[Dextrose] Dextrose 2 patches report

[Anish Mangal]

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Hi Sascha,

Many thanks for the detailed report! :-)

On 12/05/2011 11:53 PM, Sascha Silbe wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> this is the list of Dextrose 2 patches that we still apply to the
> Sugar packages in Dextrose 3 (i.e. that have been neither
> successfully upstreamed nor dropped):
> 
> 
> == sugar-artwork ==
> 
> 1. Add icons for memory and cpu resource indicator (Anish Mangal)
> 
> Part of the Memory / CPU resource indicator feature, see the 
> corresponding sugar patch below.
> 
> 2. accessibility_0001_contrast.patch (unknown author)
> 
> Part of the "accessibility" features developed by Plan Ceibal; see 
> the corresponding sugar-toolkit and sugar patches below.
> 
> 3. accessibility_0002_virtualkeyboard_icon.patch (unknown author)
> 
> Ditto.
> 
> 4. Add device feedback icon (Martin Abente)
> 
> Part of the "Feedback" feature; see corresponding sugar patches 
> below.
> 
> 
> == sugar-toolkit ==
> 
> 1. RFC: Kill the delayed menus for good (Bernie Innocenti, Michael
> Stone)
> 
> This has been discussed upstream for endless hours (see e.g.
> [1,2], but no consensus was reached.
> 

I spent a fair bit of time reading the history behind this. The
discussion, like many others, evolved from discussing the content of
the patch and what it did into many broader topics.

Still, sifting through the threads, I felt a general sense of
agreement over the change the patch affected, both in coding and
design contexts. I feel this should be given another try, probably afresh!

> 2. Add support for using high-contrast GTK Sugar theme (Plan
> Ceibal)
> 
> Part of the "accessibility" features developed by Plan Ceibal. I 
> still don't know what the actual goals were. Testing of this 
> particular change showed a negative impact on contrast, the exact 
> opposite of what I'd expect it to do.
> 
> 3. STK non-intrusive NamingAlert (Martin Abente)
> 
> The Naming Alert has been discussed for endless hours as well. 
> Upstream doesn't want to remove it before there's a reasonable 
> substitute. Progress on the latter is being made [3,4], but hasn't 
> landed yet.
> 

This might be a tough one to get in. The opinions on this are
conflicting from deployments (py, au[*]) and upstream. However, the
patch doesn't *force* a change, rather provides a knob.

[*] http://dev.laptop.org.au/issues/917

> 4. Parse activity dependencies (Aleksey Lim)
> 
> Submitted upstream [5], stalled.
> 

Is there a link for the discussion where it got stalled?

> 5. Report to the shell on errors (Aleksey Lim)
> 
> Part of the "Feedback" feature; see corresponding sugar patches.
> 
> 6. Clipboard menu off screen #2201 (Aleksey Lim)
> 
> Submitted upstream [6,7], stalled.

Is there a link for the discussion where it got stalled?

> 
> 7. More robust handling of unhandled exceptions (Aleksey Lim)
> 
> Not sure what the reason for this change is. Aleksey?
> 
> 
> == sugar ==
> 
> 1. Add cpu and memory resource indicator to frame (Anish Mangal)
> 
> Another patch that has been discussed for several cycles upstream 
> (especially in Design Team meetings), but with no consensus
> reached.
> 

I'd wait for interest from upstream before working anymore on this.

FWIW, Kids in py love it. Educators in uy not quite. One change that
can happen to this patch is replacing the 'sad = :(' face with a 'wavy
= :S' one. Gary had sent a svg for this (part of /me goes looking...)

