Sugar Labs - User contributions [en]

Sugar on a Stick/Linux

2009-08-04T04:32:00Z

Nrp: /* Put SoaS as a VMware appliance onto a VMware Player stick */ wikify link

<noinclude>{{GoogleTrans-en}}{{TOCright}}</noinclude>
== Introduction ==
This page helps you to put your [[Sugar on a Stick]] image on a USB flash drive under Linux. If you have questions, trouble, or feedback, please let us know on the [[Talk:Sugar on a Stick|SoaS talk]] page. "Sugar on a Stick" is provided in a number of variants. If you can improve these instructions, please edit the page and do so!

== Put [[Sugar on a Stick/Installation/OLPC | SoaS on an OLPC XO-1]] ==
* See [[Sugar on a Stick/Installation/OLPC]] for booting an OLPC XO-1 with SoaS images.
== Full Fedora 11 Install of Sugar and XFCE Desktops to USB ==
Uses [[wikipedia:Logical_Volume_Manager_(Linux)|Logical Volume Manager (LVM)]] layer over the file structure on the USB flash drive. Other methods on this page install a LiveUSB image that uses a compressed file system ([[wikipedia:SquashFS|SquashFS]]) to hold the system and content.

THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. Please make suggestions or improvements.

* Uses Fedora 11 Net Install CD,[http://mirrors.cat.pdx.edu/fedora/linux/releases/11/Fedora/i386/iso/] so best with a fast internet connection.
* USB 2.0 recommended or install would take a excessive time using USB 1.0
* Requires 4-GB USB drive. (Tested with Cruzer Micro USB Stick, an 8-GB Toshiba USB drive works faster.)
# Boot from CD
# Enter language, time, location, root user password
# Replace existing Linux system
# Review file system
# Delete LVM swap file (needed to fit on 4GB stick)
# Edit LVM and increase to max size on (/dev/sda*)
# Select USB for install and boot
# '''*NOTE: Be sure this is the USB drive, or you will ruin your hard disk installation on the host PC.'''
# Select customize now
## sugar-desktop and XFCE desktop / deselect gnome-desktop
## deselect other unwanted applications in categories (Games, etc)
#: Installer will reformat drive; install bootloader; transfer 957 packages (about 2 hours)
#reboot
# Configuration setup (Graphical), add user and password on first boot
# Log in User
# Select xfce or Sugar on selection bar
*''' install gnome desktop with this technique and then when in gnome, use add/remove programs to install sugar from other desktops'''

*''' you get a 8GB USB that boots either gnome or sugar (8 GB Toshiba USB)'''

* This Works well....can switch back between desktops by logging off and back on.

*''' You can also do a hard disk install of SUGAR this way ''' (not tested yet)

*''' This procedure can be used with a Windows PC if it will boot from CD''' (not tested yet)

== Put SoaS as a VMware appliance onto a VMware Player stick ==

[[VMware|These instructions]] will help you put a [[Sugar on a Stick#Downloading|SoaS image]] onto a USB
stick that boots into VMware Player that then runs a VMware Virtual Appliance containing a [[Sugar on a Stick#Downloading|SoaS image]].

== openSUSE Sugar-Desktop on a stick ==

* The openSUSE version is a .raw image that is burned to a stick by the dd command. It creates a usb stick that boots sugar-desktop with 55 applications.

* '''This also is not a live image on a stick''' (a file system is created on the stick on first use)

* Installation of openSUSE.raw file to USB/SD: [[VMware#Image USB/SD Drives]]

* Details http://en.opensuse.org/Sugar

== Put SoaS onto a stick using Fedora and Ubuntu ==

This is known to work in Fedora and Ubuntu.

First, start downloading a SoaS <tt>.iso</tt> image from the [[Sugar on a Stick#Downloading|images]] table, then return here.

A program called UNetBootin available at http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ does all this magic for you... or you can do the magic yourself:

* Make sure you have the ''syslinux'' package installed on the operating system that you will use to prepare the Live USB image. It is recommended that you also have the ''isomd5sum'' package installed. The ''cryptsetup'' package is another option potentially used by the "livecd-iso-to-disk" installation script. (On Ubuntu, <code>sudo apt-get install syslinux isomd5sum cryptsetup</code> will install the packages. They are also available through the Synaptic Package Manager.)
: (On Gentoo, one needs to uncomment 'SAMPLE FILE' in /etc/mtools/mtools.conf to make syslinux work.)
:*''syslinux'' is needed to set up booting on the FAT file system of the USB disc or Live CD.
:*''isomd5sum'' is needed for the recommended verification step, which checks that the .iso file is complete after its travels. If there is a problem with the .iso file, the script will exit and provide a failure message. The verification step can be bypassed by using the <code>--noverify</code> option.
:*''cryptsetup'' is only needed for the option to provide password protection and encryption for the persistent /home/liveuser folder. It is not necessary if one applies the recommended <code>--unencrypted-home</code> option. The <code>--unencrypted-home</code> option is preferred because the reduced overhead improves robustness with the compressed ''squashfs'' file system employed by the Live USB deployment.
* Plug in a 1GB or larger USB stick into your computer.
* Download the installation script: http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/releases/livecd-iso-to-disk.sh (23 June 2009).

* Check the USB device. In the example below the device is /dev/sdb:
: <tt>'''df -h'''</tt>
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 19G 7.0G 11G 40% /
tmpfs 1.5G 0 1.5G 0% /lib/init/rw
varrun 1.5G 96K 1.5G 1% /var/run
varlock 1.5G 0 1.5G 0% /var/lock
udev 1.5G 2.9M 1.5G 1% /dev
tmpfs 1.5G 104K 1.5G 1% /dev/shm
lrm 1.5G 2.0M 1.5G 1% /lib/modules/2.6.27-11-generic/volatile
/dev/sdb1 996M 913M 84M 92% /mnt/myUSBdisc

* Unmount the drive,<br>
: <tt>sudo umount /dev/sd''b1''</tt>

* Then check to see that the partition is marked as bootable,<br>
: <tt>sudo fdisk '''-l'''</tt> ''<----that's a lowercase letter 'L' for the '''l'''ist option.''
You should see output that looks like this:
Disk /dev/sdb: 1047 MB, 1047265280 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 127 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0008325f
.
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 127 1020096 6 FAT16
The '*' under the Boot column is what you want to see.
: If not, then
:* For Ubuntu 8.10, menu: System -> Administration -> Partition Editor (GParted).
::# Select your USB device (/dev/sd''b'' for the rest of these instructions),
::# then your partition (/dev/sd''b1''),
::# then menu: Partition -> Manage Flags,
::# check the boot box,
::# and Close to mark the partition as bootable.

