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Supported systems/Technical considerations (view source)
Revision as of 18:06, 27 May 2008
, 18:06, 27 May 2008generalization of a Bernie memo to ASUS
There are a number of technical considerations for providing Sugar support.
==INTEGRATION==
Sugar is designed to be started as desktop option
alongside Gnome and KDE rather than a plain "start menu"
application. This means that we should consider a "switch
desktop" function if it is a requirement to ship multiple environments.
==APPLICATIONS==
In order to provide a consistent environment,
Sugar activities need to implement a number of custom APIs to
access documents and perform collaborative work over the
network. There is some degree of interoperability with
ordinary GNU/Linux applications (which needs improvement),
but "sugarizing" software is really the only way to provide
a nice user experience for little children. This doesn't
imply duplicating all code: our Browse activity is really
a thin shell around Firefox's engine.
==PACKAGING==
At this time, we have alpha-quality packages
for Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu. Seamless integration would
require additional packaging work, especially for the
networking features. Packaging Sugar for other distributions would be
done in collaboration; appropriate contacts within those communities would be necessary.
==SOFTWARE STACKS==
Sugar is based on quite a different set
of components than the native PC desktop. Most code is
written in Python and uses Cairo and GTK as its UI library.
However, we also have a few activities written in C++,
Small Talk and even C#, using disparate software stacks.
If you are already supporting GTK based applications,
the footprint of Sugar should be reasonably small.
==VENDOR CUSTOMIZATIONS==
Sugar is moving to become an upstream
project with respect to hardware and software distributors.
We are glad to accept vendor-specific contributions back in
our codebase, subject to peer review and a general usefulness
criteria.
==ENGINEERING SUPPORT==
We are aware that Sugar still requires
much more engineering work to polish the user interface,
stabilize the codebase, and complete missing features. Since
when we started the Sugarlabs project, we have already
attracted a few fresh volunteers. But we'd appreciate hardware
vendors (and others) assigning resources to work with us and make things happen
faster.
==COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT==
We are in contact with several government
organizations and grassroots groups which adopt laptops for
primary education. They might want to run pilots using a
variety of hardware in their respective countries. We are happy to assist
in this process.
==CONTENT==
We are also looking for localized open content. Industry partners
might be able to help here.
==DESIGN PROPOSALS==
We'd appreciate feedback and marketing input
from hardware manufacturers (and others) to enhance our environment.
[[Category:developer]]
==INTEGRATION==
Sugar is designed to be started as desktop option
alongside Gnome and KDE rather than a plain "start menu"
application. This means that we should consider a "switch
desktop" function if it is a requirement to ship multiple environments.
==APPLICATIONS==
In order to provide a consistent environment,
Sugar activities need to implement a number of custom APIs to
access documents and perform collaborative work over the
network. There is some degree of interoperability with
ordinary GNU/Linux applications (which needs improvement),
but "sugarizing" software is really the only way to provide
a nice user experience for little children. This doesn't
imply duplicating all code: our Browse activity is really
a thin shell around Firefox's engine.
==PACKAGING==
At this time, we have alpha-quality packages
for Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu. Seamless integration would
require additional packaging work, especially for the
networking features. Packaging Sugar for other distributions would be
done in collaboration; appropriate contacts within those communities would be necessary.
==SOFTWARE STACKS==
Sugar is based on quite a different set
of components than the native PC desktop. Most code is
written in Python and uses Cairo and GTK as its UI library.
However, we also have a few activities written in C++,
Small Talk and even C#, using disparate software stacks.
If you are already supporting GTK based applications,
the footprint of Sugar should be reasonably small.
==VENDOR CUSTOMIZATIONS==
Sugar is moving to become an upstream
project with respect to hardware and software distributors.
We are glad to accept vendor-specific contributions back in
our codebase, subject to peer review and a general usefulness
criteria.
==ENGINEERING SUPPORT==
We are aware that Sugar still requires
much more engineering work to polish the user interface,
stabilize the codebase, and complete missing features. Since
when we started the Sugarlabs project, we have already
attracted a few fresh volunteers. But we'd appreciate hardware
vendors (and others) assigning resources to work with us and make things happen
faster.
==COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT==
We are in contact with several government
organizations and grassroots groups which adopt laptops for
primary education. They might want to run pilots using a
variety of hardware in their respective countries. We are happy to assist
in this process.
==CONTENT==
We are also looking for localized open content. Industry partners
might be able to help here.
==DESIGN PROPOSALS==
We'd appreciate feedback and marketing input
from hardware manufacturers (and others) to enhance our environment.
[[Category:developer]]