Difference between revisions of "Sugar Labs/Current Events"

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=== Sugar Digest ===
 
=== Sugar Digest ===
  
−
1. Milan update: Minutes of the Sugar Labs meeting are posted in the wiki (Please see [[Sugar_Labs/Meeting_Minutes-30-06-2008]]). Topics covered in the meeting included:
+
1. Sugar Labs governance: There are still a few more loose ends to
−
* Governance and the Software Freedom Conservancy
+
deal with before we are officially members of the Software Freedom
−
* What are we (Sugar Labs) trying to accomplish?
+
Conservancy. In preparation, I've made a lot of changes on the
−
* Sugar distributions: what are the issues?
+
governance page. Please comment.
−
* Sugar Labs look and feel: a graphic design review
 
−
* Sugar on mobile phones: is it possible? does it make sense?
 
−
* Sugar Labs: models of support
 
−
* Fund-raising: how much and from whom?
 
  
−
One byproduct of the meeting was further refinement of the Sugar Labs governance pages in the wiki (Please see [[Sugar_Labs/Governance]]) and the accumulation of an initial membership list for Sugar Labs (Please see [[Sugar_Labs/initial_members_list]]).
+
2. Leaning: There were some interesting discussions about learning on
 +
the Education list this week:
 +
* [http://lists.lo-res.org/pipermail/its.an.education.project/2008-July/001275.html Sugar Labs, LOGO and Brian Harvey]
 +
* [http://lists.lo-res.org/pipermail/its.an.education.project/2008-July/001279.html reconstructed maths]
  
−
2. Intercambio de experiencias (Exchange of experiences): There is starting to be a nice exchange of classroom experiences among teachers on the olpc-sur mailing list (in Spanish). Teachers helping teachers.
+
3. OLPC in the field: Jim Gettys has published an aggregate summary of
 +
Sugar in the hands of children in the various OLPC deployments around
 +
the world ([http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/community-news/2008-July/000134.html OLPC News]).
  
−
3. Regional efforts: There are a number of people discussing regional programs for Sugar development and support. Such programs are in line with the Sugar Labs vision. It is extremely important to push development and support into the hands of local organizations because: (1) it scales; (2) the detailed knowledge is local; (3) it helps the local economy; (4) it sets in motion independent agencies with a common goal and yet autonomy of action, which leads to innovation. Please bring these discussions to the Education mailing list so that we can leverage each other's ideas.
+
4. Clarity: When talking about Sugar, I never have trouble describing
 +
the collaboration features or the reflective nature of the Journal,
 +
but I struggle with describing the interface in terms of its
 +
simplicity. "Simplicity" has an undertone of "dumbed down" and limited
 +
capability. In a discussion with Nathan Felde from the Art Institute
 +
of Boston, a division of Lesley University, we used the word
 +
"clarity", which immediately struck me as a much better term than
 +
simplicity. It doesn't imply any limit and it suggests transparency
 +
and openness, both hallmarks of the interface.
  
−
4. What works? What doesn't?: Roy Zimmermann is working in collaboration with the World Bank on a USAID-funded project to analyze the role of ICT on education in developing countries (If you have examples you think should be included in his survey, please upload them to http://www.ictimpact.org).
+
5. Studio Thinking: Nathan also introduced me to a book, ''Studio
 +
Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education'' by Lois Hetland,
 +
Ellen Winner, Shirley Veneema, and Kimberly M. Sheridan. It is a
 +
treatise on visual arts education; the authors argue that through the
 +
arts, students learn specific "dispositions of mind" that lead to
 +
high-quality thinking. They also speak about "Studio Habits of Mind":
 +
develop craft, engage and persist, envision, express, observe,
 +
reflect, stretch and explore, and understand the world and "Studio
 +
Structures": the demonstration/ lecture, students working, and the
 +
critique. It seems there is synergy with many of the goals of Sugar.
 +
An open question is how to transfer this thinking beyond the visual
 +
arts.
  
