Features/Write to journal anytime
Summary
Replacement for the Naming Alert that lets you write to the Journal at any time while working on an activity.
Owner
- Name: Walter Bender
- Email: <walter at sugarlabs dot org>
Current status
- Targeted release: (0.88)
- Last updated: (17 November 2009)
- Percentage of completion: 25%
Detailed Description
The Naming Alert is loved by some and despised by others. This enhancement makes it be available on demand from the activity toolbar instead of automatically imposed when closing an activity. The goal is to encourage more writing and reflection throughout the activity, not just at the end.
Benefit to Sugar
Being able to write to the Journal at any time is a feature requested both from the field and from pedagogist. And adding this ability would mean that the "annoying" naming alert could be removed as it would be redundant.
Scope
The basic functionality is complete. I just made some simple changes to sugar-toolkit/src/sugar/activity/namingalert.py (eliminated the call to activity.close() and changed the button shortcut from Return to <Ctrl>s). We need: (1) a better icon; (2) decide if we want this to be a part of the standard activity toolbar; (3) decide whether the pop-up window or some toolbar widget is a better choice; and (4) eliminate the Name Alert invocation in activity.py.
How To Test
Preparation
- Install the patch to widget.py
- Install the icon
Testing
- Launch any Sugar activity
- Open the activity toolbar
- Observe whether or not the Write-to-Journal icon is on the toolbar
- Click on the Write-to-Journal icon to open the palette
- Observe whether or not a palette and text box appear below the icon
- Observe whether or not the description metadata is displayed in the text box (if there was no description already written, the text box will be empty)
- Type some text into the box
- Exit the activity
- Open the Detail View of the activity instance in the Journal
- Observe whether or not the text entered above is visible in the Description field
User Experience
Users may notice that the Naming Alert is missing and they may notice a new icon on the activity toolbar.
Dependencies
No new dependencies
Contingency Plan
What I have done to date is implement this as an activity button as oppose to integrate it into Sugar. This is a reasonable fall-back if we cannot reach consensus as to a path forward.
Documentation
See [1]
Release Notes
The Sugar Release Notes inform end-users about what is new in the release. An Example is 0.84/Notes. The release notes also help users know how to deal with platform changes such as ABIs/APIs, configuration or data file formats, or upgrade concerns. If there are any such changes involved in this feature, indicate them here. You can also link to upstream documentation if it satisfies this need. This information forms the basis of the release notes edited by the release team and shipped with the release.
Comments and Discussion
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