ASLO2

The aslo2 is a hypothetical revision of the aslo site that brings new features. This pages discusses them.

You can find the code here: https://github.com/SAMdroid-apps/aslo/

You can view it live here: http://www.aslo.cf/

Current ASLO Feature Parity

Here are the important things the current ASLO has that the new one has too:

• Stores every version of the activity
• Shows the user the latest compatible version
• Can search by title or description
• Users can comment and add stars
• Activities in categories
• i18n ui
• The update manager in the system settings

New Features

For Users

• Nicer ui - just in my own opinion
• No more reloads - the activities detail pages load almost instantly
• Localised search - users can search in their own language
• 'Instant' search - it is very fast :)
• A comment system that lets people to actually discuss activities - they can post ideas, questions, reviews and bug reports. Any user can then post a reply to the post and then somebody can reply to the reply.........
• Not yet implemented: Connect B.SL.O with the ASLO - Let people post bug reports is a really easy way

For Developers

• Github integration - a webhook can be connected with github which can build and update the activities listing automatically (see the technical description below)
• Communication with their users - they can talk over the comments system (in real time even). I really need to add email notifications so this can work better
• No more references to firefox addons in random corners of the site :)

Activity Categories

The new ASLO adds a categories field in the activity.info. It is a space separated list of categories.

The current categories are (with their name for the activity.info):

• Games (game)
• Programming (programming)
• Internet (internet)
• Science (science)
• Maths (maths)
• Geography (geography)
• Office (office)
• Tools (tools)
• System (system)

Please tell me what you think about these.

Help Us --- Translate it!

Warning, the strings are unstable - you should wait before you translate

Here it is, step by step:

1. Make a copy of this file: https://github.com/SAMdroid-apps/aslo/blob/master/web/locales/dev/translation.json 2. Translate the values (the things on the right of the colons) 3. Save the translated file in /web/locales/en_US/translation.json (replace en_US with your language) 4. Also save it in the general language folder (without the country code). eg: /web/locales/en/translation.json 5. Send me a pull request (or an email) 6. BE HAPPY :)

Implementation Details

JSON Backend

The data about the activities is stored in a json file. This json file is available via GitHub (currently https://github.com/SAMdroid-apps/sugar-activities). This is served with the correct content type here: http://aslo-bot-master.sugarlabs.org/data.json

Activity Buildbots

The aslo2 integrates a lot with GitHub. It offers a web hook for which the activity can be automatically built and listing data extracted.

Here is a diagram of the network:

   GitHub ----Hook-Request----> Bot Master  <----Activity-Data------.
     ^                            |    ^------Request-For-Task---> Bots
     |-----Data-Committed---------|

Here is a list of data sorces for the activity listing:

• Title, Summary - activity.info for en-US and po/LANG.po for the translations
• Screenshots - /screenshots/LANG/NAME.png
• What's New - NEWS.LANG (NEWS defaults to en-US). Use this format https://github.com/ignaciouy/chat/blob/af7bbc9b8036fb7252cf21cd6a2e6d545a42ed5d/NEWS
• Compatibility - Robots reading through your code :)
• Authors - You need to do that manually
• Bundle - Automatically compiled by the robots
• Categories - from the activity.info - a space seperated list under the name categories

Commenting

Here are a few points:

• Live updating - via websockets
• Replying to comments
• 4 comment types: bug, question, idea and rating