Development Team/Meetings

About

  • Quick update about what we have been working on and eventually the problems we have run into.
  • Discussion about the implementation details of tickets we are planning to work on. Figure out how to split up the work and who should be owning the various parts.
  • Questions from activity authors about specific aspects of the platform and more in general on how to better integrate their activity in Sugar. Report about problems they run into.
  • Help out new contributors to figure out where to start. Point out the tickets we need help with, discuss with them the implementation.

When and where

  • weekly
  • thursday
  • 17.00 (UTC)
  • irc.freenode.net, #sugar-meeting

Every tuesday on irc.freenode.net, in the #sugar-meeting channel. Since people from the outside might not have the time to join weekly we will alternate in big and small meetings. The big meeting will try to be more general to allow to get the big picture. The first meeting in 2008 (19th February) was a big meeting so the 26th February will be a small one and so on...

To convert UTC to your local time, take a look at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/UTCHowto or run:

date -d '[current date] [time] UTC' 
date -d '2008-06-03 17:00 UTC'

Who

The meeting is mainly targeted to Sugar core and activity developers, but everyone interested is welcome to join. It's primary purpose is to try to open up a bit the development, make it more transparent and allow the community to participate more easily. For when to join see 'When and Where'.

Meetings

Thursday June 05 2008 - 17.00 (UTC)

Logs

Attending

Topics

1. Break your projects into small pieces that can be submitted for review independently. Submit for review as early as possible, by mailing list or review-board site or whatever other mechanism.

More specific:

  • preferred way if possible: 1. code a small part, 2. submit to review, 3. get into joyride, 4. repeat
  • not talking about: 1. code everything, 2. split in patches, 3. submit

2. If you want testing before review, make a topic build.

We agreed to use an explicit MANIFEST but to provide tools to build it automatically. homunqlus is going to work on a patch for this. We need to try and freeze bundlebuilder to be able to include Develop in 8.2.

3. Some new tools will be needed to make topic builds easier to make. (.img, .rpm, and .deb)


  • Bundlebuilder: how to create the source tarballs best to not incude unintentional files.
  • How to announce a new release of an activity best?

Thursday April 17 2008 - 17.00 (UTC)

Logs

http://dev.laptop.org/~morgan/sugar_meeting_Apr_17.log

Attending

Topics

  • Collaborative activities
  • The collaboration framework
  • Collaboration Central
  • Adding collaboration to activities
  • Upgrading to the new Presence Service API in Update.1
  • API improvements required? (buddy<->handle tracking, reducing boilerplate code...)
  • New proposed collaboration API

Tuesday April 08 2008 - 17.00 (UTC)

Logs

http://dev.laptop.org/~erikos/meeting_logs/sugar_meeting_Apr_08.log

Attending

eben, homunq, garycmartin, tomeu, bemasc, daf, morgs, erikos

Topics

  • discuss eben's sugar todo list: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-April/004909.html
    • We found out that eben's list is basically not controversial and that we 'only' need to prioritize the topics :p
      • action item: prioritize the topics
    • Expose an avatar property for buddies in the ps
      • daf stated that we have specific support for avatars in Gabble, which uses hashes, and therefore would reduce overhead.
  • AlertBox for use with palettes/notifications
    • mockup: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Specifications/Object_Transfers#Preliminary_Mockups
    • sumup:
      • an object transfer error occurs.
      • create a new palette and embed an alertbox in it.
      • create a notification object.
    • attach the new alert palette to both the notification and the transfer object in the frame.
      • Then, upon the cancel/retry button callback: make sure that the notification is gone, reattach the old palette, take the appropriate action.
    • action items:
      • a) create an AlertBox class (probably a subclass of alert or make alert more generic)
      • b) add support for more complex layout to Palette class (ability to set the content before and/or after the menu independently)
  • Activity bundle format, autoupdate
    • Homunq has a proposal up at Talk:Activity_bundles#Proposals_for_update
    • two proposals: a philosophical one about where we want to get to, including activity threading with forks, and an implementation one, which only covers activities as long as the signing key stays the same.
    • Philosophically:
      • Eben says any change of key should count as a different activity
      • Homunq argues that still grouping them in the UI will allow tighter control of keys, and that the UI can give appropriate guidance on secure practices.
      • Agree to disagree for now, because implementation is not urgent.
    • Implementation Signatures
      • morgs has minor comment about hash format (hex instead of base64, for easier comparison
      • no further comments
      • homunq will start work this week
      • unresolved issue: how to store private key for signing an activity?
        • we need to talk to m_stone .