:* For Fedora,
::# <tt>parted /dev/sd''b''</tt>
::# toggle 1 boot
::# quit

* Also, check to see that you do not already have an existing boot loader (such as [[wikipedia:GNU GRUB|GRUB]]) in the [[wikipedia:Master boot record|MBR]] of your stick. (If you have not previously used this stick as a live boot, you can skip this step.) To be sure that the USB stick's MBR is wiped clean, overwrite it completely using:
: <tt>dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd''b'' bs=446 count=1</tt>
:: (Actually, that didn't work for me. But this did:
::: <tt>lilo -M /dev/sd''b''</tt>
:::It put in a standard MBR that boots whichever partition has been called bootable. It does not install [[wikipedia:LILO (boot loader)|LILO]] as such.)
* Change mode to make the script executable.
: <tt>chmod +x livecd-iso-to-disk.sh</tt>
* Run it as root, making sure to pass the correct USB device and to set overlay and home size appropriately, depending on the stick size.
: <tt>sudo ./livecd-iso-to-disk.sh --overlay-size-mb 300 --home-size-mb 160 --delete-home --unencrypted-home soas-strawberry.iso /dev/sd''b1''</tt>
::The ''livecd-iso-to-disk'' installation has the advantage over the ''liveusb-creator'' installation method by allowing a persistent /home/liveuser folder with the <tt>--home-size-mb ''NNN''</tt> option. This feature would allow you to update the OS image while keeping the user files (by running the script against your existing installation but <u>leaving out</u> the --home-size-mb NNN option).
::* The <code>--delete-home</code> option is used to avoid an error message while requesting both a new home (with <code>--home-size-mb</code>) and a persistent home (indirectly with <code>--unencrypted-home</code>). You wouldn't use the --delete-home option on an upgrade of the operation system only.
:Depending on the size of your USB stick, you may have to decrease <code>--overlay-size-mb</code> and <code>--home-size-mb</code> values (for example, for a 1-GB stick, use 200 for each).
:* If you get an error about udevinfo, you have the new version of udev where "udevadm info" is the proper command. :Create an executable file called udevinfo somewhere in your path with the following contents:
:::<code>#!/bin/bash</code><br>
:::<code>udevadm info $*</code>
:* Watch out for errors in the output of the script, the script seems to ignore them! (and say all is fine on the last line).

===Transcript===

$ sudo ./livecd-iso-to-disk.sh --overlay-size-mb 300 --home-size-mb 160 --delete-home --unencrypted-home Soas2-200906211228.iso /dev/sdb1
Verifying image...
/home/walter/Desktop/Soas2-200906211228.iso: 9f1aa3c7a19dd9c68d1047d681f703c6
Fragment sums: f5ddb7deb26b6474bd59be9f57b6c7abcd624e1ccc682ddf664ba73da4ed
Fragment count: 20
Checking: 100.0%

The media check is complete, the result is: PASS.

It is OK to use this media.
Copying live image to USB stick
Updating boot config file
Initializing persistent overlay file
300+0 records in
300+0 records out
314572800 bytes (315 MB) copied, 88.7551 s, 3.5 MB/s
Initializing persistent /home
160+0 records in
160+0 records out
167772160 bytes (168 MB) copied, 48.1191 s, 3.5 MB/s
Formatting unencrypted /home
mke2fs 1.41.4 (27-Jan-2009)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=1024 (log=0)
Fragment size=1024 (log=0)
40960 inodes, 163840 blocks
8192 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=1
Maximum filesystem blocks=67371008
20 block groups
8192 blocks per group, 8192 fragments per group
2048 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
8193, 24577, 40961, 57345, 73729

Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (4096 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

This filesystem will be automatically checked every 28 mounts or
180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.
tune2fs 1.41.4 (27-Jan-2009)
Setting maximal mount count to -1
Setting interval between checks to 0 seconds
Installing boot loader
USB stick set up as live image!

== What's next? ==

After you've created your stick, it's time to [[Sugar_on_a_Stick#Boot|boot your stick]] and [[Sugar on a Stick/Getting Involved | test]] it out. Please also [[Sugar on a Stick/Getting Involved/Testing | report]] your observations.

[[Category:HowTo]]

Summer of Code/Interviews

2009-04-13T14:44:13Z

Nrp: /* Thurs Apr 16 (Wed 15 in the western hemisphere) */

We would like to interview the top candidates for Google Summer of Code under Sugar Labs. Please sign up for a time below. If you have been told the name of your provisional prospective mentor, and your mentor has put his/her preferred times below, please try to find a time which works for your mentor. (Note that mentor assignments are still in flux; if your provisional prospective mentor changes, we will try to accommodate your chosen time or reschedule at a convenient time for you.)

Interviews will be conducted over IRC; even hours on #sugar-interview0 and half-hours on #sugar-interview1 . Please treat these like real rooms, ie, do not lurk unless you are a mentor. If you have some quick pre-interview questions, we will be in #sugar too.

If you have not been told to sign up to interview (through a public comment on your application), please do not sign up here. Interview time is limited, and we are trying to interview the applicants with the best chances of admission. Like many other organizations participating in GSoC, we have received more good applications than we have funding for interviews. Almost all of our applications would be things that we'd really love to have you working on, even if we don't have space for you in GSoC. If you are interested in finishing your project and would like a mentor assigned even though we can't give you a slot, please contact us on the sugar-devel or gsoc mailing list and we'll work something out.

== Wed Apr 15 ==

Mentors attending: Jameson Quinn, [[User:BryanWB|BryanWB]], Luis G. Lira ...

* [http://www.timeanddate.com/counters/customcounter.html?day=15&month=04&year=2009&hour=14&min=0&sec=0&p0=0 1400 UTC]:

* 1430 UTC:

* 1500 UTC:

* 1530 UTC:

== Thurs Apr 16 (Wed 15 in the western hemisphere) ==

Mentors attending: Jameson Quinn, Andrés Ambrois, [[User:BryanWB|BryanWB]], [[User:Nrp|Nirav Patel]] ...

* [http://www.timeanddate.com/counters/customcounter.html?day=16&month=04&year=2009&hour=0&min=0&sec=0&p0=0 0000 UTC]: Andrés

* 0030 UTC:

* 0100 UTC:

* 0130 UTC:

== Thurs Apr 16 ==

Mentors attending: Jameson Quinn, ...

* [http://www.timeanddate.com/counters/customcounter.html?day=16&month=04&year=2009&hour=18&min=0&sec=0&p0=0 1800 UTC]:

* 1830 UTC:

* 1900 UTC:

* 1930 UTC:

Summer of Code/Interviews

2009-04-13T14:44:00Z

Nrp: /* Thurs Apr 16 (Wed 15 in the western hemisphere) */

We would like to interview the top candidates for Google Summer of Code under Sugar Labs. Please sign up for a time below. If you have been told the name of your provisional prospective mentor, and your mentor has put his/her preferred times below, please try to find a time which works for your mentor. (Note that mentor assignments are still in flux; if your provisional prospective mentor changes, we will try to accommodate your chosen time or reschedule at a convenient time for you.)

