Sweet: The abstract design of the experience
(the taste of sugar)
Description: "Sweet" is the abstract design of the interface's appearance and behavior, independent of any code actually implementing this design, and by extension—the learner experience. The mockups at Design Team/Designs represent this component's second major release, or perhaps 2.0-alpha.
Glucose: The base Sugar environment
(the fundamental, simple sugar used by all life forms)
Description: Glucose is the minimal system that must be added to a standard GNU/Linux distribution in order to enable Activities to run. This includes all the python code and graphics files that implement the shell, as well as the Journal. Glucose's dependencies may include xorg-server, xulrunner, squeakvm, rainbow, etc. Some of these dependencies may be marked optional by distributions. Glucose does not include any Activities except those like the Journal that are non-optional.
Fructose: The set of demonstration activities
(the main sugar in fruit, which is how we're supposed to get our sugar)
Description: The Sugar developers will need some example set of activities with which to demonstrate Sugar. This set is Fructose. The packages in Fructose should be selected to make the resulting environment as impressive as possible for a potential client or user. Packages should therefore be stable, polished, and exercise the widest possible range of features. Fructose may also serve as an example for people constructing their own Activity sets.
Sucrose: The interface, plus a set of demonstration activities
("table sugar", the kind you buy in the store. It consists of glucose and fructose, combined)
Description: Sucrose consists of both Glucose and Fructose. It therefore represents a complete example Sugar environment, ready to be installed through a package manager. The purpose of Sucrose is so that prospective deployers can install the "sugar-sucrose" package, and immediately say "Wow! Look at all the cool capabilities that this system has!".
Ribose: The operating system components developed for Sugar
(the sugar used by all lifeforms to control their hardware, in the form of RNA. It's important, but not sweet)
Description: Ribose is the set of hardware-centric software components that have been developed throughout this project. It includes the XO kernels, OHM, any init-script customizations, etc. Ribose should be construed as including all components necessary to boot the system, enough to install Glucose if it has not yet been installed.
Starch(es): A complete disk image for Sugar
(starch is composed of multiple sugars bonded together)
Description: We often distribute complete disk images for Sugar, ready to boot. These images are composed of multiple elements of the above stack. ~ For example, the current Joyride images are composed of Ribose (the non-graphical work) and Glucose (the shell) but not Fructose (the activity package). Each image series should be named separately, to minimize confusion. For cutesy codenames, we could have a development build ("glycogen", a starch used to produce Glucose) and a stable build ("cellulose", an extremely stable starch).
The SUGAR stack:
- Note: See discussion for details about the OS/Ribose stacking
- Current implementations of Sugar elements can be found at Supported systems
Deepening the concept
Honey: activities developed by 'in the wild' vendors
a sweet fluid made by bees, mostly Fructose
Description: Activities that are packaged by outside developers, sometimes ports of activities to Sugar from other OS. It might enhance Sugar and the Sweet experience, but "honey frequently contains dormant endospores of the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, which can be dangerous to infants" Wikipedia. ~ For example, Skype, printer capability, IM software
- as a former beekeeper I can tell you that not all honey is organic, though we all wish it were so (antibiotics taint a lot of it, especially in developing countries) Yamaplos 15:04, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
One-liners
- Lead acetate: An implementation of Sweet on Windows. Sweeter than sugar, but toxic to young brains.
- aspartame - once thought better than sugar, but possibly connected with brain tumorsMorgs 11:44, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
- So you're saying Sugar is now suite? Kevin Cole
- Caramel: a "feature freeze" on Sucrose
- Diabetic OS: an OS that cannot handle Sugar yet Yama Ploskonka
- Molasses: a beta, unfinished release of Sugar
- High Fructose Corn Syrup: Apparently similar, but made of patented materials Morgan Collett
- How sweet it is! Jackie Gleason
- Insulin: what Microsoft needs to make Sugar go away. davewa
Glossary
See Glossary.