Tuesday April 01 2008 - 17.00 (UTC)

Logs

http://dev.laptop.org/~erikos/sugar_meeting_Apr_01.log

Attending

bemasc, homunq, tomeu, bertf, m_stone, garycmartin, erikos, eben, cjb

Topics

  • Sugar-Control-Panel - timezone
    • handle root permissions for settings like timezone (can this be done in the background)
  • Sugar-Control-Panel - language
    • how to generate the list of languages and their translation best)
    • desired output: current locale, language in language itself, territory
    • example: ingles/english, frances/francais, aleman/deutsch
    • do we make the same for the territory than what we do for the language?

Tuesday March 25 2008 ("TTL-meeting") exceptional time: 15.00 (UTC)

Logs

http://dev.laptop.org/~erikos/sugar_meeting_Mar_25.log

Attending

David Bolter

Timothy Hobbs, timthelion

Jorge Silva

Arjun Sarwal

Hemant Goyal

Assim Deodia

Alex Escalona (vergueishon on olpc here and here)

eben, tomeu, erikos

Topics

  • Meetings in #olpc-meeting
    • Announce the meetings here: Meeting
    • action: send note about that to #devel-ml, #sugar-ml
  • TTS
    • Interfacing with Sugar
      • Unitarian interface
        • Screen readers, TTS engines, and any other text grabbing UI addons (Could that mean tty output, ssh ;)) should all be able to use the same interface.
        • Discuss how orca can possibly be used in the sugar environment. (speech-dispatcher as a speech-synth backend is supported by orca)
        • Discussion about speech-dispatcher, and how it can be used to interface with sugar activities.
      • Discuss some UI considerations for speech synthesis configuration management in Sugar Control Panel.
      • Discuss the magic button for speech synthesis.
    • Support for multiple languages
      • How should the process for including a new language work
      • (This is copied up from the last meeting)
        • santhosh and HFactor present Dhvani, a text-to-speech system for indian languages.
          • santhosh has already worked into integrating Dhvani into Speech Dispatcher.
          • Dhvani will need to be packaged in Fedora.
    • Performance
      • Ram use of any daemons.
      • Fundamental CPU speed limitations(real time TTS?).
    • TTS as accessibility vs. TTS as a reading tutor.
    • Standardized bells.


  • Short Term Implementation Plans
    • Discussing feasibility of speech-dispatcher for the XO
    • Discussion of speech-dispatcher python API
    • Discussion of speech-dispatcher sugar configuration management
    • UI elements of speech synthesis control panel
    • Working on something like sugar.speech?
    • performance analysis of speech dispatcher for the XO
  • Long Term Plans
    • Development of Guidelines for using speech synthesis for developing self-voicing activities.
    • Expansion of ideas list and encouraging community developers to incorporate speech synthesis in their activities.
    • Streamlining speech synthesis projects in OLPC community
    • Community involvement/experimentation to improve quality of synthesized voice, as well as "localization" efforts to make speech sounds more natural-sounding relative to the user
  • Literacy Project
    • What points do we want to address?
      • Dictionary and eBook Projects
      • Teaching Tools that use speech synthesis
      • Tools for helping students learn new languages, improve their language skills


Tuesday March 18 2008 ("big")

Logs

http://dev.laptop.org/~erikos/sugar_meeting_Mar_18.log

Attending

tomeu, bertf, erikos, eben, HFactor, shikhar, santhosh

Topics

Update on everybody's work

  • Redesign Home view (tomeu)
  • Control Panel (erikos)
    • Working now on providing a fade-out look around the dialog. Investigating the new matchbox that contains much improved composition support.
  • Develop (homunq): can't attend the meeting but check it out. Search/replace is a mess but anything else, go ahead and start posting bugs. http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=activities/develop;a=summary . To resume editing on the activity bundles it creates, you need to use the DoppelJournal activity (included in the git tree), which is a renamed copy of journal with the relevant bug fixed. Homunq 09:43, 18 March 2008 (EDT) "git clone git://dev.laptop.org/activities/develop"
  • santhosh and HFactor present Dhvani, a text-to-speech system for indian languages.
    • santhosh has already worked into integrating Dhvani into Speech Dispatcher.
    • Dhvani will need to be packaged in Fedora.
    • Would be good to have a meeting next week with all the people interested in TTS.

Tuesday March 11 2008 ("small")

Logs

http://dev.laptop.org/~erikos/sugar_meeting_Mar_11.log

Attending

garycmartin, eben, benzea, cjb, homunq, ChristophD, erikos

Topics

  • meeting reminder
    • people can put topics on the wiki until Tuesday morning
    • erikos will send a message including these topics to the sugar-ml so more people read the topics and can join if it sounds interesting
  • sugar-control-panel
  • Lots of current activities don't have a bundle .xo for download on the Wiki
    • this got special attention due to the build core changes
    • how do we best address this issue?
    • encourage the activity authors to upload bundles and update the links on the wiki or provide a mechanism in bundlebuilder or at another place?