Interviews will be conducted over IRC; even hours on #sugar-interview0 and half-hours on #sugar-interview1 . Please treat these like real rooms, ie, do not lurk unless you are a mentor. If you have some quick pre-interview questions, we will be in #sugar too.

If you have not been told to sign up to interview (through a public comment on your application), please do not sign up here. Interview time is limited, and we are trying to interview the applicants with the best chances of admission. Like many other organizations participating in GSoC, we have received more good applications than we have funding for interviews. Almost all of our applications would be things that we'd really love to have you working on, even if we don't have space for you in GSoC. If you are interested in finishing your project and would like a mentor assigned even though we can't give you a slot, please contact us on the sugar-devel or gsoc mailing list and we'll work something out.

== Wed Apr 15 ==

Mentors attending: Jameson Quinn, [[User:BryanWB|BryanWB]], Luis G. Lira ...

* [http://www.timeanddate.com/counters/customcounter.html?day=15&month=04&year=2009&hour=14&min=0&sec=0&p0=0 1400 UTC]:

* 1430 UTC:

* 1500 UTC:

* 1530 UTC:

== Thurs Apr 16 (Wed 15 in the western hemisphere) ==

Mentors attending: Jameson Quinn, Andrés Ambrois, [[User:BryanWB|BryanWB]], [[User:Nrp|Nirav Patel] ...

* [http://www.timeanddate.com/counters/customcounter.html?day=16&month=04&year=2009&hour=0&min=0&sec=0&p0=0 0000 UTC]: Andrés

* 0030 UTC:

* 0100 UTC:

* 0130 UTC:

== Thurs Apr 16 ==

Mentors attending: Jameson Quinn, ...

* [http://www.timeanddate.com/counters/customcounter.html?day=16&month=04&year=2009&hour=18&min=0&sec=0&p0=0 1800 UTC]:

* 1830 UTC:

* 1900 UTC:

* 1930 UTC:

Category:2009 GSoC applications

2009-03-31T15:21:53Z

Nrp: added to gsoc cat

Below is the list of student applications. Please copy Summer of Code/Student application template and name your page with your project title, not using your name and not making it a subpage (no / in title).

[[Category:GSoC]]

Karma

2009-03-25T13:33:20Z

Nrp: fixing category

[[Image:Karma.png|right]]

[[Karma]] is a yet-to-be-created framework for creating very simple Sugar activities using javascript and html5. It is not intended to create powerful animations, simulations, or reusable artifacts. PyGTK and pygame are much better tools for those purposes.

== Team ==

At this time, [[USER:BryanWB| Bryan Berry]] and Felipe Lopez Toledo "SubZero" are exploring Karma as a Google Summer of Code project. BryanWB will likely serve as the mentor and Felipe as the GSoC participant.

== Project Requirements ==

* Create a single prototype activity which could be used as a template for sugarizing AJAX activities. The GSoC participant should not create her own activity but recreate an existing activity such as one of [http://www.pustakalaya.org/external-content/static/epaath/E-Paath-2.activity/activity/Activity/MenuStage.html OLE Nepal's flash activities].
* This prototype should have the following features:
** Simple interactive animation and audio using html5 tags like <canvas> and <audio>
** An assessment section that stores results of student's progress and gives them suggestions on improvement. Assessment info should be persistent.
** Has embedded pdf or pdf like document reader for activity lesson plan and teacher notes.
** Integrates with the Journal
** Navigation and Help elements, ideally reusing widgets from popular javascript libraries like Jquery, Prototype, or Mootools
** Some element of collaboration using Telepathy (This could be really hard, depending on the state of javascript bindings to dbus)

== Initial Thoughts on Technical Architecture ==

It is preferable to use a minimalist html rendering engine, javascript compiler, and filesystem access API rather than extending full-blown browser such as Mozilla.

Preferred Underlying Components:
* [http://www.webkit.org Webkit] for html rendering engine rather than gecko
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V8_(JavaScript_engine) Google Chrome's v8 javascript engine] -- Note: Mozilla's tracemonkey offers comparable performance
* Google Gear's Filesystem API because it seems to have the most traction in the linux world
* Some mechanism to support dbus events

At this time, 23 March 2009, [http://www.titaniumapp.com Titanium] seems to offer all of the above but warrants testing. On the XO. Other options are to use regular firefox, Epiphany, or another browser. Titanium's developers have expressed enthusiasm for extending their platform to better support Sugar.

== Project Plan ==

There are roughly 4 parts to this project plan: first get titanium running on the XO, second create a very simple learning activity with javascript and html5, third get that activity running on the XO in a roughly sugarized version of titanium, fourth extend the activity to take advantage of Sugar-specific features such as the Journal and Collaboration.

# Apply for the GSoC program formally
# Get a "Hello World" Titanium app running on the XO and measure its system footprint. Compare it with regular Firefox
# Select an existing [http://www.pustakalaya.org/external-content/static/epaath/E-Paath-2.activity/activity/Activity/MenuStage.html E-Paath] flash activity to reengineer with javascript and html5.
#* The activity should have interactive animation and sound using javascript and html5
#* Layout the strings in the activity so that they are compatible with pootle
#* Determine possible ways to add collaboration.
# Recreate the learning activity with javascript and html5
# Get the activity to run successfully on Titanium and on firefox. Let's ignore Internet Explorer because it does not support html5
# Integrate the activity with the Journal
# Extend the activity so that it has some collaboration features
# Document the resulting code and issues encountered so that others can build on this project.

== Project Risks ==

# Creating interactive animations with html5 and javascript is very new technology as html5 is a new standard. It could be much harder to create animations than we expect. Risk Level: High
# Javascript animations could be very slow on the XO. Risk Level: Low, we don't need very complex animations
# It could be very difficult to interface titanium with telepathy. Risk Level: High

[[Category:2009 GSoC applications]]

Summer of Code/Getting Involved

2009-03-24T13:44:25Z

Nrp: /* Students */ fix links

Development Team/Project Ideas

2009-03-19T20:25:30Z

Nrp: /* Toolkits / Frameworks for developers */ adding sugargames

This is a list of project ideas. For now the focus is on giving [[GSoC]] students an idea of the kind of thing we're looking for. It also includes dumping ground for less-explicitly-explained crazy ideas at the end.

'''Priorities''': see the [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-March/004592.html ongoing discussion of priorities] on our mailing list. You might find new project ideas in that thread, too.

* There is a similar project ideas page on the [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Summer_of_Code/Ideas OLPC wiki] (and a related [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Category:GSoC_proposals category]). OLPC-specific projects, including hardware and scoholserver-related projects, should go there. Feel free to add below relevant projects from that list - perhaps 80% of these could be appropriate Sugarlabs applications.

