Learning about
computers is certainly a subset of that goal, but by no means the
primary one as you suggest.

/me notes the name of the list...

> the children are denied the opportunity to learn about directories.

An activity which presents these topics would provide such an
opportunity for those kids inclined to explore it, would it not? It
seems that you are confusing opportunity with obligation.

Incidentally, I would actually like to see some changes come about to
the underlying data structures of the Journal so that it isn't so
completely alienated from the filesystem itself. I think many others
would too, but I don't think that forcing that on kids is particularly
useful. Still, making underlying changes to provide the opportunity
for kids to dig in deeper — via an activity, or via the command line —
is a worthy goal.

Eben


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[Sugar-devel] Fwd: [IAEP] Testing Soas

[Frederick Grose]

Hi Tom,
Your work on the VMware page,  http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/VMware, has been
helpful.  Others may want to collaborate with you there.

Please also look at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/BugSquad and its subpages.
 You could help in verifying and sorting out problems reported in our bug
tracking system.

Thanks for your contributions!   --Fred


Forwarded conversation
Subject: [IAEP] Testing Soas


From: *Thomas C Gilliard* 
Date: Tue, May 26, 2009 at 12:26 PM
To: feedb...@sugarlabs.org


I have been trying to help test with the resources and skills that I have.

I am using VMWorkstation 6.5.2 for testing snapshots
burning CD's and attempting Boots with them
I have available to my use:

3 Dell Computers:
520n = Ubuntu 9.04
530n = Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (VMworkstation)
Dimension 2350 XPPro SP2  (VMworkstation)
hp e-pc 1200 (with USB 1.0 only) Fedora 11 (leonidas) from upgraded
Preview net  install
Netbook:
EePC900 first linux edition
HP Laptop: Multimedia x1000 =Vista
Last version of Apple Powerbook G4

I have been helping nubae testing his sugarSUSE builds
I have been working on an alternate boot able
1 or 2 USB stick VMPlayer solution to archive
Persistent SUGAR entities.
(VMWARE on wiki)

I am retired and want to help;
Please point me in other ways that I can help.

Tom Gilliard
satellit
Bend, OR
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From: *Walter Bender* 
Date: Tue, May 26, 2009 at 12:37 PM
To: Thomas C Gilliard 
Cc: feedb...@sugarlabs.org


This is all very valuable help. Thank you.
Can you tell me a bit more about your background and interests? There
are many different ways to get involved--getting deeper into testing
being one obvious one. But outreach, curriculum development,
documentation, support, etc. are all in need of more hands as well.

(I presume you've visited the
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Getting_Involved page in the
wiki?)
Thanks for all the help to date. Look forward to hearing from you.

regards.

-walter

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[Sugar-devel] Fwd: [IAEP] IRC application Autojoin feature does not work on Soas2-20090524 (Soas-1)

[Frederick Grose]

Forwarding to sugar-devel.
NOTE:  Mail sent to feedb...@sugarlabs.org is forwarded to
i...@lists.sugarlabs.org subscribers and appears with the [IAEP] prefix and
footer, but the post is not in the IAEP Archives,
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/.


Forwarded conversation
Subject: [IAEP] IRC application Autojoin feature does not work on
Soas2-20090524 (Soas-1)


From: *Thomas C Gilliard* 
Date: Tue, May 26, 2009 at 3:24 PM
To: feedb...@sugarlabs.org


Where do I set the autojoin features of the latest Soas -1 iso burned to
a CD

I check the box on the tab for #opensuse-edu and it does not re-connect
when I turn it back on.


Is there an overiding config file? Or is this a bug?

Tom Gilliard
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From: *Caroline Meeks* 
Date: Tue, May 26, 2009 at 3:41 PM
To: Thomas C Gilliard 
Cc: feedb...@sugarlabs.org


Are you running from a CD or a USB?  I think the CD can not record any
changes so it can't remember anything.
-- 
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Re: [Sugar-devel] disabling "tap to click"

[Daniel Drake]

2009/5/28 roshan karki :
> The problem with gsynaptics is I don't have any section with "synaptic" as
> identifier in xorg.conf

Yes, the XO ships with the standard PS/2 driver, so the touchpad runs
in the PS/2 "emulation" mode. This works but means you don't have
control over the more advanced features of the new touchpad, such as
enabling/disabling tap-to-click. And as you have noted, the new
touchpad has tap-to-click enabled in the PS/2 emulation mode.

If you do want that extra control, you have to install and configure
the synaptics driver to suit your needs.
If my recollection is correct, OLPC did not do this for 8.2.1 as it
was decided that the change was too major for a bug-fix release, and
while the sudden change is a little undesirable, it was hoped that
kids being kids would "adapt" without problems.

Daniel
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[Sugar-devel] Fwd: [IAEP] IRC application Autojoin feature does not work on Soas2-20090524 (Soas-1)]

[Frederick Grose]

Forwarded conversation
Subject: Re: [IAEP] IRC application Autojoin feature does not work on
Soas2-20090524 (Soas-1)]


From: *Thomas C Gilliard* 
Date: Tue, May 26, 2009 at 4:00 PM
To: feedb...@sugarlabs.org


Caroline;

I tried a burned CD of .iso.

There is no memory in computer for changes made while running?

SUGAR remembers  user name at sign on and changes of colors if not turned
off,
If do a reboot after change name or colors from controlpanel it goes to a
blue autologin screen
and comes back with the changes. Is this a feature of Control Panel and not
applications?
why not auto join in IRC?

Regards;
Tom Gilliard


Caroline Meeks wrote:
> Are you running from a CD or a USB?  I think the CD can not record any
> changes so it can't remember anything.
>
> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 3:24 PM, Thomas C Gilliard <
> satel...@bendbroadband.com> wrote:
>
>  >> Where do I set the autojoin features of the latest Soas -1 iso burned
to a
>> CD
>>
>> I check the box on the tab for #opensuse-edu and it does not re-connect
>> when I turn it back on.
>>
>>
>> Is there an overiding config file? Or is this a bug?
>>
>> Tom Gilliard
>>
>> >
>
>



-- Forwarded message --
From: Caroline Meeks 
To: Thomas C Gilliard 
Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 15:41:08 -0400
Subject: Re: IRC application Autojoin feature does not work on
Soas2-20090524 (Soas-1)
Are you running from a CD or a USB?  I think the CD can not record any
changes so it can't remember anything.

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 3:24 PM, Thomas C Gilliard <
satel...@bendbroadband.com> wrote:

> Where do I set the autojoin features of the latest Soas -1 iso burned to a
> CD
>
> I check the box on the tab for #opensuse-edu and it does not re-connect
> when I turn it back on.
>
>
> Is there an overiding config file? Or is this a bug?
>
> Tom Gilliard
>



-- 
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carol...@solutiongrove.com

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax

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From: *Caroline Meeks* 
Date: Tue, May 26, 2009 at 4:11 PM
To: Thomas C Gilliard 
Cc: feedb...@sugarlabs.org


Yeah you have a point, I'm not sure.  When I get a chance I'll try to test
on a USB.  Maybe ask in #Sugar?