Tuesday March 4 2008 ("big")

Logs

http://dev.laptop.org/~erikos/sugar_meeting_Mar_04.log

Attending

  • person, task, where
  • Homunq, Develop, Guatemala (UTC-6)
  • morgs, presence, ZA
  • bertf, Etoys, Germany
  • erikos
  • tomeu
  • eben
  • garycmartin

Topics

Tuesday February 26 2008 ("small")

Logs

http://dev.laptop.org/~morgan/sugar_meeting_Feb_26.log

Attending

tomeu, erikos, garycmartin, morgs

Topics

Tuesday February 19 2008 ("big")

Logs

http://dev.laptop.org/~tomeu/sugar_meeting_Feb_19.log

Attending

tomeu, erikos, cjb, ChristophD, daja77, Ridderman

Topics

  • roadmap: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar_Roadmap
    • Tomeu tried to describe the latest mockups for the New Home view and Frame design.
    • UI for sugar-control-panel, ChristophD appearently did some work on this (early screenshot and info)
  • Activity handbook:
    • "The purpose of the activity handbook is to provide you with all the information you need in order to get started with software development for the OLPC XO."
    • http://www.olpcaustria.org/mediawiki/index.php/Activity_handbook
    • currently working on chapters about GUI elements and Journal, next update should become available over the next 2 weeks
  • distribute/share activity
    • distribute Journal entries and activities
    • use ObjectChooser to choose the object to share
    • bemasc was not around to discuss his activity
  • Message Board activity
    • the idea is to have some way of providing a persistent message board without a school server or Internet access.
    • if you have a school server it could be a webpage on the school server
    • for example, every laptop could broadcast every message board note it's seen and the activity could know to collate them and remove duplicates
    • passing a USB stick with a portable mediawiki

Tuesday October 30 2007

(all the meeting logs go here: http://www.pseudorandom.co.uk/tmp/freenode-olpc-meeting.log)

  • How do we log the meeting. (see above)
  • Quick status updates.
  • Reinier introduction.
  • #4022 browser cannot open files generated by view source.
  • #3239 Control Panel, user preferences
  • Correct way to get access to temporary file space during activity execution ?
  • Update1. Branching and trac.
  • Module maintainers. Distribute the release duties.
  • Managing the build system chaos. (idea: coordinated releases of the Sugar core. What is core?)
  • How do we bring back joyride into shape.
  • What API changes to expect before next milestone.

Who is where:

bertf: Germany
Cassidy: BE
daf: UK
edsiper: Chile
Erikos: Germany
hmmmbird: SA
marcopg: Italy
morgs: SA
rwh: NL
Sjoerd: NL
smcv: UK
bertf:		E-toys, implementing tubes
Smcv:		audit/improve tubes usage
edsiper:	developer console: stripping down, composed of 3 activities: Analyze, Log, Terminal
                http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developer_Environment
cassidy:	finishing stream tubes in Salut
morgs:		working on PresenceService reliability improvements, Connect
sjoerd:		finishing 
hmmmbird:	WorldWideWorkshop Joke Machine (waiting #3060)
marcopg:	had meeting with Ivan and Tomeu about backups, marcopg & Tomeu do sugar side, Ivan client/server
                (school server), fighting with build system
erikos:		works on control panel, functioning version
tomeu:		next to backups, screenshots
uwogBB:         Implement support for custom keybindings, develop AbiCollab debug tooling, Implement "find"
                support in Write (done)

ACTIONS:

bertf:		talk to smcv about tubes
marcopg:	list of activities, list of modules, assign some sugar + activity tickets to rwh, drop the created xm branch and create an update1 one
morgs:		talk to jg about getting bot up for logs
smcv:		post logs at: http://www.pseudorandom.co.uk/tmp/freenode-olpc-meeting.log
erikos: 	check for #4022 everything for 'Hint write about using txt with a view_source property' seems in place already
erikos: 	control panel, user preferences:do not move olpc-update into script, fix radio on/off, restart sugar
hmmmbird:	Correct way to get access to temporary file space during activity execution ? should use use get_activity_root() instead of /tmp 
everyone: 	read Walter's mail for clarification of the names (Update1 etc)
module_owners: module owners should create update1 branches as necessary (help: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Git_Tips)


  • The branch/build procedure discussion is moved to the journal/tubes meeting