'''See something that interests you?''' To get in, you will need to design your project and find a mentor. On irc (#sugar on freenode) or the sugar-devel mailing list, you can briefly introduce yourself, state your interest, and ask relevant and specific questions about the state of the existing code. You should also do your own research for other open-source code that might help you. Get a [[DevelopmentTeam#Development_systems|development environment]] installed. We definitely appreciate it if you can show your readiness to help out - either joining [[BugSquad|bug squad]] and [[BugSquad/Meetings|helping]] to [[BugSquad/TriageGuide|triage]], or actually helping fix some small [http://tinyurl.com/ctfkjl bug].

When you're ready, figure out a very basic, preliminary design (where does your new UI fit in? what about the code - what talks to what?) and post that to the [[Sugar_Labs/Contacts#Developer_Lists|mailing list]], asking if anybody would be willing to mentor you. You will almost certainly get some response, but you may not find a prospective mentor right away. That's OK. If your idea is really not a good fit for us, we will let you know; otherwise, remember that several mentors are holding back for now to see which projects shows the most feasibility, clarity, and creativity in their design ideas. Persistence should pay off.

'''Want to apply with an idea not on this list?''' That's fine. Read the thread linked above about priorities - and remember, our highest priority is for you to have a successful GSoC and hopefully continue to contribute afterwards. Do the steps above, paying particular attention to getting some community members' opinions on whether your idea would be valuable. The [[Sugar_Labs/Contacts#General_List|"iaep" mailing list]] may be the best venue for this. We will not all agree with each other about how important your idea is - that's normal - but our feedback will almost certainly help you refine your idea.

<div style="float:right;">
__TOC__
</div>

== Template for well-explained ideas ==

If a project that interests you lacks a "potential mentor" here, or you want to know more about the current status of the related code, we would be happy to help guide you on irc (#sugar on freenode) or mailing lists (technical questions to sugar-devel@lists.laptop.org, educational/general ones to iaep@lists.laptop.org).

:<tt> '''==== Project title ====''' </tt>
:
:A quick explanation of the project idea
:
: * Priority for Sugar: Low/Medium/High
:
: * Difficulty (as a GSoC project): Easy/Medium/Advanced
:
: * Skills needed: Experience with WikiCode and copy-paste.

=== Core Software ===
==== Registry for people ====
Extend the interaction model to include real people beyond the user–laptop couple. This would extend the virtual network to include some very significant entities, such as family members, who may not have a physical computing device. See the [[Request_New_Features#Support for family interaction | suggestion]] submitted by [[User:Skua]]. The [[olpc:Record]] Activity could be used as fun, instance-of-person creator and embellisher, by capturing an image or video of the person, and saving it in a new registry.
* Integration of a person object into the Sugar architecture
* Extension of the User/Group model to realistically capture the actual Person entity
* Modification of at least one activity (Record ?) to support the new API
* Extension of School Server registration model
* Extension of an Internet person model to support a Person entity (e.g., to support a missing-person registry in the [http://sahana.rit.edu/ Sahana] Disaster Management System)
Lots of extensions are possible, following a good, fundamental design
* Difficulty: Medium - Hard (depending on scope chosen)
* Skills needed: Data modeling, Core system programming
* Potential mentor: [[User:FGrose]] for data modeling, collaborators needed for Core systems and Internet architectures

==== Speech Synthesis for Sugar ====
Integrate speech synthesis with all activities, not just [[Speak]], and provide for karaoke coloring. See [[User:Mokurai|Mokurai]]'s [http://www.olpcnews.com/content/ebooks/effective_adult_literacy_program.html article] on adapting [[Same Language Subtitling]] for literacy to the XO.

Desirable Features for Sugar Speech Synthesis Plugin:

* Provide Sugar Speech Synthesis Configuration Management Tool
* Karaoke Style Coloring in Sugar Environment
* UI for configuration Control
* Accent gets set on the basis of locale

*Priority for Sugar: Medium

*Difficulty (as a GSoC project): Advanced

*Skills needed: Experience with GTK, decent Python ability, ability to integrate with existing code.

*Existing Technical Documentation & Work that can be leveraged: Interested developers can refer to [http://google-summer-of-code-2008-olpc.googlecode.com/files/Hemant_Goyal.tar.gz GSOC 08 Project Status Report].

==== Print Support ====
Print support in Sugar would be useful in many scenarios. The ideal project deliverables would include
* Integration of a printing infrastructure (CUPS ??) into the XO-1 software images
* Modification of Sugar Control Panel to set up the printer (add/select default printer?)
* Modification of at least one activity (Write ?) to support printing
* Making a printing activity, that follows sugar GUI guidelines?
* Extra credit: integrating a server, including permissions and quota management, into the XS image.

*Priority for Sugar: High

*Difficulty (as a GSoC project): Medium-high

*Skills needed: Python programming, API design, some communications

==== Sugar Toolbar submenu support ====

The Sugar Human Interface Guidelines have a toolbar design that includes submenus (See [[DesignTeam/Designs/Toolbars|Toolbar designs]]). The project would be to extend the existing Toolbar widget to include this new feature and then to work with a few Activity developer to incorporate the new design into their Activities. Possible candidate activities include Paint and [[Activities/Turtle Art|Turtle Art]].

*Priority for Sugar: Medium

*Difficulty (as a GSoC project): Easy-Medium

*Skills needed: intermediate GTK and python skillz

==== Versioned Datastore ====

* To add [[DevelopmentTeam/DatastoreRewrite#Versioned_entries_.28not_fulfilled_yet.29|Version support]] for [[Journal]] / [[DevelopmentTeam/Almanac/sugar.datastore.datastore|DataStore]]: Start with (old) [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Olpcfs Olpcfs] and (newer; less-documented; based on an RCS backend and a relatively small amount of fuse magic) [http://dev.laptop.org/git/users/cscott/olpcfs2/ olpcfs2]. Get Sugar to mount OLPCFS2, a working virtual versioned filesystem, and keep its datastore there. Get datastore to create a new version for each save (automatic or manual). Modify journal UI to use these versions, fork from old versions, etc. Keep with the same name / tags, create a branch if metadata was changed. Allow the user to access "older" versions (Keeping and "old" version will create a branch) and view ancestry (tree of branches).

We would not expect a GSoC project to be necessarily ready to check into our trunk. For instance, you could avoid facing the issue of pruning old versions for disk space, or not have a converter for existing datastores. However, it should work as a proof-of-concept with a variety of activities.

*Priority for Sugar: High

*Difficulty: Hard

*Skills needed: primarily Python UI (pygtk); also FUSE/file systems (this part is mostly done); and Packaging and building.

=== Toolkits / Frameworks for developers ===

==== AJAX Sugar aka Karma ====

Create a proof-of-concept learning multimedia Sugar activity using javascript and html5 (for instance, Titanium-made apps). This activity should have animation, audio, persistent storage of user progress, and at least basic integration with the Sugar environment.

JavaScript/Python Communication through the following strategies: PyXPCom, hulahop, xulrunner or [http://www.titaniumapp.com/ Titanium]. see also [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2009-March/012829.html the mailing list discussion]. The preferred solution should use a minimalist rendering engine like Webkit and a toolset for local file access like Google Gears. Such a solution would have much less overhead than embedding all of mozilla.