-- 
> Caroline Meeks
> Solution Grove
> carol...@solutiongrove.com
>
> 617-500-3488 - Office
> 505-213-3268 - Fax
>
>


-- 
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carol...@solutiongrove.com

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505-213-3268 - Fax

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Re: [Sugar-devel] Gears in Browse

[Lucian Branescu]

2009/5/28 Tomeu Vizoso :
> 2009/5/28 Lucian Branescu :
>> For both Webified and Karma, Gears support in Browse is necessary (or
>> at least preferred), but AFAIK there is currently no strategy to get
>> it running.
>
> I have managed to get it running in Browse some months ago by
> expanding the .xpi and installing the files in a couple of different
> directories. I could help you find which are those dirs.
I tried that, but it didn't work. I welcome help :)
>
>> Since Browse uses xulrunner, it should be possible to use the Firefox
>> version of Gears, with possible modifications. However, I could not
>> find any documentation about XUL/Firefox extensions running on Browse.
>
> Not all extensions can run in Browse, as some will use stuff only
> present in firefox, thunderbird, etc. But Google Gears only depends on
> stuff in xulrunner so it works fine once it's properly installed.
I know not all extensions can run in Browse, but AFAIK Gears doesn't
target the firefox .xul. It's quite non-invasive in all browsers in
fact.
>
>> On a related note, Sebastian Dzillas has done some work on packaging
>> Gears in a .rpm for Firefox. The work is not complete, as the
>> extension tries to write in places owned by root, instead of the local
>> user profile. My project would probably need to be able to
>> move/edit/delete the Gears profile for Journal integration (search
>> your .mozilla default profile for the folder 'Google Gears for
>> Firefox' after installing Gears in Firefox).
>
> You mean that GG tries to write in /usr if it has been installed in
> /usr? That sounds wrong and may be configurable or fixable.
I think /usr, I didn't check. I will today.

Yes, it certainly is fixable, but I'm not sure it is also
configurable. I'd hate to have to patch and compile Gears for the .rpm
I'll investigate some more
>
> Regards,
>
> Tomeu

Thanks!
>
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[Sugar-devel] How to get sugar config values without a console?

[Martin Langhoff]

I'm working on olpc-update-query, a script that runs without a tty
(from NM hooks and cron) and needs to query Sugar configuration stuff.
To make things more complicated, it runs as root :-/

It's a good thing that we have sugar-control-panel, but at least on
0.82 it doesn't work unless you're in Terminal. Strangely enough, it
tries to load gtk.

Is there a better way to do what I am hoping to do, in a portable way
(that works on 0.82, 0.84, 0.86)? Or should I fall back on yaml
linbraries for 0.82 and gconf cli for 0.84?

cheers,



m
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Gears in Browse

[Martin Langhoff]

2009/5/28 Lucian Branescu :
> For both Webified and Karma, Gears support in Browse is necessary (or
> at least preferred), but AFAIK there is currently no strategy to get
> it running.

If I understand correctly, the 'HTML5' extensions push means that the
core gecko gets facilities that look almost exactly like
GoogleGears... because they are GG-derived code.

So I suspect that if we get a new-enough xulrunner, this problem goes away :-)

cheers,


m
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 mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Gears in Browse

[Lucian Branescu]

Not really. HTML 5 only brings an SQLite database accessible from JavaScript.

Gears has other features that aren't present in Gecko proper (yet):
- LocalServer - a way to transparently persist resources locally
- WorkerPool - threads. The WHATWG HTML 5 spec does include provisions
for WebWorkers, but they aren't really supported anywhere yet
- Geolocation - no equivalent
- Desktop - shortcuts, file access, etc - not very relevant for Sugar,
at least not without modifications

However, even if Gecko had all the features Gears already has, there
are web applications that rely on Gears APIs specifically. Wrappers
would be needed and they usually aren't quite complete.

It's better to just try to get Gears working, at least for my project.
I guess Karma could use a JavaScript ORM that can use both Gears and
HTML 5 storage as a backend.

2009/5/28 Martin Langhoff :
> 2009/5/28 Lucian Branescu :
>> For both Webified and Karma, Gears support in Browse is necessary (or
>> at least preferred), but AFAIK there is currently no strategy to get
>> it running.
>
> If I understand correctly, the 'HTML5' extensions push means that the
> core gecko gets facilities that look almost exactly like
> GoogleGears... because they are GG-derived code.
>
> So I suspect that if we get a new-enough xulrunner, this problem goes away :-)
>
> cheers,
>
>
> m
> --
>  martin.langh...@gmail.com
>  mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
>  - ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Progress with SoaS boot-helper

[Caroline Meeks]

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 5:28 AM, Tomeu Vizoso  wrote:

> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 16:49, Luke Faraone  wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > This is turning into a larger project than I'd originally imagined.
> >
> > Since the current process of using LVM loop-mounted partitions prevents
> us
> > from mounting the SoaS filesystem outside of SoaS itself, we had to come
> up
> > with a new method of installing SoaS that *can* be read by a running OS.
> > I've done some work on modifying Canonical's Live USB creator to support
> > this, but it will take some time.
>
> Hi Luke, can you point us to a link where we can learn more about what
> you are trying to accomplish?


I think this is Ticket 598 to support the Gardner Pilot.  the use case is
here:
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Critical_Path_Technical_Issues

Let me know if I'm wrong about this!

Thanks,
Caroline

>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tomeu
>
> > We've decided to set up the partitions on devices as descried on the wiki
> > (permalink). This has the additional benefit of additional stability
> > (loop-mounted filesystems are inherently more fragile), as well as
> > (hopefully) increased compatability with older and odder BIOSes that only
> > support USB-ZIP booting, rather than the more modern USB-HDD.
> >
> > There should be a decently stable version of the USB creator with these
> > changes around by mid to late June, however it might need to be pushed
> back
> > until the next SoaS release.
> >
> > There is little to no risk with implementing it late in the SoaS release
> > schedule, if it was to be ready before then, since it is currently a
> > non-essential component; there exist many other ways to create a SoaS
> stick,
> > and the creator would be able to work with existing SoaS images without a
> > problem.
> >
> > --
> > Luke Faraone
> > http://luke.faraone.cc
> >
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> >
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Re: [Sugar-devel] How to get sugar config values without a console?

[pgf]

martin wrote:
 > I'm working on olpc-update-query, a script that runs without a tty
 > (from NM hooks and cron) and needs to query Sugar configuration stuff.
 > To make things more complicated, it runs as root :-/
 > 
 > It's a good thing that we have sugar-control-panel, but at least on
 > 0.82 it doesn't work unless you're in Terminal. Strangely enough, it
 > tries to load gtk.

if you're root, use the force:

 #!/bin/sh

 get_x_credentials()
 {
 # fetch the local X server's XAUTHORITY variable
 eval "$( xargs -n 1 -0 < /proc/$(pidof X)/environ | grep '^XAUTHORITY=')"
 export XAUTHORITY
 export DISPLAY=:0
 }

 test "$XAUTHORITY" || get_x_credentials

 sugar-control-panel -blah



=-
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Gears in Browse

[Martin Langhoff]

2009/5/28 Lucian Branescu :
> Not really. HTML 5 only brings an SQLite database accessible from JavaScript.
>
> Gears has other features that aren't present in Gecko proper (yet):
> - LocalServer - a way to transparently persist resources locally

I thought HTML5 had some "offline resource" facility.

cheers,



m
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Gears in Browse

[Lucian Branescu]

AFAIK it's not in the spec (yet), but there was some talk about it. In
any case, it's certainly not in browsers.

