Activity Team/Sweetener

Sweetener is a desktop framework which provides compatibility between Sugar and other Desktops. Does all the repetitive parts, for be more friendly with developers. It's divided in modules, they can be included in an activity for do a specific task.

Maintainers

• Daniel Francis

Current Release

At the moment it hasn't got a stable release. Clone the GIT Repository and feel free to send patches, request merges or contact the maintainers.

Documentation

The Sweetener documentation is available in [1].

Its source code is in Git: http://git.sugarlabs.org/sweetener/doc

Get started creating an activity

• Start a repository on Git
• Clone Sweetener

$ git clone git://git.sugarlabs.org/sweetener/sweetener.git

• Copy to your new activity directory the following files:

Makefile
activity.py
canvas.py
info.py
options.py
setup.py

Optional, only if you want to get your activity working on other Linux desktops:

application.py
hello-integration # (rename it to your activity name)

• Make the following directories inside your activity:

activity/
sugar/
desktop/  # (Only if you want to run your activity on Linux desktops)

• Clone sweetener submodules

$ git submodule add git://git.sugarlabs.org/sweetener/makescripts
$ git submodule add git://git.sugarlabs.org/sweetener/sugar sugar/sweetener

# This is only for other Linux desktops.
$ git submodule add git://git.sugarlabs.org/sweetener/desktop desktop/sweetener

• Fill info.py with information about your activity. See info.py fields.
• Create a sugarized icon on activity/activity-(lower-name).svg where lower-name must be the same as the variable on info.py
• Generate the activity.info file trough the command make.

 $ make activity

• Install it

 $ python setup.py dev

• Make a .xo bundle

 $ make xo_bundle

• Make a desktop tarball

 $ make dist_tarball

Activity information

The way to tell the framework scripts and all your program some data is through the file info.py

We recommend a text search for fill the following fields:

• Activity Service Name
• IO Mode
  Document or Config. Important at desktops.
• Generic Name
  Only for desktops. See examples at the file comments.
• Activity Name
• lower-name
• copyright note (Obligatory for desktops, recommended)
• Version
• Summary
• Authors
• If any, Web site and documentation URL (Only for desktops)
• Categories (Only for desktops)
• Filter
  Important on desktops with IO mode Document, also needed to create your own mimetype.
• license name

Key accelerators

Gtk Stock sets by default some accelerators for convention, like Ctrl+Q for Quit. Sweetener sets and overwrites some key accelerators for integrate them with Sugar.
Keep this in mind when setting up key accelerators in your activity. At your convenience, edit files sugar/sweetener/stock.py and desktop/sweetener/stock.py.

Stock label	Key accelerator on Sugar	Key accelerator on Linux desktops
Add	Ctrl + A	Ctrl + A
Fullscreen	Alt + Return	F11
Normal Size	Ctrl + 0	Ctrl + 0
Remove	Shift + Del	Ctrl + R
Save as	Unused :)	Ctrl + Shift + S
Select Color	Ctrl + L	Ctrl + L
Zoom In	Ctrl + +	Ctrl + +
Zoom Out	Ctrl + -	Ctrl + -

Activities using Sweetener

• Graph Plotter
• Illustrate Sweetener (Development)

Gtk2 and Gtk3 Support

There are efforts to port Sweetener to Gtk3[2], but at the moment it isn't possible thanks to the upstream bug GNOME#652697.