* Ideally, develop a demo activity which could be used as a template for sugarizing AJAX activities. The GSoC participant doesn't have to create her own activity but could simply recreate an existing activity such as one of [http://www.pustakalaya.org/external-content/static/epaath/E-Paath-2.activity/activity/Activity/MenuStage.html OLE Nepal's flash activities].
* This demo should have the following features:
** Simple interactive animation and audio using html5 tags like <canvas> and <audio>
** An assessment section that stores results of student's progress and gives them suggestions on improvement. Assessment info should be persistent.
** Has embedded pdf for lesson plan that can be viewed w/in the activity
** Integrates with datastore
** Navigation and Help elements, ideally reusing widgets from popular javascript libraries like Jquery, Prototype, Mootools
** Some element of collaboration using telepathy (This could be really hard, depending on the state of javascript bindings to dbus)
*Priority for Sugar: Very High ("never bet against the browser")

*Difficulty (as a GSoC project): medium/hard Note: integrating w/ the datastore likely won't be too hard but utilizing Sugar's collaboration features could be very hard

*Skills needed: Javascript/Python integration (PyXPCom, hulahop), CSS, knowlege of SQL

*potential mentors: Wade Brainerd (wadetb at gmail dot com), Bryan Berry (bryan at olenepal dot org) can serve as project manager, define requirements and project deliverables

==== SWF Sugar ====

* Integrate SWF (Flash/Gnash) applications into Sugar.
* Ideally, develop a demo activity which could be used as a template for sugarizing Flash/Gnash activities.

*Priority for Sugar: Very High ("never bet against the browser")

*Difficulty (as a GSoC project): hard

*Skills needed: SWF/Python integration

==== Improve Develop activity ====

There are several improvements that would make the Develop activity a more attractive IDE. Any ONE of these would be a good GSoC project.

* Make a WYSIWIG GUI editor, like Glade. Note that GTK natively supports loading Glade-format interface definitions, although there would be some work involved making the Sugar interface elements available through this method.
* Integrate Sugarbot and auto-testing facilities.
* Integrate a debugger, based on pdb or other.

*Priority for Sugar: Medium-High

*Difficulty: Medium - Hard

*Skills needed: Good python skills.

*Potential mentor; Jameson Quinn (firstname dot lastname at gmail dot com)

==== "Translate Activity" activity ====

We will never finish localizing all our activities and base software for all our deployments - especially for places with high linguistic diversity like Afghanistan, Peru, Guatemala. So it would be great if there were an easy, discoverable way to translate any string on your machine; have the translation appear on your own machine immediately; and, assuming the activity has a link to a Pootle project, upload that translation to a Pootle server later. (For real-world use, these uploads would probably have to be cached at the school server level, but that is more complexity than we'd expect from a GSoC project.)

*Priority for Sugar: Medium-High

*Difficulty: Medium to Hard

*Skills needed: at least some experience localizing, to know what's involved; ability to do minor hacks on gettext in C and Python; work with localization formats (.po, etc.); Python for activity UI; some simple communications, to upload proposed translations to pootle.

*potential mentor: Sayamindu Dasgupta (sayamindu at gmail)

==== SugarGames Pygame wrapper ====
The [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPCGames OLPCGames] wrapper allows [http://pygame.org Pygame] to run inside of GTK in Sugar, making Pygame based Activities possible. However, the wrapper is geared specifically for use on the XO-1, and does not necessarily reflect the modern reality of running Sugar on diverse hardware. It also does not allow for the use of other GTK Widgets in the Activity, restricting developers from adding UI features like pop up query boxes. This project would involve porting OLPCGames or writing a Pygame wrapper from scratch that would allow Pygame to run in GTK while still enabling the use of GTK UI elements. It would also involve making GTK events and other relevant parts of the Sugar API available to Pygame Activities.

* Priority for Sugar: Medium-High (Activity development is limited between the graphics limitations of PyGTK and the UI limitations of Pygame)
* Difficulty (as a GSoC project): Medium-Advanced
* Skills needed: Requires a fair amount of knowledge of both Pygame and PyGTK.
* Potential Mentor: Nirav Patel (nrpatel at gmail, nrp on freenode)

=== Stand-alone activities ===

==== Improved Read activity ====
Use Gecko to implement a reader for [http://www.openebook.org/ epub] format ebooks. This is superior to PDF because such books can be reflowed to better fit the screen and user preferences. Also, (although it would break the standard) it would make it very simple to include AJAX-style active features to books.

Extra credit if you support textual and graphical annotation. Deployments have also asked for a page-turn animation. See also [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2009-March/012821.html ml].

*Priority for Sugar: High

*Difficulty (as a GSoC project): Medium (w/o annotation); very hard (w/annotation)

*Skills needed: Strong Javascript/DOM skills, some interlanguage integration (Python/Javascript), ability to adapt Read activity's communications code (Python).

*Potential mentor: Sayamindu Dasgupta (sayamindu at gmail) (already has some code to start with)

==== Listen Spell activity ====

Extending [[Listen Spell]] activity wrt to following points

* Adaptable to different speech models
* Playing over mesh network
* User Defined word list.
* Test Mode: A teacher can feed the pre-defined word list on the network and activity is being used to conduct the test/exam
* Speaking sentences to make student learn grammar

*Priority for Sugar: Medium

*Difficulty (as a GSoC project): Medium

*Skills needed: Python, GTK, Understanding of sugar mesh network
*Potential mentor: Assim Deodia (assim.deodia at gmail dot com)

==== KDEEdu ====

Sugarize any [http://edu.kde.org/ KDEEdu] activity, especially the ones which have no corresponding Sugar activity. This probably means recoding the C to use GTK instead of QT and to use Sugar conventions. It is doubtful that this process could be automated, so you'd probably just do one activity.

*Priority for Sugar: High

*Difficulty (as a GSoC project): easy-hard

*Skills needed: C/C++, GTK.

==== Educational Toolkit ====

Either based on the existing educational toolkit, or starting from scratch, enable XO use in classroom scenarios. Such scenarios could include

* Teacher shows slides, reproduced on child's screens
* Teacher asks questions - either pre-prepared or on-the-fly
* Students give answers via collaboration
* Teacher or student chooses - explicitly or randomly - an answer for further discussion
* Students split in groups and go from their individual answers to a collaborative answer
* Teacher can review all answers later
* Teacher gives individual or group feedback (offline) which will be shared with appropriate students when they come online
* Teacher checks what's on a child's screen - (experience on other platforms shows this "look over shoulder" ability reduces goofing off even though it is rarely used.)

The low-hanging fruit on [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Educational_toolkit Educational Toolkit] is the following:

* Enable collaboration scenarios
* Work on the GUI to provide support for multiple types of questions.
* Add API to make it easy to add new question types.