 
=== Community jams and meetups ===
 
=== Community jams and meetups ===
  
−
5. India Day: There will be an OLPC Day in India on 4 August in a venue to be determined. On the agenda is a discussion on learning by David Cavallo.
 
  
 
===Tech Talk===
 
===Tech Talk===
  
−
6. Development release: Today (Monday, 7 July) is the date for the next development release. Simon Schampijer asks maintainers to please provide source code tarballs by the end of the day for the following modules:
+
6. Release process: Marco Pesenti Gritti and Michael Stone have been
 +
discussing how to integrate the Sugar and OLPC release processes:
 +
* SugarLabs should try to schedule its release a few months before the
 +
OLPC release target date (something around 2–3 months). That will give
 +
us enough time to ensure everything is stable before we start
 +
integrating the new code in the OLPC distribution.
 +
* Sugar developers employed by OLPC will work on OLPC release
 +
contracts for all the new features present in the new release.
 +
* After the first stable release SugarLabs will keep releasing minor
 +
updates, which will include bug fixes and strings for the OLPC
 +
release.
 +
* We should make an effort to develop all the features required as
 +
part of the unstable development cycle. Though there surely will be
 +
cases where OLPC will need changes outside the normal SugarLabs
 +
schedule. We will land these in a limited and controlled way both
 +
during the freeze periods and as part of the stable minor releases.
  
−
:[[ReleaseTeam/Roadmap#Glucose_Modules]]
+
7. Sucrose: Simon Schampijer announced the Sucrose Development Release
−
:[[ReleaseTeam/Roadmap#Fructose_Modules]]
+
0.81.6 this week
 +
([[ReleaseTeam/CurrentRelease/Sucrose]]). You
 +
can test it in OLPC joyride >= 2129.
  
−
And to please announce them as explained here:
+
This first release after the feature freeze and therefore has only bug
 +
fixes. It contains as well a new Browse activity (Version 92). Due to
 +
an interface change in xulrunner the downloads were broken in Joyride.
 +
They are fixed with this Browse release. Simon Schampijer added
 +
refinements to the autocompletion feature #7281 and #7280.
  
−
:[[ReleaseTeam#Module_release]]
+
Due to a name change of the Browse activity (Web->Browse) you will
 +
likely have problems updating to the latest version. Find instructions
 +
here to work around that problem
 +
([[ReleaseTeam/Releases/Sucrose/0.81.4#Instructions to test in olpc joyride]]).
  
−
7. SocialCalc: KS Preeti has done a thorough review of the latest release of SocialCalc. Such feedback is enormously helpful to developers. Please help us by reviewing your favorite Activities and filing detailed reports either to the wiki or the Sugar list.
+
The sources can be found here:
  
−
8. Gears: David Van Assche continues to make progress on getting Google Gears running under Sugar.
+
[http://dev.laptop.org/pub/sugar/sources/sugar/sugar-0.81.6.tar.bz2 Sugar-081.6.tar.bz2]
  
−
9. Xterm: Michael Stone posted Blake Setlow's recipe for increasing the font size in an xterm window:
+
* #7438 sugar shuts down when you click Restart
 +
* #7365 Invites not working
 +
* #7248 Speaker device has inconsistent behavior
 +
* #7339 CPU Spins after starting an activity
 +
* #7015 Add proper alignment support to the "tray" control
 +
* #5613 Cannot set non-ASCII nick name
 +
* #7046 Deleting activity bundle with journal leaves it showing in Home list view until reboot
 +
* #7391 Make the search field in Home reveal the list view
 +
* #7248 Speaker device has inconsistent behavior
 +
* #7272 Notifications are redundant with new launching feedback
 +
* #7273 Activity icons remain colored after launch
  
−
LANG=C xterm -fa "DejaVu LGC Sans Mono" -fs 8 +sb
+
Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release (as well to the
 +
translation team for adding new languages and updating existing ones).
  
−
10. Etoys Quickguides: Ted Kaehler reports that the PDF file containing all of the Etoys QuickGuides is now only 4MB (instead of 22MB) thanks to a suggestion by Tim Falconer (See
+
8. Handwriting: Julka Lipkova has been working on software for
 +
teaching children handwriting ([http://code.google.com/p/olpc-dhw/ handwriting activity]);
 +
more details are available at http://olpc-dhw.blogspot.com/.
  