2009/5/28 Martin Langhoff :
> 2009/5/28 Lucian Branescu :
>> Not really. HTML 5 only brings an SQLite database accessible from JavaScript.
>>
>> Gears has other features that aren't present in Gecko proper (yet):
>> - LocalServer - a way to transparently persist resources locally
>
> I thought HTML5 had some "offline resource" facility.
>
> cheers,
>
>
>
> m
> --
>  martin.langh...@gmail.com
>  mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
>  - ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
>  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Gears in Browse

[Martin Langhoff]

2009/5/28 Martin Langhoff :
> 2009/5/28 Lucian Branescu :
>> Not really. HTML 5 only brings an SQLite database accessible from JavaScript.
>>
>> Gears has other features that aren't present in Gecko proper (yet):
>> - LocalServer - a way to transparently persist resources locally
>
> I thought HTML5 had some "offline resource" facility.

What we ship on XO 8.2.x is xulrunner 1.9 (FF3.0). If we were to ship
xulrunner 1.9.1 (which is what the F11-based builds ship anyway) then
we'd get support for the tools listed here
http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Implementations_in_Web_browsers

>From that URL, my understanding is that you get all the things you
need from gecko itself.


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Re: [Sugar-devel] How to get sugar config values without a console?

[Martin Langhoff]

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 4:48 PM,   wrote:
> if you're root, use the force:

you are truly evil :-)



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Re: [Sugar-devel] Gears in Browse

[Lucian Branescu]

Heh, I didn't know LocalStorage had been in Firefox for so long. I was
under the impression it was at the same stage as Webkit. Thanks for
the link.

Again, this should be sufficient for Karma-in-Firefox.

But many websites already use Gears specifically, and I need them to
work for Webified.

2009/5/28 Martin Langhoff :
> 2009/5/28 Martin Langhoff :
>> 2009/5/28 Lucian Branescu :
>>> Not really. HTML 5 only brings an SQLite database accessible from 
>>> JavaScript.
>>>
>>> Gears has other features that aren't present in Gecko proper (yet):
>>> - LocalServer - a way to transparently persist resources locally
>>
>> I thought HTML5 had some "offline resource" facility.
>
> What we ship on XO 8.2.x is xulrunner 1.9 (FF3.0). If we were to ship
> xulrunner 1.9.1 (which is what the F11-based builds ship anyway) then
> we'd get support for the tools listed here
> http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Implementations_in_Web_browsers
>
> From that URL, my understanding is that you get all the things you
> need from gecko itself.
>
>
> m
> --
>  martin.langh...@gmail.com
>  mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
>  - ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Gears in Browse

[Tomeu Vizoso]

2009/5/28 Lucian Branescu :
> Heh, I didn't know LocalStorage had been in Firefox for so long. I was
> under the impression it was at the same stage as Webkit. Thanks for
> the link.
>
> Again, this should be sufficient for Karma-in-Firefox.
>
> But many websites already use Gears specifically, and I need them to
> work for Webified.

I'm also interested in knowing better how to support extensions in
Browse. I can dedicate a couple of hours today to get GG running in
Browse.

Regards,

Tomeu

> 2009/5/28 Martin Langhoff :
>> 2009/5/28 Martin Langhoff :
>>> 2009/5/28 Lucian Branescu :
 Not really. HTML 5 only brings an SQLite database accessible from 
 JavaScript.

 Gears has other features that aren't present in Gecko proper (yet):
 - LocalServer - a way to transparently persist resources locally
>>>
>>> I thought HTML5 had some "offline resource" facility.
>>
>> What we ship on XO 8.2.x is xulrunner 1.9 (FF3.0). If we were to ship
>> xulrunner 1.9.1 (which is what the F11-based builds ship anyway) then
>> we'd get support for the tools listed here
>> http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Implementations_in_Web_browsers
>>
>> From that URL, my understanding is that you get all the things you
>> need from gecko itself.
>>
>>
>> m
>> --
>>  martin.langh...@gmail.com
>>  mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
>>  - ask interesting questions
>>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
>>  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
>>
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[Sugar-devel] Journal criticism (or not)

[James Simmons]

My two cents:

When I started programming computers 30+ years ago data was stored in 
punch cards and reels of tape.  Disk storage was available, but too 
expensive to use to store large amounts of data.  (I didn't hear the 
word "gigabyte" until the late 80's).  In classes at college I studied 
database management systems.  The book had ONE chapter on relational 
databases.  There was some question back then if one of these could 
actually be built.

For versioning of files we used something called a GDG (generation data 
group).

The first interactive computer system I got to use was VM.  Everyone in 
the system had the illusion of having a whole mainframe to himself.  If 
you wanted to send someone else some COBOL code you'd use the "spool 
punch" command, because that was virtually like having the machine punch 
up a deck of 80 column cards and handing that deck to the person.  We 
used fixed length records for most things, because there was no way to 
make a variable length punched card.

Later, at the same time I got my first PC, I also started programming 
IBM's new AS400, which had libraries, files, and members.  Everything on 
the box had those three levels of hierarchy: no more, no less.

Everything I have listed above is still in use today.  Most of them 
predate hierarchical folders.

Now the thing about Sugar is that it is NOT about teaching the kid how 
to use a computer.  It's about teaching him everything, using the 
computer to help.  It's about teaching art with Colors, music with Tam 
Tam, creative writing with Write, math with a whole bunch of Activities, 
History, Language, and Literature with the various reading Activities, 
etc.  Learning about computers is in there too, with Pippy, etc. but 
it's not the main focus.

I think of the Journal as a DBMS that stores and organizes various kinds 
of objects.  Sure, it uses files and directories underneath but so does 
a DBMS and nobody thinks of a DBMS that way except the guy who wrote it.

The Journal is a real selling point for Sugar.  My criticism of the 
Journal is:

1).  It doesn't live up to its potential.  It should be MORE like it 
already is.
2).  It should stop pretending that other ways of organizing files (on 
thumb drives) are as good as it is.  They are not.  They are crude 
visitors from a foreign land and should be treated as such.

James Simmons


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Re: [Sugar-devel] Running Sugar with sugar-jhbuild - questions

[Bastien]

I did a fresh install of sugar-jhbuild.

./sugar-jhbuild depscheck doesn't advertize the need for
python-distutils-extra.  Recent bug reports about this:

http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/902
http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/898

Another problem: sugar-jhbuild still doesn't recognize my keyboard 
to be AZERTY. Is anyone successfully using a non-QWERTY keyboard?

I want to make screencasts but would prefer to fix this before.

Thanks!

-- 
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] classroom presenter, iTalc for sugar (possible ports for LinuxTag Berlin showoff)

[David Van Assche]

Hi,
  Caroline, that is exactly how iTalc works. The teacher can pass on the
session to one or groups of students, so it becomes a great way for everyone
to join in. If you are going to be at LinuxTag, I can do a quick demo so u
can see how this would work in a real teaching environment. I have also been
testing the wiimote whiteboard solution, which is truly outstanding. The
solution works better than I had projected (no pun intended) and though I
have not been able to run it inside Sugar yet, Classroom Presenter is a
great tool for this. Basically its like having a really big touchpad on the
projection screen, and up to 4 people can use the infra red pens at once.
Again, this allows for some pretty neat collaborative abilities. Tony
Anderson is working on the next version of Classroom presenter which should
also be able to read out slides. He will be at LinuxTag, and hopefully we
can put together some kind of demonstration of how the wiimote works with
it. Same goes for iTalc and LTSP. So its all looking good... The wiimote
whiteboard software runs on Linux, Windows and Mac (more info here:
http://www.uweschmidt.org/wiimote-whiteboard) with up to 2 concurrent pens,
smoothing callibration (how straight a line u can draw) and basically turns
an infra red pen into a mouse pointer. By using single click and double
click u can pretty much control the computer from the projector screen,
including doing really neat stuff in gimp, sugar-paint, inkscape, and
classroom presenter. Even things like google earth being controlled this way
is very very cool. The cost of all the necessary items is under 50 euros, so
this is truly an amazing solution that can be adopted in 3rd world countries
too. For the same functionality, you'd normally be paying thousands of
euros, and the stuff would still require extra licenses, etc. All the
software to run this is free, and I hope we can get some more testing done
in this area at LinuxTag, including a moodle tutorial, and how/where to get
the software.