> 2. set-default-scaling-to-100.patch (unknown author)
> 
> Hack to set the scaling to 100; not suitable for upstreaming. See 
> SL#39 [8]. The real fix for this would need to take angular size
> into account [9,10]. Maybe we could come up with a good enough
> heuristic by analysing the physical screen size. Since it's just a
> heuristic the user needs to be able to override it in the Control
> Panel. GTK3 is supposed to provide better scaling support (the
> 72/100 distinction currently in Sugar is a hack), so probably not
> going to move forward for this release cycle.
> 
> 3. Add font dpi schema (Jorge Saldivar)
> 
> Supposed to be used by sugar-settings-manager [11,12]; can
> probably be dropped as even the latest DX2 releases didn't ship 
> sugar-settings-manager. See also the previous patch.
> 
> 4. Change the method to add new actitivities in the activities list
> in home view (Jorge Saldivar)
> 
> Workaround for #1660 [13]; I got stuck on a GTK issue [14] when 
> trying to fix it the right way.
> 
> 5. Journal Volumes Backup and Restore (Martin Abente) 6. Journal XS
> backup and restore (Martin Abente) 7. Processdialog prerequisite
> check support (Martin Abente) 8. Journal Backup save lease (Martin
> Abente) 9. backup-translations.patch (unknown author)
> 
> Rejected upstream [30,31]. Design discussion still stuck in the
> Design Team pipeline [15]. The code needs a lot of cleaning up.
> 
> Deployments seem to like the approach because it's integrated into 
> Sugar, rather than separate activities like Backup / Restore
> [25,26].
> 
> Long-term we should probably move to more transparent School
> Server access, similar to the DataManager activity [27]. Unlike
> Tony [28,29] I don't want to completely tie Sugar to a School
> Server, however. Most individual users and even many schools don't
> have access to a School Server.
> 
> 10. accessibility_0001_cp_accessibility_keyboard.patch (unknown
> author) 11. accessibility_0002_magnifier_extension.patch (unknown
> author) 12. accessibility_0003_cp_accessibility_contrast.patch
> (unknown author) 13.
> accessibility_0004_cp_accessibility_mouse.patch (unknown author) 
> 14. accessibility_0005_cp_accessibility_capital_letters.patch
> (unknown author) 15. accessibility_0006_virtualkeyboard.patch
> (unknown author) 16.
> accessibility_0008_cp_show-virtualkeyboard-for-accessibility.patch 
> (unknown author) 17. accessibility_0007_cp_translations.patch
> (unknown author) 18.
> accessibility_0009_cp_show-virtualkeyboard-for-accessibility-traslate.patch
>
> 
(unknown author)
> 19. accessibility_0012_add-accel-mouse-default.patch (unknown
> author) 20. accessibility_0013_add-theme-mouse-default.patch
> (unknown author)
> 
> Part of the "accessibility" features developed by Plan Ceibal. As 
> mentioned above, I still don't know what the actual goals were. 
> Before we can upstream this, we need a lot more information from
> the original authors. The code needs to be cleaned up; custom
> packages are required to make it work in Fedora (and maybe other
> distros).
> 
> I've been tempted more than once to simply drop this patch series, 
> but have been assured it's important for deployments (without 
> explaining why - maybe just check-box compliance with 
> anti-discrimination laws?).
> 
> 21. Share 3g connection (Martin Abente)
> 
> Another (albeit rather useful) wart on the NetworkManager client 
> code in Sugar. Restricted to sharing 3G internet connections, even 
> though sharing internet access provided by an Ethernet upstream 
> connection would be equally useful. The NetworkManager code in
> Sugar should probably be cleaned up before trying to fix up and
> upstream this patch.
> 
> 22. Make sure Adhoc is Sugar-Adhoc (unknown author)
> 
> I've only recently understood what the purpose of this patch is: 
> NetworkManager supports several different ways to handle address 
> allocation and routing for ad-hoc networks. The "default" Sugar 
> ad-hoc networks (the channel 1 / 6 / 11 icons) use the
> 'link-local' method, but for accessing internet via an ad-hoc
> network created using the "Share 3g connection" feature we need a
> different one.
> 
> The best thing to do would be to put the wireless interface into AP
> mode for sharing, rather than using the ambiguous ad-hoc mode. 
> Unfortunately, a lot of wireless network drivers, including the 
> libertas driver as shipped in OLPC and upstream kernels, don't 
> support AP mode.
> 
> We should try to upstream this patch to make Sugar mainline
> capable of using a connection created by the (currently)
> Dextrose-specific "Share 3g connection" feature.
> 

+1 (for points 22 and 21)

> 23. Simple messages notification extension (Martin Abente) 24.
> Improve message notification behaviour (Martin Abente) 25. Message
> Notifications second behaviour enhancement (Martin Abente)
> 
> Enhancement of the existing notifications support (in the Frame). 
> Haven't looked at it yet; a first step would be to re-arrange it 
> into a patch set based on functionality rather than history. The
> API changes should be documented and discussed upstream.
> 
> There's some additional information at [16].
> 

+1.
IIRC, it got stalled during long design discussions.

