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://128.199.197.37/
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
Still ToDo
- 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