*Priority for Sugar: High

*Difficulty (as a GSoC project): medium-hard

*Skills needed: intermediate ability with Python and communications

==== Improved Imageviewer ====

Implement missing bits in Imageviewer, some of which are

* Sharing support
* Basic image effects support (grayscale, sepia effects, colorize, etc)
* Exif support

There are more things that can be implemented, but the above are the basic minimum one should try to implement.

*Priority for Sugar: High

*Difficulty (as a GSoC project): easy-medium

*Skills needed: Python, GTK. the Sugar collaboration framework

==== Etc., Etc. ====
It should not be hard at all to imagine educational activities or games which would be useful for primary or secondary school education. Let your imagination run wild!

*Priority for Sugar: Medium

*Difficulty: Medium

*Skills needed: Python, GTK, Sugar collaboration framework

== Brainstorm / unexplained ideas ==

==== Sugar adaption for the Nasa ====
One of the 91 indigenous cultures that still exist in Colombia is the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paez_people Paez people] (aka '''Nasa'''). They have their own traditions, customs, world view, mother tongue (Nasa Yuwe), i.e. their own culture. It could be possible to take cultural elements into the Sugar Interface, not only language, to provide Nasa children a suitable and familiar interface. [[User:Santiago|Santiago]] 18:01, 8 March 2008 (EST)

=== Core Software ===

* Accessibility Support: Sugar currently doesn't have anything available for the visually impaired.
* Improve automatic testing across the system. This would improve our check-in and build process immensely. Very high priority which nobody is addressing head-on.
==== Homework turn-in ====
* "Homework turn-in" support: Certain metadata on a file causes new versions to be pushed out over the net (via SMTP, rss, or other; note that Moodle already has [http://docs.moodle.org/en/Email_processing support] for routing from special email addresses to a "location"). No new UI in Sugar, and a trivial amount of changes to Moodle.

==== Research projects: unpolished code ====
* There is also [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Journal%2C_reloaded Journal, reloaded], another research project with real code behind it that is promising but languishing. In this case, the idea is to make the journal "tagging" view transparently compatible with a traditional hierarchical directory structure.
* bemasc's [http://dev.laptop.org/git/users/bemasc/groupthink/ groupthink], expanded: The idea is to have a data structure which keeps itself in sync across many laptops "behind the scenes", thus providing drop-in collaboration as long as the structure in question provides the needed functionality. The problem is that the existing code is unpolished, and only supports some pretty limited data structures. I have some ideas of [[how groupthink could be more general]]. [[User:Homunq|Homunq]] 00:43, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

==== Java ====
Package and integrate the IcedTea open source bootstrap of OpenJDK Java with browser plugin for the XO. Deliverables would include:
* Binary, source and rpm dependencies for icedtea and icedtea browser plugin
* Java enabled os image
* Integration of packages into autobuild branch

(This is just to get Java into the build. Creating an application framework would come later.)

==== Graphical toolkit ====
Important work left to do:
* Give focus feedback by showing a rounded rectangle in gtk buttons and HippoCanvas icons.
* Implement keyboard navigation in HippoCanvas.
* Implement accessibility hooks in HippoCanvas.
* Improve keyboard shortcuts - make them easier to create and implement a UI to make them more discoverable, such as transparent letters which appear when you hold <ctrl>

=== Frameworks/Toolkits ===
==== Mono/.NET ====
The use of Mono could really enhance the number of Sugar developers due to the huge existing .NET community.
Thanks to Torello Querci, developing a Sugar activity in Mono is already possible using the Mono/Sugar bindings Sugar.dll (more on Mono on Sugar [[Mono|here]]).

The idea for this GSOC project is to greatly enhance this binding:
* Better integration with the Sugar look & feel and HippoCanvas,
* Binding to telepathy API,
* WinForm compatibility,
* MonoDevelop integration.

More on this idea:
* Priority for Sugar: Low
* Difficulty (as a GSoC project): Medium-Advanced
* Skills needed: C# programming, Linux programming
* Potential mentor: Lionel Laské and/or Torello Querci

=== Activities ===
* See also ideas at [[ActivityTeam/ProjectIdeas]].
* A better, more fun, Paint option for small children - One way - Use eToys - http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/etoys/2008-November/002770.html

==== VideoChat activity ====
telepathy-python has support for audio and video streaming and has recently gained support for using gstreamer, which means that we could easily do efficient videoconferencing using fully open source codecs.

So a really nice project would be to do a proper Sugar activity for video conferencing.

==== Language Trainer ====
A language trainer with text to speech support would be very nice. Something that could start with letters and then teach words.

==== Thesaurus ====
Working together with openthesaurus -- someone could create a thesaurus for kids to learn different words (synonyms and antonyms)

==== Logo Activity ====
:Logo is a computer programming language used for functional programming. It is an adaptation and dialect of the Lisp language; some have called it Lisp without the parentheses. Today, it is known mainly for its turtle graphics, but it also has significant facilities for handling lists, files, I/O, and recursion.

:Logo was created for educational use, more so for constructivist teaching, by Daniel G. Bobrow, Wally Feurzeig and Seymour Papert. It can be used to teach most computer science concepts, as UC Berkeley Lecturer Brian Harvey does in his Computer Science Logo Style trilogy. — [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language) Wikipedia article on the Logo programming language]

There is a "[[Running_Linux_Applications_Under_Sugar|Sugarized]]" Logo—[http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/usermanual UCB Logo]—but it does not record data into the Journal or use the standard Sugar toolbar.

There are two possible approaches we could take: (1) digging deeper into UCB Logo and (2) working with another Logo, possibly [http://pylogo.org/ PyLogo].

* Priority: high as Logo is an important tool engaging children in programming
* Difficultly: moderate to high, depending upon the approach chosen
** Integrating Pylogo would be relatively easy, but it is a very limited implementation of Logo that would need enhancing
* Experience: some Python and C if the UCB Logo approach is taken

==== FoodForce2 Activity ====

* Integrate story board into the game.
* Make an extensible API to enable educators to add their own storyboards.
* Add Speech Support into the project.
* Optimise the speed and efficiency of the game.

Link : http://code.google.com/p/foodforce/

== Other ideas for improving Sugar Activities ==

=== Broad project ideas ===
*See [[MarketingTeam/Events/Sugarcamp_Boston_2008/Minutes#Items_from_the_roadmap_brainstorm|a list of project ideas]] from a brainstorming session at Sugar Camp.

=== Activities Site (addons) ===

* The activities http://activities.sugarlabs.org, is in need of a serious ''sugarization'', a GSOC project could be giving some love to the dressing and coding of the underlaying activities site (based on mozilla's addons).