−
11. ReviewBoard: Sayamindu Dasgupta has set up an instance of ReviewBoard at http://xenguest1.laptop.org/ for exploring. A basic workflow for using ReviewBoard is available online ([http://code.google.com/p/reviewboard/wiki/UserBasics]).  
+
9. Movie portal: DailyMotion, which has an ogg-friendly website, is
 +
planning a video campaign to solicit new uploaded materials for OLPC
 +
([http://olpc.dailymotion.com./us Dailymotion]).
  
−
12. Misc: Tomeu Vizoso reviewed and pushed out patches this week and has begun working on Journal object transfer. Marco Pesenti Gritti is taking a well-deserved vacation. Daniel Drake addressed issues associated with the Fedora 9 rebase and has some code that brings the Record activity back into a somewhat usable state.
+
10. Sugar Almanac: Faisal Anwar continues to progress on documenting
 +
the community's best coding practices and conventions
 +
(http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar_Almanac).
 +
 
 +
11. SocialCalc: Manusheel Gupta reports that the Dan Bricklin,
 +
co-inventor of VisiCalc (the first spreadsheet), Luke Closs, and K.S.
 +
Preeti have SocialCalc (a spreadsheet activity) in Sugar. This is the
 +
first Sugar activity written in JavaScript (JS) to have been
 +
integrated to Python-based Sugar environment. They did this through
 +
XOCom, a wrapper function. The XOCom package will encourage the JS
 +
community to participate in developing software and content for Sugar
 +
(Please see [http://www.socialtext.net/socialcalcxo/index.cgi?sweet_socialcalc SocialCalc] and
 +
and [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Browse#Install_an_activity Installation instructions]).
 +
 
 +
12. Physics: Brian Jordan and Alex Levenson have made great progress
 +
on the Physics activity
 +
([http://dev.laptop.org/~bjordan/Physics-0.2.xo Physics-0.2.xo]). Brian is planning a
 +
Physics Jam for late August
 +
([http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Physics_meetings/July_10%2C_2008 Physics meetings]).
 +
 
 +
More physics: Joshua Minor created a wiki page discussing a file
 +
format for 2D physics scenes
 +
([http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Physics_File_Format Physics File Format]).
 +
 
 +
13. Misc.: Tomeu Vizoso worked on stabilizing the development builds
 +
and helping David Van Assche who has volunteered to package Google
 +
Gears for OLPC. This work has exposed some issues in Browse that, once
 +
fixed, will allow the installation of several Firefox extensions.
 +
 
 +
Riccardo Lucchese, an intern at OLPC, will work on Browse performance
 +
during the next months; Riccardo has been doing some Sugar profiling:
 +
wget http://www.bodhidharma.info/out.grapher.svg
 +
 
 +
Daniel Drake
 +
released Record-55 for compatibility with the newer GStreamer
 +
libraries present in Joyride/8.2.
  
 
=== Sugar Labs ===
 
=== Sugar Labs ===
  
−
13. Self-organizing map (SOM): Gary Martin has generated another SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:Image:2008-June-28-July-4-som.jpg]]).
+
14. Self-organizing map (SOM): Gary Martin has generated another SOM
 +
from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see
 +
[[:Image:2008-July-05-11-som.jpg]]). The
 +
discussion seems to have drifted back towards the topic of learning.
 +
 
 +
Gary has moved all the SOM content to it's own community wiki page: [[Community/SOM]].
 +
 
 +
He has also uploaded the Sugar month by month SOMs as well, the direct link is: [[Community/SOM#Sugar_Mailing_List]].
 +
 
 +
15.  Blogged: I'll be posting these digests in blog form starting this week.
  
 
==Sugar in the news==
 
==Sugar in the news==

Revision as of 21:18, 14 July 2008

What's new

This page is updated each week (usually on Monday morning) with notes from the Sugar Labs community. (The digest is also sent to the community-news at sugarlabs.org list.) If you would like to contribute, please send email to walter at sugarlabs.org by the weekend. An archive of this digest is available here.

