| Line 5: |
Line 5: |
| | == Sugar Digest == | | == Sugar Digest == |
| | | | |
| − | 1. It has been crazy busy. With the upcoming XO-4 launch, Sugar with touch support will be making its début. The developer team has done a great job but we are lagging behind a bit on the activity level: Activities that use keyboard input need to be modified to use the on-screen keyboard; and now that tablet mode will be used more often, we need to better attend to the issue of screen rotation. | + | 1. We need to finalize our application to Google Summer of Code by the end of next week. I've put a rough draft of our application in the wiki (See [[Summer_of_Code/2013/Application]]). Most important is to finalize our list of project ideas and mentors. Please add your ideas to the wiki to [[Summer_of_Code/2013]]. |
| | | | |
| − | In order to adapt to the on-screen keyboard, there are two adjustments that need to be made: (1) use either a GTK Entry or TextView instead of directly querying the keyboard; and (2) make sure that the Entry is visible when the keyboard is visible. To address both issues, I have been mostly using GTK Fixed in order to reposition the Entry appropriately. But also, I have been using a strategy of moving the Entry to the top of the activity.
| + | 2. I've been on the road (and ice) these past few weeks. I gave the keynote at GoOpen Arctic, and had a chance to hobnob with the likes of Richard Stallman and Håkon Wium Lie. It was quite the adventure since the conference was held in two venues: Tromsø and Longyearbyrn (the latter being in Svalbard at 78:15 North). Lots of enthusiasm for Sugar and interest in connected the young end of our developer community with kids in Norway. I came back to Boston and almost immediately headed to West Coast to attend Pycon. I was the keynote for a new Education Summit at Pycon, organized by Naomi Ceder. I had a chance to catch up with a number of old friends, including Raúl Gutiérrez Segalés, Mel Chua, Stephen Jacobs and Jeff Elkner and the RIT Sugar team. As usual, I gave my talk using Turtle Art, and afterwards, we discussed the gulf between block-based graphical programming environments and text-based environments such as Python. One idea that emerged was to add an export-Python option to Turtle Art (similar to the export-Logo option that already is part of the package). Raúl and I started writing some code that looks promising. Stay tuned. Then off to Washington DC with Claudia Urrea for a meeting with the Inter-American Development Bank to discuss the use of Sugar in Honduras. We kicked around a lot of good ideas about mentoring and building bridges between teachers. |
| | | | |
| − | There are two issues with dealing with landscape vs portrait mode. One is to make sure that the work area of an activity accommodates the change in size and aspect ration. Perhaps the easiest way to do this is simply to define a square work area inside of a scrolling window. There are times when this strategy won't work, such as with Paint, but for the most part, it is a simple solution.
| + | 3. Martin Abente (with a little help from his friends) has gotten the beginnings of a Twitter Web Service working from the Sugar Journal. Simply invoke the Copy-To Twitter menu item, and your Journal entry is sent as a tweet. There is some work to be done in registering the service per user and some housekeeping regarding pulling replies into the comments field of the Journal, but it is already in pretty decent shape, thanks to the Web Services framework that Raúl and I developed last month. (I am hoping that the framework is reviewed and accepted into Sugar so that it will be easier for people to test and enhance it.) |
| | | | |
| − | The toolbars are another matter. It is often the case that not all of the elements fit when in portrait mode. The default behavior of Sugar, to make a list on a palette that displays on the edge of the screen is somewhat lacking, both in that many toolbar items are either not shown or inoperable in that form. And aesthetically, it is not very Sugar-like. I've been experimenting with some different approaches to generating palettes, and also moving some toolbar elements around (e.g., moving some buttons to secondary toolbars). Alas, none of these solutions are ideal or completely generalizable. But I think there are harbingers of a solution.
| + | === In the community === |
| | | | |
| − | Another issue with touch is that Gtk2 ComboBoxes don't work. The problem has been fixed in the Gtk3 version of the Sugar tool-kit, but, not being a fan of Combo Boxes to begin with, I see it as an opportunity to minimize their use. For example, using bigger/smaller buttons is arguably an easier way to adjust font size using touch.
| + | 4. Guzmán Trinidad has written a book about Physics on the XO (See ''[https://sites.google.com/site/solymar1fisica/fisica-con-xo-investigacion-/fisica-con-xo-el-libro Física con XO]''). It features many of the projects that Guzmán and Tony Forster have been developing, using a combination of Measure and Turtle Blocks. |
| − | | |
| − | Ultimately, we'll want to add more gesture support as well. Many activities could readily support panning and zooming. And a "long" press can replace the un-Sugar-like reliance of right-click that some activities are using.
| |
| − | | |
| − | I've packaged many of these ideas into some experimental (and production) versions of some activities (Please see [http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Abacus-47.1.xo Abacus], [http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Chart-9.1.xo Chart], [http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Chat-78.1.xo Chat], [http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Labyrinth-14.4.xo Labyrinth], [http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Portfolio-41.2.xo Portfolio], [http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Speak-44.6.xo Speak], and [http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addons/versions/4027#version-173 TurtleBlocks]). Feedback most welcome.
| |
| − | | |
| − | 2. It occurred to me that the Web Services framework that Raul and I developed a few weeks ago might make a nice home for a simple classroom service: handing in homework assignments and receiving back comments from the teacher and fellow students. Such a service could be dropped right into the same framework we built for Facebook, so in the Journal, there would be a Share with (or Copy to) Teacher and comments would appear in the Journal detail view (and be directly integrated in the Portfolio). Simple, but potentially quite useful.
| |
| − | | |
| − | === In the Community ===
| |
| − | | |
| − | 3. We will be applying to Google Summer of Code this year ([[Summer_of_Code|detailed schedule]]). We need project ideas and mentors. Please add your ideas to [[Summer_of_Code/2013]] and let me know if you are interested in mentoring. (As far as I know, GSOC participants need to be enrolled in university but there is no restriction on whom can be a mentor. I am hoping that some of our GCI contestants, too young to participate in GSOC, might be interested in mentoring.)
| |
| − | | |
| − | === Tech Talk ===
| |
| − | | |
| − | 4. Adam Holt reported on [http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/server-devel/2013-February/006258.html the School Server Hack Sprint] held in Toronto (See [8]).
| |
| − | | |
| − | 5. Daniel Narvaez has been making great progress on "[http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2013-February/041847.html Agora]", his attempt to achieve the goals of the Sugar Learning Platform using the web technologies (See [9]).
| |
| | | | |
| | === Sugar Labs === | | === Sugar Labs === |