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 2:06 PM, Caroline Meeks wrote:

> +1 on the importance of iTalc like functionality.  If that is something
> Windows/Apple can do and Sugar  can't its going to hurt adoption.
>
> It would be cool if students could also become the presenters so the
> teacher could ask a student in the room to explain how a problem was done
> and pass control over to that student for a while.
>
> On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 2:17 AM, David Van Assche wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>At LinuxTag Berlin, there are 3 areas that are of particular interest
>> to me, and might be considered novelties in the way sugar can/will be
>> presented there. From one side, I will be representing sugar packaging on
>> the openSUSE platform, and being part of the opensuse-edu team, we will show
>> off not only the live suse sugar cd/usb stick, but also the tight
>> integration (including desktop launch icon) of sugar within the openSUSE
>> 11.1 educational spin. Since kiwi-ltsp (A mature variant of LTSP 5) is quite
>> integrated in the educational desktop, as is ejabberd, we will show off LTSP
>> sugarised, with the approximately 50 sugar activities that have been
>> packaged for openSUSE. Within the LTSP framework, we often use an
>> application called iTalc, which allows for the remote administration (vnc on
>> steroids) of desktop sessions, locking of sessions, passing around of
>> sessions (for the classroom environment) as well as, intra station messaging
>> (in case a particular station needs administrative help/training/support.)
>> Right now, it runs great on the administrator machine, which doesn't need to
>> and won't run Sugar. Basically from this view one can see screenshots of
>> each desktop and by clicking on the desktop in question, one takes over or
>> shares that session with that particular sugar user. There is more
>> explanation and screenshots here: http://italc.sourceforge.net/
>> On the client side, it would be nice for someone to study how hard it
>> would be to port to sugar. Its not massively important since it runs from
>> gnome, but for scenarios where sugar is the only Desktop Environment, it
>> would be nice to have this kind of controlling mechanism for the
>> teacher/admin. For example, the teacher could collaboratively work on one
>> session connected to a projector, and pass that session on friom student to
>> student, with each of them carrying out some task. I have seen it used this
>> way under Gnome with great success, and as Sugar is collaborative by nature,
>> it seems like a perfect fit. So any sugar porting takers?
>>
>> On another note, I have successfully tested the home made whiteboard
>> option using a wiimote and infra red pens. This approach allows for the
>> building of an interactive whiteboard for under 50 euros. Unfortunately, the
>> best software to use for something like this is classroom presenter,
>> originally windows software allowing one to open a powerpoint/impress
>> presenation and then draw upon th

Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Journal criticism

[NoiseEHC]

There are 3 different ideas when we are talking about Journal vs 
Directories:
1. Whether we are limiting the user to use exactly one filtering 
category for his/her documents (and lets call them Files and the filter 
the Files' Directory) or we allow multiple filters (and call them Tags).
2. Whether we are showing the user a open/save dialog which has a 
Directory tree and File list or we just ask for a name and some tags for 
save and let the user filter open.

3. Whether the document store is a filesystem or a database.

so remembering these points, answers are inlined:

Albert Cahalan wrote:

In graphical environments alone, directories are over 25 years old.
Since 8 is less than a third of that, there is only one safe bet.

It'd be way more than 25 years, except that we didn't even have
graphical environments much beyond that. Directories go back
about 40 years. 8 years is just another 20%.
  


I am sure that 100 years ago when the car was invented, because humanity 
has been used horses for 5000 years and the next 100 years is only 2% of 
that, people predicted that we will still ride horses now



This isn't the "Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2" feature set.
This is a concept that is pretty fundamental in computing.
It crosses platforms, it's in our network protocols, and it's even
required for all the programming languages that implement Sugar.

  


Having a filesystem does not conflict with that the user will never ever 
see one (3. is a differ idea than 2.).



The following things unfortunately cannot be done with a flat filesystem
view:
1. Revision based view.
2. Tagging.



First, I think you didn't mean "flat". That's the Journal.
Second, both flat and tree systems can handle that.
  


I meant flat filesystem so I have written exactly that. I meant a 
filesystem which can be drawn on a 2D surface in a tree (where the files 
are leafs). Contrast it to a multidimensional "filesystem" where a File 
can have multiple Directories and which stores all the versions. See I 
do not want to argue over semantics so if we will have some system which 
can handle this multidimensional storage then we can call it a 
filesystem if you insist. After all a filesystem is just a database 
which maps names to disc block numbers (and the canceled WinFS was 
marketed as a filesystem after all). What is sure that this future 
"filesystem" will have a completely different access semantics that for 
example ext2.



It is a totally different problem that the current Journal barely implements
those things but dropping it in favor of "time-tested" solutions is a
mistake IMHO. (Note that no filesystem solves those problems I have
mentioned.)



No filesystem should! It looks like GNOME 3.0 will get you those
features on top of a plain old UNIX-style filesystem tree though,
without making the filesystem incompatible with both software
and humans.
  


Have you noticed that as the world evolved, filesystems gained 
unimaginable capabilities like resource forks, extended attributes, 
access control lists, transactions?
Is your point that we should drop the Journal just to be compatible with 
those softwares that possibly no child will ever use?


I would vote to make the Journal more usable rather than trying to stop 
the world.


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Re: [Sugar-devel] Gears in Browse

[Lucian Branescu]

Slightly off-topic, a new Gears has been released
http://gearsblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/gears-05210-released.html

The Blob builder API is very interesting, as it possibly allows
altering arbitrary files from JavaScript.
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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Journal criticism

[Sean DALY]

I, too, encounter difficulty finding elements in the Journal but
haven't found time yet to contribute to a feature discussion.

just 2 cents about hierarchical representation: it certainly has uses.
The coolest one I ever saw was 8 years ago by a company (trying to
remember the name) that provides intranet search to corporations:
users enter text in a Google-like box; the bottom half of the screen
shows hit-parade results (links) by relevancy, but the top half
dynamically generated a hierarchy by type: text file (subclassed by
format upon drilling down), media file, intranet web page, database
result (interrogation by prebuilt connectors), etc.

Clicking on any hierarchy entry regenerated the hit-parade by that type.

Private tagging was possible, tied to the user's profile but exportable.

Viewing rights were handled too; if unavailable to the profile, the
link would be greyed but the info source within the company shown, so
the user could militate for access (as opposed to not knowing its
existence).

Related: I heard Steve Jobs say in 1998 that folders were great for
small numbers of files, but it didn't scale... so he had resorted to
e-mailing files to himself, with different accounts and keywords in
the subject lines... and sort/filter available in mail software.
Today, OSX uses "Spotlight" which indexes not just text, but media
file metadata, a subject dear to my heart (the Ogg container is
well-suited to that).

