[Bugs] #1615 UNSP: Add a button in Physics Activity to clear off the whole screen at once

[Sugar Labs Bugs]

#1615: Add a button in Physics Activity to clear off the whole screen at once
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    Reporter:  mchua                      |          Owner:  garycmartin                
        Type:  enhancement                |         Status:  new                        
    Priority:  Unspecified by Maintainer  |      Milestone:  Unspecified by Release Team
   Component:  Physics                    |        Version:  0.84.x                     
    Severity:  Unspecified                |       Keywords:                             
Distribution:  OLPC                       |   Status_field:  Unconfirmed                
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Changes (by garycmartin):

 * cc: eben (added)


Comment:

 Replying to [ticket:1615 mchua]:
 > (Dictated by Audrey Kim, age 6)
 >
 > Is there a button to clear off the whole screen? It'd be good if we
 wouldn't have to click around [to erase things] so much.
 >
 > Her older cousin Mel says: We're using Physics version 3 on an XO
 running the 0.84.2 Sugar build. I'd be willing to sit down with the
 Physics maintainer on IRC and make the change, because Physics seems to be
 a hit with the first-graders at Cambridge Friends School and I'd like to
 be able to tweak it in realtime and then submit those tweaks upstream.

 Thanks for the feedback!

 One quick hint is that the Erase tool works with both single clicks and if
 you draw with it, like a line of death, you can quickly scribble many
 objects away. A Single click erase all button has come up once before, but
 I have worries that without a full undo system, and with Sugar's Journal
 auto state saving design, folks will frequently destroy previous efforts,
 and/or fail to keep records of new efforts.

 It feels like a general Sugar UI design issue that frequently comes up for
 all activities; the 'start new activity from home', 'do stuff', 'stop',
 'start new activity from home', 'do stuff', 'stop'... workflow does not
 seem to be obvious/fast enough for most needs. The obvious solution (that
 badly breaks the Sugar activity design metaphor), is for all activities to
 implement a "New Activity" primary toolbar button. It would keep the
 current activity state to Journal so no work is lost, and then create a
 new blank activity that you would carry on working in (i.e. the
 application would not quit, just revert to a clean first launch state).

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Ticket URL: <http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1615#comment:1>
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