[Sugar-news] [IAEP] Sugar Digest 2013-03-03

[Walter Bender]

On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 11:10 AM, James Simmons <nicestep at gmail.com> wrote:
> Walter,
>
> I'd like to fix my Activities to work with an on-screen keyboard.  Is there
> any way to simulate having one of these for desktop testing?

Not sure. But we should make a test environment.

>  Also, a few of
> my Activities use the arrow keys for paging and scrolling.  The numeric pad
> arrow keys map to one of the gaming controls on my XO-1 so you can use that
> control to page through books when the XO-1 when it is in "tablet" mode.
> Will there be a similar control on the XO-4?

Should be the same.

-walter
>
> James Simmons
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 11:15 AM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> == Sugar Digest ==
>>
>> 1. It has been crazy busy. With the upcoming XO4 launch, Sugar with
>> touch support will be making its debut. 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.
>>
>> 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 re-position the Entry
>> appropriately. But also, I have been using a strategy of moving the
>> Entry to the top of the activity.
>>
>> 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 are 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.
>>
>> 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 idea or completely generalizable. But I think there are
>> harbingers of a solution.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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 [1-7]). 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.
>>
>> === Tech Talk ===
>>
>> 3. Adam Holt reported on the School Server Hack Sprint held in Toronto
>> (See [8]).
>>
>> 4. Daniel Narvaez has been making great progress on "Agora", his
>> attempt to achieve the goals of the Sugar Learning Platform using the
>> web technologies (See [9]).
>>
>> === Sugar Labs ===
>>
>> Visit our planet [10] for more updates about Sugar and Sugar deployments.
>>
>> -walter
>>
>> ---
>>
>> [1] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Abacus-47.1.xo
>> [2] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Chart-9.1.xo
>> [3] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Chat-78.1.xo
>> [4] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Labyrinth-14.4.xo
>> [5] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Portfolio-41.2.xo
>> [6] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Speak-44.6.xo
>> [7]
>> http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addons/versions/4027#version-173
>> (TurtleBlocks-173.xo)
>> [8]
>> http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/server-devel/2013-February/006258.html
>> [9]
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2013-February/041847.html
>> [10] http://planet.sugarlabs.org
>>
>>
>> --
>> Walter Bender
>> Sugar Labs
>> http://www.sugarlabs.org
>> _______________________________________________
>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>
>



-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org