=== Packaging for specific distros ===

'''Debian'''
* Help in maintaining and packaging sugar and activities in debian.
* Including/adapting debian-edu .debs to sugar

Hello there, I am quite interested in Debian and want to help with this and all other projects. Please contact me (bjoern AT xruby DOT net) if I can be of assistance to the XO project or other things. I will start my PhD studies in April and have previously studied Computer Science. I am highly interested in helping where I can and want to bring the necessary technology to kids around the world.
: from olpcwiki 2008

=== Preeti's list ===

Hi, I am Preeti, from New Delhi. I would like to get myself involved in this very interesting aspect of the OLPC software development. I have jotted some of my views on the same at:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User_talk:59.178.99.172

[[Category:Participate]]

Summer of Code

2009-03-19T17:46:30Z

Nrp: /* Students */ reflecting what to do now that we are a mentoring org

{{TOCright}}

{{Draft}}

== Introduction ==

The purpose of this project is to get Sugar Labs ready for a [http://code.google.com/opensource/gsoc/2009/faqs.html Google Summer of Code] mentor organization application, and to coordinate a Sugar Labs Summer of Code effort if accepted. (From the 2009 FAQ: "Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source projects.")

This is a project under [[DevelopmentTeam]]. [[User:Mchua|Mchua]] is the current project coordinator and can be contacted with any questions.

== What makes a good project ==

Our focus is on '''collaboration''' and '''community''' for the summer 2009 round of projects, though we'll also consider thoughtful proposals that lie outside these two areas and can make a strong case for how they would support the Sugar Labs [[Sugar_Labs|mission]].

=== Collaboration ===

This refers to API or activity work that makes [[collaboration]] "work better." A good metric for "works better" is to ask the following: "6 months after the summer ends, which projects are likely to have caused the highest increase in children-hours spent collaborating over Sugar Activities?"

=== Community ===

This refers to meta-work that makes it easy for Sugar to reach a broader [[community]]; this includes development tools (and accompanying implementation of processes and training), internationalization/localization, accessibility, infrastructure-building, and porting Sugar to other platforms.

A good metric for "reaches a broader community" is to ask the following: "6 months after the summer ends, which projects are likely to cause the highest increase in SL community members that have participated consistently on a team for a minimum of 3 months?"

== Get involved ==

=== Mentors ===

The preliminary [[/Mentors]]' application page is now up.

=== Students ===

Student applications open on March 23rd. In the meantime, look at the list of [[DevelopmentTeam/ProjectIdeas | project ideas]] or propose your own. Bring your proposals to the community, developers, and potential mentors for feedback on [[Sugar_Labs/Contacts | the mailing list]] or [[IRC]].

=== Supporters ===

We're currently in the "get ideas" phase; please see [[DevelopmentTeam/ProjectIdeas]] for a list of potential projects, and add your own. (There are some [[MarketingTeam/Events/Sugarcamp_Boston_2008/Minutes#Items_from_the_roadmap_brainstorm|more project ideas]] from a brainstorming session at Sugar Camp that should be ported over; let [[User:Mchua|Mchua]] know if you'd like to help with this.)

We would welcome help coordinating the overall effort as well; please contact [[User:Mchua|Mchua]] if you'd like to get involved with this. We are currently working on the [[/SL application]] to Google.

== Community-building ideas ==

The mentoring org application includes the following questions:

# What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program?
# What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with the project after GSoC concludes?

This is a place for brainstorming these issues.

[11:59] <mchua> homunq: we also need a general plan for how we're going to use this as a good community building tool for new developers, though that's a little vague
[11:59] <mchua> homunq: stuff like "would a weekly check-in email be a good idea?" "do we require mentor meetings on IRC?" "are students mandated to blog about their work?"

[[Category:Participate]]

Summer of Code/Mentors

2009-02-18T06:40:00Z

Nrp: adding nrp

Our most important need right now is for quality mentors. If you (or someone you know) would make a good mentor, please nominate yourself (or them), both here on the ML and on the wiki (if you can't handle a little redundant paperwork, you're probably not a good candidate :). Include relevant information such as:

*Name/contact
*Timezone
*What kind of projects could/would you mentor?
*How much time could you devote to mentoring? Can you make the especially solid commitment of being a double-mentor?
*What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at most)?
*What relevant mentoring (or related) experience do you have?
*Anything else you think is relevant.

Please also add this page to your watchlist. We will probably later do some kind of "community interview" process where we ask you questions on this page.

=== Jameson ===

*Name/contact

Jameson.Quinn at gmail

*Timezone

US Central / Central America

*What kind of projects could/would you mentor?

PyGTK-based activities or Sugar improvements, especially interested in language or developer tools.

*How much time could you devote to mentoring? Can you make the especially solid commitment of being a double-mentor? What are your other commitments over the summer?

I could commit up to 4-6 hours a week. If we are short on mentors and I find project(s) that are an especially good match, I could do 8 hrs (double duty). Over the summer, I hope to be helping to work on an XO deployment, hopefully on a paid basis, but am currently unemployed.

*What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at most)?

Maintainer of Develop activity, have done some tinkering with Sugar, I've been involved for over a year.

*What relevant mentoring (or related) experience do you have?

I have several years' experience as a full-time teacher.

*Anything else you think is relevant.

Nah.

=== [[User:Nrp|Nrp]] ===

* Name/contact

Nirav Patel nrpatel at gmail

* Timezone

UTC-5

* What kind of projects could/would you mentor?

Pygame or PyGTK based Activities

* How much time could you devote to mentoring? Can you make the especially solid commitment of being a double-mentor? What are your other commitments over the summer?

Graduating and no job prospects, so it is likely I will have quite a
bit of free time as of early May. 5 hours a week is certainly doable.

* What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at most)?

Some Pygame/PyGTK Activity development and a module for Pygame.

* What relevant mentoring (or related) experience do you have?

Teaching Assistant and miscellaneous mentoring experiences at school.

* Anything else you think is relevant.

I survived GSoC on the student end of things in 2008.

Activity Team/Resources

2009-01-11T15:32:30Z

Nrp: activity team header

<noinclude>{{ GoogleTrans-en | es =show | bg =show | zh-CN =show | zh-TW =show | hr =show | cs =show | da =show | nl =show | fi =show | fr =show | de =show | el =show | hi =show | it =show | ja =show | ko =show | no =show | pl =show | pt =show | ro =show | ru =show | sv =show }}
{{TeamHeader|ActivityTeam}}</noinclude>

=Getting started in Activity development=
If you have no experience developing Sugar activities and want to get started, these resources should help you get going.

====Setting up a Sugar environment====
If you use Linux, your best bet is to install sugar-jhbuild. You will be able to develop in your native environment, treating Sugar as just another desktop application.

If you run MacOS X or Windows, you will need to set up an emulator. For Mac OS X, see [[Supported_systems/Mac]]. For Windows, see [[Supported_systems/Windows]].

To develop efficiently using an emulator or a real XO, find an editor which supports editing files over a SFTP connection. Komodo Edit is a good example.

====Python Reference & Tutorials====
* http://docs.python.org/
* http://diveintopython.org/

Python is the language Sugar is written in and is also used by most activities. If you don't already know Python well, you should familiarize yourself with it before continuing.