However, since I find Spotlight windows a pain (the commandline
version is often faster), I continue to use the system I've used these
past ten years: e-mailing documents between my accounts adding as many
keywords as I can and searching in different ways (gmail search is not
bad but could actually be quite a lot better). I think the Journal
will be fine if additional search options are very carefully
selected... and as much metadata as possible is pulled out of media
files. I have found exiftool to be wonderful in this respect

Sean



On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 1:19 PM, Jonas Smedegaard  wrote:
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: RIPEMD160
>
> On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 06:18:35AM -0400, Albert Cahalan wrote:
>>On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 5:49 AM, Jonas Smedegaard  wrote:
>>> On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 04:58:17AM -0400, Albert Cahalan wrote:
Tomeu Vizoso writes:
>>
> I think it's very important if we want to keep pushing Sugar that
> we distinguish between design decisions and bugs and unimplemented
> features. If we bring down good design ideas not by themselves but
> because of its implementation status, we risk ending up with
> nothing that brings new value compared to existing desktops.

You say that like it would be a bad thing. The existing desktops are
at least time-tested. Learning to deal with the common features of
modern desktop systems is very valuable for children.
>>>
>>> I flat out disagree that Sugar should be a learning experience
>>> towards using alternative user interfaces.
>>>
>>> In that mindset we should mimic Word, Excel and the Windows desktop,
>>> not for the quality of their interface designs, but simply because
>>> they are expremely popular so getting acquainted to them is "very
>>> valuable for children".
>>
>>To the extent that there are common features that are highly
>>unlikely to change across versions or even OSes, definitely.
>>
>>MacOS System 6, MacOS X, OS/2 Warp, and Windows Vista
>>have certain basic features in common. It's a safe bet to say that
>>most of these features will remain in the computers of 2017.
>
> Actually, I am not so sure about that: I suspect user interfaces (as
> well as many other features of our society) do not evolve linear, but
> more and more rapidly transform.
>
> So I am willing to challenge you in that bet. :-D
>
> I suggest, for simplicity sake in our later judgement, that we limit the
> bet to "do all popular computer desktop environments still use (and
> directly expose to the edn user) a hierarchical file system in 2017, as
> they did in 2009?"
>
> And I propose a symbolic item from looser to winner, with a fun
> punishment twist added: One bottle of bewerage of the winner's choosing,
> delivered personally at the winner's door step.
>
> How does that sound?
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
>  - Jonas
>
> - --
> * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
> * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
>
>  [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
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>
> iEYEAREDAAYFAkoeczYACgkQn7DbMsAkQLhjdACgg6Q4x+mudFAyWE7tZBMMkC1d
> mdQAoISLHzNrsO5kO0WqCzjU977WKGU3
> =mR8C
> -END PGP SIGNATURE-
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[Sugar-devel] The moodle-Print User Experience

[Vamsi Krishna Davuluri]

Hi,


I was wondering about the best moodle user experience. The three procedures
I've sketched out are:
1) Follow the roots of the advanced assignment upload module, and let
printing be added by the teacher as an activity for a specific period.
Or
2) Make printing a default resource for every course once the course is
established
Or
3) Provide a printing option for every registered user, and provide him/her
with a printing option which also follows the roots of assignment upload,
   But very loosely. This will of course require a good deal of work
regarding permissions on which teacher can assess what.

Personally, I prefer 1.

Some teachers might not want the students to print in their courses, but
might want them to for a specific duration. <- more or less completely
An art course might want printing for the entire duration though, so perhaps
an option when establishing the course to add the print module by default.

Or a (4) , which I am open for. My knowledge with moodle and its deployed
environment is very limited, so I would like some advice here.

Thanks

Vamsi Krishna Davuluri
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Running Sugar with sugar-jhbuild - questions

[Edward Cherlin]

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 9:25 AM, Bastien  wrote:
> I did a fresh install of sugar-jhbuild.

Likewise.

> ./sugar-jhbuild depscheck doesn't advertize the need for
> python-distutils-extra.  Recent bug reports about this:
>
> http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/902
> http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/898

The only dependency problem I ran into was a conflict between
olpc-sound and csound, which I was able to remove without breaking
anything. I am quite pleased with the recent improvements. I had not
been able to compile sugar-jhbuild successfully for weeks.

However, I had to invoke 'force checkout' several times, because of
missing .git directories.

> Another problem: sugar-jhbuild still doesn't recognize my keyboard
> to be AZERTY. Is anyone successfully using a non-QWERTY keyboard?

Yes. You are in a new X session that doesn't know what your main
session is doing, so you have to tell it what you want. I often switch
keyboards, so I create scripts that I can use in Terminal. My ru
script is

#!/bin/bash
setxkbmap ru

My asdf and фыва scripts both contain

setxkbmap dvorak

while my aoeu script contains

setxkbmap us

for when I want to let others type without confusion.

You want 'setxkbmap fr'.

> I want to make screencasts but would prefer to fix this before.
>
> Thanks!
>
> --
>  Bastien
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-- 
Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Kartik - internship outside GSoC

[kartik rustagi]

So its decided that I will be working on Groups, as was suggested by tomeu
earlier. I will be needing a Joining letter from Sugar. I mailed the blank
format in a previous mail. It will be great if its print out is taken,
filled and then a scanned copy mailed to me. Sugar can also provide its own
Joining Letter too (I will prefer if both can be done). If any thing is
required from my side, kindly let me know.
Also can any one please tell me how I should report my progress and who will
be my mentor?

Thank You

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 3:48 PM, Tomeu Vizoso  wrote:

> On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 14:18, kartik rustagi  wrote:
> >
> > Hello everyone,
> > Sorry for replying after this long a duration. Exams followed by physical
> > damage to my machine consumed a lot of time.
> > I will like to start my internship under Sugarlabs ASAP. Can any one
> please
> > provide me a link to all the ideas that were discussed at the recent
> Sugar
> > meetup (in Paris I guess) and the results of those discussions if
> possible.
> > I will have a look at those ideas and will like to finalize the one I
> will
> > be working on as soon as possible (in a day or two maximum). The idea
> > regarding sharing of activities is also in the loop.
>
> Hi, Kartik,
>
> see http://erikos.sweettimez.de/?p=678
>
> We are still discussing all this and trying to put names to each task,
> but those are some ideas of what we would like to work on during this
> release.
>
> I would like to propose you one task that will bring enormous value
> and that I think could fit well with your previous experience:
>
> 
> Groups
>
>* tagging buddies to build up relations, tagging can happen by a
> teacher tagging a class or the learner can tag himself
> 
>
> We have a problem with schools that have thousands of children logged
> in their jabber server, as we have very limited functionality for
> searching and browsing contacts. This impacts the usability of
> collaboration in the classroom.
>
> I think that the presence service is already sending a "tags" property
> along the rest of the presence information. I think that we should
> have a way for a person to set its own tags, and also for adding tags
> to its contacts.
>
> Does this feature interest you?
>
> Regards,
>
> Tomeu
>
> > Thank You
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 12:20 AM, David Farning 
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> Kartik,
> >> That all looks pretty straightforward.  When you get the project
> >> worked out Jameson can sign as training officer.  It looks like the
> >> third page should be sent by Jameson directly to your school.
> >>
> >> thanks
> >> david
> >>
> >> On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 11:25 AM, kartik rustagi 
> >> wrote:
> >> > Please find the scanned structure of the documents which are required
> as
> >> > a
> >> > proof of Internship at my school. It will be best if the documents are
> >> > mailed directly to me since that will be the most reliable.
> >> >
> >> > On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 4:50 AM, kartik rustagi 
> >> > wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >>>
> >> >>> My own, completely personal opinion on dissimilar activity
> >> >>> collaboration
> >> >>> is that it is a solution searching for a problem. I understand that
> >> >>> there
> >> >>> are real use cases, but I haven't seen one that's nearly as
> compelling
> >> >>> as
> >> >>> the viral-activity idea (idea 2 of the ones I sent). This is just me
> >> >>> commenting, I hope that others with opposing viewpoints will also
> >> >>> comment.
> >> >>
> >> >> If that is indeed the case then I will go with viral-activity idea.
> Any
> >> >> idea who put up the dissimilar activity collaboration idea on the
> idea
> >> >> list.
> >> >> Maybe he/she might have a different outlook towards it. Suggestions
> on
> >> >> this
> >> >> are requested :)
> >> >>
> >> >>>
> >> >>> As to Groupthink, I think that it would be ill-advised to try to
> force
> >> >>> you and Bemasc to work together without a very clear delineation of
> >> >>> responsibility which minimizes dependencies. I also think it would
> be
> >> >>> very
> >> >>> hard to draw such a line, though you're welcome to prove me wrong on
> >> >>> this
> >> >>> latter point.
> >> >>
> >> >> I completely agree with you. The reason why I mentioned Groupthink
> was
> >> >> because I seriously appreciated it and wanted to do something like
> this
> >> >> for
> >> >> Sugar (according to my capabilities).
> >> >> Few more suggestions on the project idea and then I will start making
> >> >> the
> >> >> proposal.
> >> >>
> >> 
> >>  On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 8:34 PM, Jameson Quinn
> >>  
> >>  wrote:
> >>  > I hope we can do this for you, and would be really happy if it
> >>  > comes
> >>  > through. However, as much as it pains me, I think you will have
> to
> >>  > go
> >>  > through some of the application process over again. We don't need
> >>  > to
> >>  > interview you again, once is plenty and you did well. But we do
> >>  > need a
> >>  > speci

Re: [Sugar-devel] Progress with SoaS boot-helper

[Luke Faraone]

 2009/5/28 Caroline Meeks 

> On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 5:28 AM, Tomeu Vizoso  wrote:
>
>>  Hi Luke, can you point us to a link where we can learn more about what
>> you are trying to accomplish?
>>
> I think this is Ticket 598 to support the Gardner Pilot.  the use case is
> here:
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Critical_Path_Technical_Issues
>

Yes, that's an accurate description of the goals for this project.

An installable boot helper would provide functionality not avaliable in a
normal boot-helper ISO, namely increasing boot time (time between a student
inserting a SoaS stick and getting up and running) in addition to less
down-time in between switches (as the machine would be able switch to
another user/SoaS stick without rebooting).

It would also be trivial to enable features such as on-server backups, live
SoaS upgrades and repairs, and centralized administration by the IT staff.

The boot-helper is related to a new installer method for this reason: our
current method of formatting and installing SoaS on USB sticks cannot be
read by the boot-helper. LVM snapshots are difficult to read outside of the
context (in this case the kernel used in SoaS) in which they were created.
Therefore, I suggested that we simply have raw EXT3/whatever on the flash
drive, and mount them directly rather than using LVM.

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Re: [Sugar-devel] Gears in Browse

[Luke Faraone]

2009/5/28 Lucian Branescu 

> > You mean that GG tries to write in /usr if it has been installed in
> > /usr? That sounds wrong and may be configurable or fixable.
> I think /usr, I didn't check. I will today.
>
> Yes, it certainly is fixable, but I'm not sure it is also
> configurable. I'd hate to have to patch and compile Gears for the .rpm
> I'll investigate some more
>

Hm. It should be trivial to get that patch upstreamed, though, right?

As Google was/is (IIRC) a partner of OLPC, they should be happy to accept
patches that make it easier to use Google Gears with Sugar and the XO.

-- 
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Documentation [WAS: Re: [Localization] Help activity]

[Luke Faraone]

2009/5/28 Tomeu Vizoso 

> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 21:47, Sayamindu Dasgupta 
> wrote:
> > [Jumping into the discussion midway]:
> >
> > From an l10n point of view, I would highly recommend adopting (and
> > perhaps extending) the GNOME documentation framework. It is docbook
> > based, which is a format pretty easy to pick up (and I believe
> > OpenOffice.org can also export to docbook - though I have never tried
> > it out).
>
> Well, I think it was a decision by the people who wrote the manual to
> use floss manuals, I guess it would be up to them which tool they use.
> And in the same way, translators would choose the tools that best suit
> them. I think that floss manuals has already tools for translation and
> also think that people have worked on a translation to spanish, Maybe
> we should ask to those people which was their experience with the
> floss manuals tool set?


We already have an export-to-XHTML option with FLOSS Manuals, and I think a
while ago there was talk of adding a docbook export function as well. I was
preparing a script to automate the creation of Debian .debs from those
dumps, but it got dropped by the wayside as it seemed that a docbook export
option was not forthcoming. CCing the FLOSS Manuals discussion list for
their take.

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] [SoaS] Important Schedule Changes - Please Read!

[Luke Faraone]

2009/5/26 Walter Bender 

> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 12:40 PM, Tomeu Vizoso 
> wrote:
> > On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 18:38, Sean DALY  wrote:
> >>> What we call beta - can't be announced as "is working out of the box".
> >> I completely agree... nor can what we call v1 be announced as working
> >> out of the box if it can't :-(
> >
> > On the upside, little non-trivial software can be said to work out of
> > the box for the general public.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Tomeu
>
> We should be able to say with confidence that SoaS works everywhere
> that the Fedora LiveUSB works. No more, no less. And tell a story
> around that.


I'm hoping to do a little bit more: by formatting flash drives in a special
way we can gain compatability with a large number of BIOSes which are only
compatable with USB_ZIP, an older system which is very particular about what
it expects from a disk. There's very little potential for regression, and
this alternate formatting is (imho) easier to deal with.

-- 
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Running Sugar with sugar-jhbuild - questions

[Sascha Silbe]

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 06:25:26PM +0200, Bastien wrote:


./sugar-jhbuild depscheck doesn't advertize the need for
python-distutils-extra.  Recent bug reports about this:

[...]

I got knocked out by a major infection imported from SugarCamp/Paris. 
About the same time (starting just before SugarCamp) the Gnome people 
hacked heavily on jhbuild and thus broke sugar-jhbuild (*). I'm slowly 
recovering now and started fixing sugar-jhbuild.



Another problem: sugar-jhbuild still doesn't recognize my keyboard to 
be AZERTY.
You're probably talking about sugar-emulator and thus Xephyr (sorry if 
it sounds like nitpicking, but it's an important distinction because it 
needs to be fixed in a different module with different maintainers).
This is Xephyr bug #19365 [1] / Sugarlabs bug #342 [2]. It's a major 
problem to several people, but nobody stepped up to fix it yet. It's a 
major change and at least I don't has enough time to do it. Maybe we 
should start collecting money and announce a bounty (**)...



Is anyone successfully using a non-QWERTY keyboard?
Using somewhat yes (minimal activity testing). Successfully would not be 
the right word for it, though.



I want to make screencasts but would prefer to fix this before.

