Features/Show Thumb Drives As Hierarchical

Summary

There is a desire from many users to replace the part of the Journal UI that represents files on thumb drives and SD cards as if they were Journal entries, instead of what they actually are, which is files within directories. I suggest that only Journal entries should be represented as such, and that thumb drives and SD cards should be represented conventionally.

Owner

This should link to your home wiki page so we know who you are

• Name: James Simmons

• Email: <nicestep@gmail.com>

Current status

• Targeted release: (SUGAR_VERSION)
• Last updated: (DATE)
• Percentage of completion: XX%

Detailed Description

There is a desire from many users to replace the part of the Journal UI that represents files on thumb drives and SD cards as if they were Journal entries, instead of what they actually are, which is files within directories. Representing these files as if they are Journal entries creates an expectation in the user that they will behave as Journal entries do, and in fact they do not. It also makes it difficult, perhaps impossible, to deal with directories on the thumb drive or SD card.

Benefit to Sugar

Plan Ceibal has created an Activity "Leer Pendrive" which simply displays the contents of removable devices as a GTK file chooser and lets people copy selected files to the clipboard, from where they can be pasted into the Journal. I understand there was a big demand for this. I followed this up with my own Activity, Sugar Commander, which lets you copy files directly to the Journal without using the clipboard. I understand that this Activity has a following and is routinely included on XOs in Australia. Neither of these Activities allow you to copy from the Journal to a thumb drive, and there is a legitimate need to do this.

Scope

See the code for the Sugar Commander Activity for a simple implementation of this idea.

UI Design

Have a look at the Sugar Commander Activity:

http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4291

How To Test

Features/Show Thumb Drives As Hierarchical/Testing

User Experience

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Dependencies

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Contingency Plan

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Documentation

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Release Notes

The Sugar Release Notes inform end-users about what is new in the release. An Example is 0.84/Notes. The release notes also help users know how to deal with platform changes such as ABIs/APIs, configuration or data file formats, or upgrade concerns. If there are any such changes involved in this feature, indicate them here. You can also link to upstream documentation if it satisfies this need. This information forms the basis of the release notes edited by the release team and shipped with the release.

Comments and Discussion

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