0.102/Notes

Sucrose 0.102.0 Release Notes

Introduction
Sugar 0.102.0 (stable) is the release version of the Sugar learning platform. It was released 1 July 2014.

The main changes in this cycle are primarily bug fixes and enhancements to existing features. Worth noting is the large number of patches contributed by new (and young) community members.

tar files
http://download.sugarlabs.org/sources/sucrose/glucose/sugar/sugar-0.102.0.tar.xz http://download.sugarlabs.org/sources/sucrose/glucose/sugar-toolkit-gtk3/sugar-toolkit-gtk3-0.102.0.tar.xz  http://download.sugarlabs.org/sources/sucrose/glucose/sugar-artwork/sugar-artwork-0.102.0.tar.xz  http://download.sugarlabs.org/sources/sucrose/glucose/sugar-datastore/sugar-datastore-0.102.0.tar.xz  http://download.sugarlabs.org/sources/sucrose/glucose/sugar-runner/sugar-runner-0.102.0.tar.xz

Summary of changes

 * Sugar: Add age and gender to intro pages and About Me settings; configurable limits imposed on the number of open activities; activities can be limited to opening a single instance at a time; improvements to the updater; reworking of wireless control panel; improvements to batch processing; improvements to View Source; removal of OLPC-specific code from Control Panel; improvements to the layout of the Web Accounts Control Panel; improvements to the layout of the Languages Control Panel; improvements to the Journal toolbar filters; improvements to the Sugar notification system; new mechanism for adjusting microphone input level; and an improved backup mechanism in the Control Panel.


 * Sugar Toolkit: Conversion to gsettings; improvements to mimetype handling; Journal searching; inhibit suspend while activity is sharing


 * Sugar Artwork: New icons for backup and restore; age and gender; document-open. Improvements to the battery-charging icons. Some style improvements.


 * Sugar Activities (Fructose): Pippy, the Sugar Python editor got a major overhaul. It supports multiple tabs and numerous new export mechanisms. In combination with Turtle Blocks, it is now possible to create new Sugar Activities entirely within Sugar itself: (1) Create a Turtle Blocks project; (2) Export the project as Python; (3) Import the Python code into Pippy; and (4) Export the Python code as a Sugar Activity. You can even create a Sugar icon for your project using Turtle Blocks, which can export projects to Python. The Chat activity had a major stylistic overhaul.


 * Other Sugar Activities (Honey): Major updates to Maze, Spirolaterals, Fraction Bounce, Words, Music Painter, et al.

What is new for users





















 * limit the number of open activities
 * limit certain activities to one open instance at a time
 * the proper icon appears on the Frame when running non-Sugar activities

videos
Gonzalo Odiard has prepared videos of some of the new Sugar features (Sugar 100 and 102):

In English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baAYGtEwEbM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wxizr3elPQ En español: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot_T9impkNw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10ljkueuBU0

What's new for developers
See


 * icon_size is deprecated (use pixel_size)
 * Conversion to gsettings (gconf is deprecated)
 * max_participants is moved to activity.info and is "honored", i.e., users will not be able to join an activity where max_participants has been reached until someone drops out. (max_participants as specified in activity.py is deprecated.)

How to contribute with testing
Testing and reporting issues is a big help for the developing team.

You can set up the Sugar developer environment by following the instructions found at http://developer.sugarlabs.org

See 0.102/Testing for unstable images.

Credits
Many people contributed to this release indirectly, including testing, documentation, translation, contributing to the Wiki, outreach to education and developer communities. On behalf of the community, we give our warmest thanks to the developers and contributors who made this Sugar release possible.

We want to especially thank:


 * the Google Code-in participants who were major contributors to this release,


 * the  Infrastructure team which does all this great work in the background without which the development would not be possible at all,


 * the deployments that provide the development team with feedback from the field,


 * the  Design team which guided the design of features with UI changes or impact on the workflow,


 * the  Translation team which makes sure that Sugar is enjoyable in the local languages of our users,


 * the developers that submit patches for new features and bug fixes and do review other's patches,


 * the maintainers that make sure their code is shippable and which provide packagers with new tarballs,


 * the packagers which provide distributions with new Sugar packages,


 * the SoaS team for providing a Sugar version to test with during the development cycle,


 * the testers for finding the small and bigger issues,


 * the release team and Development team for coordinating those efforts.

Daniel Narvaez took the responsibility of manage the release.