====PyGTK Reference & Tutorials====
* http://www.pygtk.org/docs/pygtk/index.html
* http://www.pygtk.org/docs/pygobject/index.html

PyGTK is the user interface toolkit used by Sugar activities. Bookmark these two links as you will reference them frequently during development.

* http://www.pygtk.org/pygtk2tutorial/index.html

The following sections of the PyGTK tutorial are most relevant to activity development.

* 1. Introduction
* 2. Getting Started
* 3. Moving On
* 4. Packing Widgets
* 5. Widget Overview
* 6. The Button Widget
* 7. Adjustments
* 8. Range Widgets
* 9. Miscellaneous Widgets
* 10. Container Widgets
* 12. Drawing Area

====Sugar Activities & API====
* http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar_Activity_Tutorial

This tutorial will introduce you to the basics of creating activities.

* http://api.sugarlabs.org/
* http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar_almanac

Bookmark these two links. The first contains the official API documentation for Sugar. It is currently quite sparse, the source code is included with the documentation and it's useful to have that at your fingertips. The second is a detailed module-by-module overview of the Sugar API with answers to common questions.

====Cairo Graphics====
* http://www.tortall.net/mu/wiki/CairoTutorial

Cairo is the graphics library used in Sugar. The tutorial is a good introduction to the API as well as vector graphics programming in general.

====Sugar Human Interface Guidelines (HIG)====
* http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Human_Interface_Guidelines.

These pages give a good introduction to the thought process behind the Sugar environment and will help a lot when designing your activity.

====JSON introduction====
* http://www.json.org/fatfree.html

JSON is a data format commonly used to store activity data in the Journal.

====Git introduction====
* http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Git

Git is the version control software used by Sugar Labs. It is a distributed version control system and is quite powerful, but requires a lot of command line use.

=Activity Development Resources=
This is an open area for posting links related to activity development.

===References===
* http://docs.python.org/ The official Python documentation.
* http://www.pygtk.org/docs/pygtk/index.html PyGTK API reference
* http://www.pygtk.org/docs/pygobject/index.html PyGObject API reference. Contains a few important things missing from the PyGTK API such as timers and idle callbacks.
* http://api.sugarlabs.org/ The official Sugar API documentation (quite sparse but includes all the source code).
* http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar_almanac Detailed Sugar API overview. Quite in depth and offers answers to common questions.
* http://pygstdocs.berlios.de/ Python GStreamer bindings.
* http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Human_Interface_Guidelines The design behind the Sugar interface. Useful when planning your activity.
* http://cairographics.org/documentation/pycairo/ Cairo Python API reference. Very sparse, use the tutorial instead.
* http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Low-level_Activity_API Information on how activities interact with Sugar.

===Tutorials and Whitepapers===
* http://diveintopython.org/ An online book which teaches Python step by step.
* http://www.pygtk.org/pygtk2tutorial/index.html A very informative step-by-step introduction to PyGTK.
* http://www.olpcaustria.org/mediawiki/index.php/Activity_handbook Introduction to activity development by OLPC Austria.
* http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar_Activity_Tutorial Another introduction to activity development.
* http://www.tortall.net/mu/wiki/CairoTutorial A great introduction to Cairo in PyGTK and vector graphics drawing in general.
* http://www.json.org/fatfree.html An overview of the JSON data format.

=People=

If you have a question, don't hesitate to ask the activity team. We are happy to help and can often save you a lot of hunting for answers.

We hang out in #sugar on irc.freenode.net, and you can always post questions to sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org.

User:Nrp

2009-01-11T15:27:10Z

Nrp: key

I am Nirav Patel, currently an Electrical and Computer Engineering student at Carnegie Mellon University. Most of my OLPC related activities are documented at my website: http://eclecti.cc/olpc. My ssh public key can be found at http://eclecti.cc/files/id_rsa.pub

== [[Google Summer of Code]] ==
I participated in GSoC 2008 with OLPC. My project was developing a camera and computer vision library. My implementation was through adding a camera module and several computer vision functions to [[Pygame]]. While it is available in the [http://www.pygame.org/wiki/cvs Pygame repository], it will not be released until Pygame 1.9.0 in early to mid 2009.

You can track historical updates for the summer with my [[User:Nrp/Weekly_updates | Weekly Updates]].
== [[Student Technology Outreach]] ==
I am a program coordinator at [http://cmustoc.org STOC], a club at Carnegie Mellon University. We are building up an [http://wiki.cmustoc.org/wiki/OLPC Activity development team], and should have some wonderful things out soon.
== Activities ==
=== [[Bridge]] ===
Daniel Drake and I wrote this during the OLPC Physics Game Jam. It is currently being rewritten by STOC.
=== [[Panorama]] ===
Donald Cober and I wrote this during the Yahoo! University Hack Day at CMU. It is going to be rewritten by either STOC early next year, or me during winter break 2008-2009.
=== [[Colors!]] ===
I helped Wade Brainerd with the videopaint portion of the activity. This is something that will be improved upon when I have more free time.
=== [[Pointillism]] ===
Nifty little camera demo that makes live capture look like pointillism. It is basically just a demo for the pygame camera module.

User:Nrp

2009-01-11T15:22:30Z

Nrp: New page: I am Nirav Patel, currently an Electrical and Computer Engineering student at Carnegie Mellon University. Most of my OLPC related activities are documented at my website: http://eclecti.c...

I am Nirav Patel, currently an Electrical and Computer Engineering student at Carnegie Mellon University. Most of my OLPC related activities are documented at my website: http://eclecti.cc/olpc

== [[Google Summer of Code]] ==
I participated in GSoC 2008 with OLPC. My project was developing a camera and computer vision library. My implementation was through adding a camera module and several computer vision functions to [[Pygame]]. While it is available in the [http://www.pygame.org/wiki/cvs Pygame repository], it will not be released until Pygame 1.9.0 in early to mid 2009.

You can track historical updates for the summer with my [[User:Nrp/Weekly_updates | Weekly Updates]].
== [[Student Technology Outreach]] ==
I am a program coordinator at [http://cmustoc.org STOC], a club at Carnegie Mellon University. We are building up an [http://wiki.cmustoc.org/wiki/OLPC Activity development team], and should have some wonderful things out soon.
== Activities ==
=== [[Bridge]] ===
Daniel Drake and I wrote this during the OLPC Physics Game Jam. It is currently being rewritten by STOC.
=== [[Panorama]] ===
Donald Cober and I wrote this during the Yahoo! University Hack Day at CMU. It is going to be rewritten by either STOC early next year, or me during winter break 2008-2009.
=== [[Colors!]] ===
I helped Wade Brainerd with the videopaint portion of the activity. This is something that will be improved upon when I have more free time.
=== [[Pointillism]] ===
Nifty little camera demo that makes live capture look like pointillism. It is basically just a demo for the pygame camera module.

Activity Team/Contacts

2009-01-11T15:21:58Z

Nrp: /* People */ nrp