Sugar Digest

1. Sugar Labs governance: There are still a few more loose ends to deal with before we are officially members of the Software Freedom Conservancy. In preparation, I've made a lot of changes on the governance page. Please comment.

2. Leaning: There were some interesting discussions about learning on the Education list this week:

3. OLPC in the field: Jim Gettys has published an aggregate summary of Sugar in the hands of children in the various OLPC deployments around the world (OLPC News).

4. Clarity: When talking about Sugar, I never have trouble describing the collaboration features or the reflective nature of the Journal, but I struggle with describing the interface in terms of its simplicity. "Simplicity" has an undertone of "dumbed down" and limited capability. In a discussion with Nathan Felde from the Art Institute of Boston, a division of Lesley University, we used the word "clarity", which immediately struck me as a much better term than simplicity. It doesn't imply any limit and it suggests transparency and openness, both hallmarks of the interface.

5. Studio Thinking: Nathan also introduced me to a book, Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education by Lois Hetland, Ellen Winner, Shirley Veneema, and Kimberly M. Sheridan. It is a treatise on visual arts education; the authors argue that through the arts, students learn specific "dispositions of mind" that lead to high-quality thinking. They also speak about "Studio Habits of Mind": develop craft, engage and persist, envision, express, observe, reflect, stretch and explore, and understand the world and "Studio Structures": the demonstration/ lecture, students working, and the critique. It seems there is synergy with many of the goals of Sugar. An open question is how to transfer this thinking beyond the visual arts.

Community jams and meetups

Tech Talk

6. Release process: Marco Pesenti Gritti and Michael Stone have been discussing how to integrate the Sugar and OLPC release processes:

  • SugarLabs should try to schedule its release a few months before the

OLPC release target date (something around 2–3 months). That will give us enough time to ensure everything is stable before we start integrating the new code in the OLPC distribution.

  • Sugar developers employed by OLPC will work on OLPC release

contracts for all the new features present in the new release.

  • After the first stable release SugarLabs will keep releasing minor

updates, which will include bug fixes and strings for the OLPC release.

  • We should make an effort to develop all the features required as

part of the unstable development cycle. Though there surely will be cases where OLPC will need changes outside the normal SugarLabs schedule. We will land these in a limited and controlled way both during the freeze periods and as part of the stable minor releases.

7. Sucrose: Simon Schampijer announced the Sucrose Development Release 0.81.6 this week (ReleaseTeam/CurrentRelease/Sucrose). You can test it in OLPC joyride >= 2129.

This first release after the feature freeze and therefore has only bug fixes. It contains as well a new Browse activity (Version 92). Due to an interface change in xulrunner the downloads were broken in Joyride. They are fixed with this Browse release. Simon Schampijer added refinements to the autocompletion feature #7281 and #7280.

Due to a name change of the Browse activity (Web->Browse) you will likely have problems updating to the latest version. Find instructions here to work around that problem (ReleaseTeam/Releases/Sucrose/0.81.4#Instructions to test in olpc joyride).

The sources can be found here:

Sugar-081.6.tar.bz2

  • #7438 sugar shuts down when you click Restart
  • #7365 Invites not working
  • #7248 Speaker device has inconsistent behavior
  • #7339 CPU Spins after starting an activity
  • #7015 Add proper alignment support to the "tray" control
  • #5613 Cannot set non-ASCII nick name
  • #7046 Deleting activity bundle with journal leaves it showing in Home list view until reboot
  • #7391 Make the search field in Home reveal the list view
  • #7248 Speaker device has inconsistent behavior
  • #7272 Notifications are redundant with new launching feedback
  • #7273 Activity icons remain colored after launch

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release (as well to the translation team for adding new languages and updating existing ones).

8. Handwriting: Julka Lipkova has been working on software for teaching children handwriting (handwriting activity); more details are available at http://olpc-dhw.blogspot.com/.

