NOTE: Core functionality of Library was moved to Features/Unified Browser for Objects, since now Library will be implemented in plugin form (as a separate activity).

Thanks to

Library activity idea was inspired by iaep@ mailing list thread.

Related ideas

Purposes

Cornerstone ideas:

implement Unified Objects proposal to have unified method to create, reuse and share all Objects in Sugar
work with remote Sugar Objects in the same way like with local
make this activity Sucrose version independent (0.82+)

Objects model

How it looks like from top-level point of view.

Everything is an object

So, journal objects, activities/activity-bundles, content/content-bundles are the same level objects.

All object versions

by activity_id if it exists
by activity for activities/bundles

are represented in Library by one collapsed item.

Every Library object could include:

auto included Journal objects
- new version of object, if object was already included
- by datastore fields, like mime_type, tags etc.
all Journal objects

Properties

Every object can have:

summary short explanation
description longer explanation
icon of object
screenshot of object
rank

By default, some properties could be filled from Journal fields or from object itself (like .ogg properties).

Sharing

How users can share their objects.

Type of objects

Library user could operate with two kinds of objects:

local objects stored in the local Journal; they are regular Journal objects
- local objects that were created on local system
- local objects that were downloaded from remote source
  user can sync them with original remote objects
remote objects stored in the Journal of other (online) users

Sources

Every Library object has list of known (not necessarily online) sources of objects:

local objects stored in local Journal
Sugar users joined (if they are online) to this Library session
(?) activities.sugarlabs.org
(?) various sources that are provided by proper backend, for example books from gutenberg.org

If source is online user can browse his objects (in separate way or merging them to the main set of objects) and download or download+start them.

Synchronize/Upgrade objects

User can manually/auto synchronize local versions with remote versions from online sources.

UI

Core UI components.

Objects list

The list of objects which represents result of chosen tags.

Modes:

list view a la Journal
thumbs view
grid view a la Calibre

User have several options for list items:

open object, for non-creator objects
for unbind objects use the "right" activity to handle it i.e. open .txt in ReadEText not in Write
create new objects, for creator objects
edit current object, for creator objects
download remote object, if current object is from remote source and wasn't downloaded previously
sync current object with remote one, if current object was originally downloaded from remote source
delete object from local system (i.e., from the Journal), if current object was originally downloaded from remote source it would turn to "un-downloaded" state

Tags sidebar

It filters objects for objects list.

chosen tags backslashed list of tags that were chosen
related tags
- cloud of related tags
- tree (made by composite tags) of related tags
without any tags i.e. all objects

After proper tag was chosen:

selected tag' would be added to chosen tags list
related tags would reflect on the final list of objects
objects list would contain the final list of objects

User can choose what kinds of tags it should contain:

objective tags
properties based tags
subjective tags

Sources sidebar

It filters objects for tags sidebar

List of known (not necessarily online) sources of objects.
User can select proper item to view objects only for this source.

Mockup

Usage scenarios

Share objects between Sugar users

user A creates/fills his Library object and shares it
user B joins A's Library session
B browses As local objects
B can download particular/all A's local objects
B can merge A's local objects to the objects list (only for current session)
during the next online session B can synchronize previously downloaded objects

(?) Download objects from non-Sugar sources

user selects proper non-sugar source in the sources list, for example activities.sugarlabs.org or gutenberg.org
makes it online
user browses remote objects
user can download particular/all remote objects
user can merge remote objects to the objects list(only for current session)

Keep activities up-to-date

user creates "Activities" Library object
downloads activities from proper source
make these activities auto-updated
add rule to include to this "Activities" object all activities
treats created Library object like a regular Home view i.e. use it to run all (preinstalled and downloaded) activities
"auto-updated" should mean that downloaded activities will be up-to-date (in some way) when "Activities" object is run

Publish objects on non-Sugar sources

selects object to publish in object list
click "publish" button

Implementation

Implementation details.

Database model

Library follows simple rules:

use local datastore API to search/filter local objects
use remote datastore API(in some way) to search/filter remote objects
use telepathy tubes for notifying users about changes
sync shared objects while opening Library activity or manually

Going further

Integration with Sugar components

downloaded files by Browse activity

Simplify UI usage

several levels of UI complexity
presets with different sets of UI components

Various non-sugar sources

FTP servers

Room/Lesson mode

At the first approach it could look like:

teacher prepares one or several Library objects for future lesson
during the lesson teacher shares proper Library object for all students
teacher could observe if all students were joined to proper Library object, to proper object inside of Library object

So, this mode should contain mini-neighbourhood view for Library object's items.

Roadmap

Task	Planned date	Real date
Local version v1	2009-05-12	2009-05-29
Remote version(Sugar users as an objects source)	2009-05-19
Publish objects on activities.sugarlabs.org	2009-05-26
Provide #Keep activities up-to-date scenario for LTSP
Provide #Keep activities up-to-date scenario for intranet library portal

Activity Library

support 0install by design
- use .xo format only if user requested .xo creating
- otherwise, activities should just start by click

support forks
- bundle_id should not be owned by someone, for the same bundle_id there could be dozens of activities (and not only direct forks)

no strict editors policy
- by default (or at least there should be such option), any user can launch any activity w/o additional steps (like be logged in on ASLO)
- there might be review profiles, user can apply such profile to disperse all activities to reviewed groups e.g. Featured, Major, Trash etc.

support 0install stability profiles e.g. Stable, Development, Buggy

support local user profile e.g.
- use only Stable versions
- make my-favorite-developer's activities all time in using list

one button click update i.e. synchronize current activities w/ server's (taking into account

provide easy to use by activity developers (option in activity.info) and easy to view by Actiivty Library users, centralized stats
- successful/failed launch of what SP, could be useful to judge activity stability
- average time of using/number of launches/etc

Resources

Activities/Library

Contents