Try running sugar as a session i.e. instead of Gnome, not inside Gnome.


(*) The error mentioned above is our fault, though. We added 
sugar-update-control without trying to build it on a pristine system.
(**) With a condition that it has been merged upstream, of course - 
otherwise it would bitrot like the old fix.

[1] http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19365
[2] http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/342

CU Sascha

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Re: [Sugar-devel] Running Sugar with sugar-jhbuild - questions

[Sascha Silbe]

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 11:35:20AM -0700, Edward Cherlin wrote:


However, I had to invoke 'force checkout' several times, because of
missing .git directories.

Interesting. Where exactly? TurtleArt or something else?


setxkbmap us
You mean you can run this command inside Terminal inside sugar-emulator 
and the keyboard is working properly then? That would mean we've got a 
workaround now, i.e. very good news!


CU Sascha

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] [SoaS] Important Schedule Changes - Please Read!

[Walter Bender]

If you can manage to do this, that'd be great.

-walter

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 3:23 PM, Luke Faraone  wrote:
> 2009/5/26 Walter Bender 
>>
>> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 12:40 PM, Tomeu Vizoso 
>> wrote:
>> > On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 18:38, Sean DALY  wrote:
>> >>> What we call beta - can't be announced as "is working out of the box".
>> >> I completely agree... nor can what we call v1 be announced as working
>> >> out of the box if it can't :-(
>> >
>> > On the upside, little non-trivial software can be said to work out of
>> > the box for the general public.
>> >
>> > Regards,
>> >
>> > Tomeu
>>
>> We should be able to say with confidence that SoaS works everywhere
>> that the Fedora LiveUSB works. No more, no less. And tell a story
>> around that.
>
> I'm hoping to do a little bit more: by formatting flash drives in a special
> way we can gain compatability with a large number of BIOSes which are only
> compatable with USB_ZIP, an older system which is very particular about what
> it expects from a disk. There's very little potential for regression, and
> this alternate formatting is (imho) easier to deal with.
>
> --
> Luke Faraone
> http://luke.faraone.cc
>



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[Sugar-devel] changed list admin password

[Jonas Smedegaard]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: RIPEMD160

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 04:15:22PM -0400, Luke Faraone wrote:
>On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 15:42, Jonas Smedegaard  wrote:

>> On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 03:23:20PM -0400, Luke Faraone wrote:
>> >2009/5/28 Jonas Smedegaard 
>> >> Please subscribe to the lists that you post to, to bypass our spam 
>> >> screening process which causes delays and risk of lost emails.
>>
>> >Jonas, it seems you recently changed the password for list 
>> >moderation, as neither Michael Stone nor Ivan Krstic say they have.
>> >
>> >Could you tell me the new password, if it's not a problem?
>>
>> No, I did not change any passwords.  Barney did.
>>
>> Please use mailinglists instead of private mail.  I see no need for 
>> discretion about who has admin access, and I was - privately (sigh!) 
>> - told by Barney that he and I were the only admins.
>
>
>Who is Barney? I've seen
>nothingabout
>him anywhere on
>SugarLabs.org or anywhere else for that matter. As far as I know, Ivan
>maintains mailman, and gave you listadmin privs after you volunteered.

Bernie Innocenti (sorry, Bernie!).



>> So please raise this issue on some mailinglist, for the sake of
>> transparency!
>
>It's administrivia; I didn't feel it was important enough to bother the
>whole list with it.

If I felt the same about my earlier comment, then you would probably not 
have contacted me.

And if Bernie hadn't felt the same last week there would be no issue 
now.

(no, I am not suggesting that Bernie should post the changed password in 
public, but that he could post _about_ it being changed).



Posting this to the lists, as I don't want to act as discrete proxy any 
longer, and you seem to not want to go public yourself. :-/


  - Jonas

- -- 
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

  [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
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[Sugar-devel] activities using zip files (was: Re: [IAEP] Journal criticism)

[Sascha Silbe]

On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 12:34:03PM -0500, James Simmons wrote:

5).  When several Activities support the same MIME type (Zip files are 
BOUND to be popular) then there needs to be a way of specifying that a 
particular Journal entry should be resumed by a particular Activity by 
default.
Actually zip is just a container format and should be handled as such 
(if possible at all). I.e. zips created by activities should use a MIME 
type identifying the _contents_, not the generic application/zip.


File formats can be - and often are - nested: OpenOffice documents are 
xml-inside-zip, some other application might be using 
xml-inside-tar-inside-gz and source tarballs are 
(C+Makefile+...)-inside-tar-inside-bz2. Unfortunately, most software 
using MIME types has very little support for such complexity (only 
gzip/bzip/compress as "encodings"). While it would be nice for the 
Journal to handle the full (i.e. nested) type, we'll need to cope with 
the lack of support in other software (like web servers) for quite some 
time.


CU Sascha

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[Sugar-devel] Collaboration/Google wave

[C. Scott Ananian]

Google announced Google Wave today: http://wave.google.com/

The collaboration framework is really interesting:
http://www.waveprotocol.org/whitepapers/operational-transform

It would be very interesting to see how this might benefit Sugar; it
seems like the school server might run a local wave-protocol server to
allow very interesting collaboration between students.
 --scott

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 ( http://cscott.net/ )
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Running Sugar with sugar-jhbuild - questions

[Edward Cherlin]

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 12:38 PM, Sascha Silbe
 wrote:
> On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 11:35:20AM -0700, Edward Cherlin wrote:
>
>> However, I had to invoke 'force checkout' several times, because of
>> missing .git directories.
>
> Interesting. Where exactly? TurtleArt or something else?

Four or five times. Unfortunately, I did not make notes.

>> setxkbmap us
>
> You mean you can run this command inside Terminal inside sugar-emulator and
> the keyboard is working properly then? That would mean we've got a
> workaround now, i.e. very good news!

Yes. It has always worked that way in every form of Sugar+Terminal
that I can get running at all, on several Linux distributions, in
Sugar on a Stick, in LiveCD images, and more. See [[Emulator image
files]] for the list of what I know to be available. In particular, in
yesterday's sugar-jhbuild on 64-bit Fedora in VirtualBox. I would like
to see SCIM in sugar-jhbuild, with the UI adapted to Sugar.

> CU Sascha
>
> --
> http://sascha.silbe.org/
> http://www.infra-silbe.de/
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
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>



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And Children are my nation.
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Running Sugar with sugar-jhbuild - questions

[Sean DALY]

$ setxkbmap fr

Ed, you forwarded me this workaround weeks ago and I just wanted to
tell you how useful it's been, I use it every time I boot SoaS on my
Azerty netbooks

thanks

Sean


On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 8:35 PM, Edward Cherlin  wrote:
> On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 9:25 AM, Bastien  wrote:
>> I did a fresh install of sugar-jhbuild.
>
> Likewise.
>
>> ./sugar-jhbuild depscheck doesn't advertize the need for
>> python-distutils-extra.  Recent bug reports about this:
>>
>> http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/902
>> http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/898
>
> The only dependency problem I ran into was a conflict between
> olpc-sound and csound, which I was able to remove without breaking
> anything. I am quite pleased with the recent improvements. I had not
> been able to compile sugar-jhbuild successfully for weeks.
>
> However, I had to invoke 'force checkout' several times, because of
> missing .git directories.
>
>> Another problem: sugar-jhbuild still doesn't recognize my keyboard
>> to be AZERTY. Is anyone successfully using a non-QWERTY keyboard?
>
> Yes. You are in a new X session that doesn't know what your main
> session is doing, so you have to tell it what you want. I often switch
> keyboards, so I create scripts that I can use in Terminal. My ru
> script is
>
> #!/bin/bash
> setxkbmap ru
>
> My asdf and фыва scripts both contain
>
> setxkbmap dvorak
>
> while my aoeu script contains
>
> setxkbmap us
>
> for when I want to let others type without confusion.
>
> You want 'setxkbmap fr'.
>
>> I want to make screencasts but would prefer to fix this before.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> --
>>  Bastien
>> ___
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>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name
> And Children are my nation.
> The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
> http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin)
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Running Sugar with sugar-jhbuild - questions

[Bastien]

Edward Cherlin  writes:

> You want 'setxkbmap fr'.