9. Movie portal: DailyMotion, which has an ogg-friendly website, is planning a video campaign to solicit new uploaded materials for OLPC (Dailymotion).

10. Sugar Almanac: Faisal Anwar continues to progress on documenting the community's best coding practices and conventions (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar_Almanac).

11. SocialCalc: Manusheel Gupta reports that the Dan Bricklin, co-inventor of VisiCalc (the first spreadsheet), Luke Closs, and K.S. Preeti have SocialCalc (a spreadsheet activity) in Sugar. This is the first Sugar activity written in JavaScript (JS) to have been integrated to Python-based Sugar environment. They did this through XOCom, a wrapper function. The XOCom package will encourage the JS community to participate in developing software and content for Sugar (Please see SocialCalc and and Installation instructions).

12. Physics: Brian Jordan and Alex Levenson have made great progress on the Physics activity (Physics-0.2.xo). Brian is planning a Physics Jam for late August (Physics meetings).

More physics: Joshua Minor created a wiki page discussing a file format for 2D physics scenes (Physics File Format).

13. Misc.: Tomeu Vizoso worked on stabilizing the development builds and helping David Van Assche who has volunteered to package Google Gears for OLPC. This work has exposed some issues in Browse that, once fixed, will allow the installation of several Firefox extensions.

Riccardo Lucchese, an intern at OLPC, will work on Browse performance during the next months; Riccardo has been doing some Sugar profiling: 

wget http://www.bodhidharma.info/out.grapher.svg

Daniel Drake released Record-55 for compatibility with the newer GStreamer libraries present in Joyride/8.2.

Sugar Labs

14. Self-organizing map (SOM): Gary Martin has generated another SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see Image:2008-July-05-11-som.jpg). The discussion seems to have drifted back towards the topic of learning.

Gary has moved all the SOM content to it's own community wiki page: Community/SOM.

He has also uploaded the Sugar month by month SOMs as well, the direct link is: Community/SOM#Sugar_Mailing_List.

15. Blogged: I'll be posting these digests in blog form starting this week.

Sugar in the news

28 June 2008 OLPC News – A Cutting Edge Sugar User Interface Demo
18 June 2008 PC World – OLPC Spin-off Developing UI for Intel's Classmate PC
17 June 2008 Datamation – If Business Succeeds with GNU/Linux, Why Not OLPC?
11 June 2008 LinuxInsider – The Sweetness of Collaborative Learning
06 June 2008 Bill Kerr – untangling Free, Sugar, and Constructionism
06 June 2008 Open Education – Walter Bender Discusses Sugar Labs Foundation
06 June 2008 BusinessWeek – OLPC: The Educational Philosophy Controversy
05 June 2008 Code Culture – The Distraction Machine
05 June 2008 BusinessWeek – OLPC: The Open-Source Controversy
27 May 2008 The New York Times – Why Walter Bender Left One Laptop Per Child
26 May 2008 Ars Technica – OLPC software maker splits from X0 hardware, goes solo
22 May 2008 BetaNews – Linux start-up Sugar Labs in informal talks with four laptop makers
16 May 2008 OSTATIC – OLPC's Open Source Sugar Platform Aims for New Hardware
16 May 2008 PCWorld – Bender Forms Group to Promote OLPC's Sugar UI
16 May 2008 MHT – Bender jumps from OLPC, founds Sugar Labs
16 May 2008 News.com – Sugar Labs will make OLPC interface available for Eee PC, others
16 May 2008 Feeding the Peguins – The future of Sugar
16 May 2008 Sugar list – A few thoughts on SugarLabs
16 May 2008 xconomy – Bender Creates Sugar Labs—New Foundation to Adapt OLPC’s Laptop Interface for Other Machines
16 May 2008 BBC – '$100 laptop' platform moves on
15 May 2008 OLPC wiki – Dual-boot XO Claim: OLPC will not work to port Sugar to Windows.
16 May 2008 Softpedia – Bender Launches Sugar Labs for Better Development of OLPC's Sugar UI

Press releases

 15 May 2008 Sugar Labs/Announcing Sugar Labs
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