It works!  Great, thanks.

Is there something similar to .xsession where I could put this
instruction, so that I don't need to run the script from within
the Terminal each time?

-- 
 Bastien
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Gears in Browse

[Felipe López Toledo]

>Heh, I didn't know LocalStorage had been in Firefox for so longme too.
here is an useful link about DOM Storage
https://developer.mozilla.org/En/DOM:Storage

>Again, this should be sufficient for Karma-in-Firefox
anyway, I'm looking how to get running GG with Browse

2009/5/28 Lucian Branescu 

> Heh, I didn't know LocalStorage had been in Firefox for so long. I was
> under the impression it was at the same stage as Webkit. Thanks for
> the link.
>
> Again, this should be sufficient for Karma-in-Firefox.
>
> But many websites already use Gears specifically, and I need them to
> work for Webified.
>
> 2009/5/28 Martin Langhoff :
> > 2009/5/28 Martin Langhoff :
> >> 2009/5/28 Lucian Branescu :
> >>> Not really. HTML 5 only brings an SQLite database accessible from
> JavaScript.
> >>>
> >>> Gears has other features that aren't present in Gecko proper (yet):
> >>> - LocalServer - a way to transparently persist resources locally
> >>
> >> I thought HTML5 had some "offline resource" facility.
> >
> > What we ship on XO 8.2.x is xulrunner 1.9 (FF3.0). If we were to ship
> > xulrunner 1.9.1 (which is what the F11-based builds ship anyway) then
> > we'd get support for the tools listed here
> > http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Implementations_in_Web_browsers
> >
> > From that URL, my understanding is that you get all the things you
> > need from gecko itself.
> >
> >
> > m
> > --
> >  martin.langh...@gmail.com
> >  mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
> >  - ask interesting questions
> >  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
> >  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
> >
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] activities using zip files

[James Simmons]

Sascha,

If the Activity creates a Zip file then the Journal automatically 
resumes it in that Activity.  Making Activities use a special MIME type 
when creating a Journal entry doesn't give me anything I don't have already.

Where we have problems is in downloading Zip files from Gutenberg and 
other places that don't do anything special with the MIME type.  For 
instance, Gutenberg has zipped up text files as well as zipped up 
websites (multiple html pages plus illustrations).  Somebody mentioned 
that Browse will eventually be able to save web pages with 
illustrations, etc. as zipfiles for offline reading.  If Browse could 
handle that, you'd also want it to be able to open these Gutenberg zip 
files if they are saved in the Journal, and it would be nice to do it 
with one click.

The format I use for View Slides is sometimes called CBZ.  It's just a 
Zip file containing images with a .cbz suffix rather than .zip.  The 
GNOME desktop recognizes this file type and displays the first image in 
the file as the file's icon.  I don't think there is a MIME type for 
that though.

James Simmons


Sascha Silbe wrote:
> On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 12:34:03PM -0500, James Simmons wrote:
>
>> 5).  When several Activities support the same MIME type (Zip files 
>> are BOUND to be popular) then there needs to be a way of specifying 
>> that a particular Journal entry should be resumed by a particular 
>> Activity by default.
> Actually zip is just a container format and should be handled as such 
> (if possible at all). I.e. zips created by activities should use a 
> MIME type identifying the _contents_, not the generic application/zip.
>
> File formats can be - and often are - nested: OpenOffice documents are 
> xml-inside-zip, some other application might be using 
> xml-inside-tar-inside-gz and source tarballs are 
> (C+Makefile+...)-inside-tar-inside-bz2. Unfortunately, most software 
> using MIME types has very little support for such complexity (only 
> gzip/bzip/compress as "encodings"). While it would be nice for the 
> Journal to handle the full (i.e. nested) type, we'll need to cope with 
> the lack of support in other software (like web servers) for quite 
> some time.
>
> CU Sascha
>


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Re: [Sugar-devel] activities using zip files

[Sayamindu Dasgupta]

On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 3:54 AM, James Simmons
 wrote:
> Sascha,
>
> If the Activity creates a Zip file then the Journal automatically
> resumes it in that Activity.  Making Activities use a special MIME type
> when creating a Journal entry doesn't give me anything I don't have already.
>
> Where we have problems is in downloading Zip files from Gutenberg and
> other places that don't do anything special with the MIME type.  For
> instance, Gutenberg has zipped up text files as well as zipped up
> websites (multiple html pages plus illustrations).  Somebody mentioned
> that Browse will eventually be able to save web pages with
> illustrations, etc. as zipfiles for offline reading.  If Browse could
> handle that, you'd also want it to be able to open these Gutenberg zip
> files if they are saved in the Journal, and it would be nice to do it
> with one click.
>
> The format I use for View Slides is sometimes called CBZ.  It's just a
> Zip file containing images with a .cbz suffix rather than .zip.  The
> GNOME desktop recognizes this file type and displays the first image in
> the file as the file's icon.  I don't think there is a MIME type for
> that though.
>

The version of Read that is associated with OLPC 8.2.1 release (as
well as newer versions of Read) should be able to handle CBZ files.
application/x-cbz is what I used in the activity.info file.

Thanks,
Sayamindu

-- 
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[http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Running Sugar with sugar-jhbuild - questions

[Edward Cherlin]

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 2:37 PM, Bastien  wrote:
> Edward Cherlin  writes:
>
>> You want 'setxkbmap fr'.
>
> It works!  Great, thanks.
>
> Is there something similar to .xsession where I could put this
> instruction, so that I don't need to run the script from within
> the Terminal each time?

There is indeed. In images, you can edit /etc/sysconfig/keyboard,
following the instructions at

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Customizing_NAND_images#Keyboard

Or you can put it in the startup script for Terminal. Let's see...It's
.bashrc for non-login shells, and .profile for login shells.

Joyride used to have a UI for changing localization, including UI and
keyboard. There are situations where I think the children should have
that facility, such as India, which has ten official writing systems
for more than 20 official languages, and more than 800 others. There
are also schools in California near where I live with several dozen
languages in use among students in bilingual classes. More than 60
languages in LA, I hear. (If you want your ear bent some time ^_^, ask
me about the Laotian community in Mount Shasta or the Uighurs in New
Jersey, or...Well, there's more if you care.)

I put more details about keyboards (very nearly my first contribution
to the Laptop Wiki) at

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

There are links to this and the NAND page on the Localization page.

The 'setxkbmap' command is also mentioned at

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Development_Team/Almanac#I_am_developing_on_an_XO_laptop.2C_but_my_keyboard_and_language_settings_are_not_ideal._How_can_I_change_them.3F


> --
>  Bastien
>



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