> 26. Patch to add feedback icon to frame (Mukesh Gupta) 27. Two
> kinds of feedback submits (Aleksey Lim) 28. Initial client
> implementation for feedback feature (Aleksey Lim) 29.
> Enable/disable personalized and anonymous feedback submits
> unrelated (Aleksey Lim) 30. Send XO serial numbers with anonymous
> reports (Aleksey Lim) 31. Notify on not sent feedbacks; fix issue
> with not auto resend (Aleksey Lim) 32. Switch default feedback
> serve to feedback.sl.o; clean up gconf doc strings (Aleksey Lim) 
> 33. Do not send empty feedback reports if anonymous_with_sn is
> enabled (Aleksey Lim)
> 
> This is the "Feedback" / "Problem reports" feature [16]. Haven't 
> looked at it yet; a first step would be to re-arrange it into a 
> patch set based on functionality rather than history.

+1

> Important aspects like privacy should be discussed upstream.

Hmm, I guess its a valid point, but privacy issues are quite varied
across different countries. This patch also provides knobs for
completely switching off the functionality altogether.

> Also, where's the source for the server side?
> 

http://git.sugarlabs.org/feedback-server

> 34. Yum-updater notifications integration (Aleksey Lim)
> 
> Adds custom D-Bus API for interacting with some service that runs 
> yum. No documentation found. Not upstreamable in its current form.
> 
> We should look into how Ubuntu (and possible others) handle this, 
> especially what interfaces they use and whether we could use them 
> instead of inventing our own.
> 
> 35. S non-intrusive NamingAlert (Martin Abente)
> 
> See corresponding sugar-toolkit patch.
> 
> 36. Globalkey for touchpad device icon (Martin Abente)
> 
> Keyboard shortcut for switching the touchpad mode on XO-1. I still 
> think this functionality should move to some system component so
> it will work outside of Sugar (e.g. in Gnome) as well.

Um. We also have to think about cases where gnome is not used
alongside sugar? This patch is quite limited in scope (XO-1, which is
being phased out across deployments), so its understandable why
upstream might not want this.

> 
> 37. Dextrose: Escape all text passed to Palette.primary_text and 
> .secondary_text (Sascha Silbe)
> 
> Fix-up for several other patches. Should be merged into the 
> individual patches when upstreaming those.
> 
> 38. Database support for 3G control panel (Andrés Ambrois) 39. Fix
> no restart after provider info selection (Martin Abente)
> 
> Upstreaming stalled [18-20], probably on our side. Like for "Share 
> 3g connection" it would make sense to defer until the
> NetworkManager client code in Sugar got cleaned up.
> 

+1

> 40. Flickering and unknown icons in the window bar #870 (Aleksey
> Lim)
> 
> Upstreaming stalled [21]; looks like it contains a typo. Somebody 
> (Aleksey?) should take a closer look and fix it up and / or add a 
> proper description.
> 
> 41. Clipboard menu off screen #2201 (Aleksey Lim)
> 
> See corresponding sugar-toolkit patch above.
> 
> 42. Add lease duration information in about my computer (Anish
> Mangal)
> 
> Yet another XO/OLPC-specific feature for the "About my computer" 
> Control Panel. Makes sense, though, so we should submit it
> upstream (Anish?); I will have a few review comments.
> 

+1 for upstreaming. I can follow up on review comments for this.

> 43. Extend sugar-launch with more options (Martin Abente)
> 
> Rejected upstream [22], but we could start discussions on this 
> again. Michael has given me quite a bit of food for thought.
> 
> 44. Show register gconf value (Martin Abente)
> 
> ISTR the Design Team had an issue with this (or maybe just with 
> another "Register" menu item related topic). We should restart 
> discussions on this.
> 
> From a UX perspective, it would be nice if we could automatically 
> determine whether a School Server is available, rather than always 
> showing the option and adding a crutch to disable it. There are 
> privacy issues to consider (that are potentially shared with the 
> existing code; see e.g. [23]).
> 

+1

> 45. Let call the frame from arbitrary code avoiding curcular
> imports (Aleksey Lim)
> 
> Not sure why this one is necessary. We should fix circular imports 
> by refactoring rather than adding hacks to break the cycle.
> 
> 46. Replace activity updater with microformat compatible one
> (Anish Mangal)
> 
> The Dextrose Updater, bringing back micro-format support to the 
> Update Control Panel. We started to upstream it [23], but the new 
> version (only submitted on dextrose@, not part of Dextrose 3)
> needs a lot of testing first and upstream didn't signal any
> interest in it after I posted the patch.
> 

+1 (Although I'd like to see this going upstream) :)

> 
> I'm explicitly not listing the patches that we have already
> upstreamed since we don't ship those as patches anymore
> (obviously). They would be part of a different report that focusses
> on what we got upstreamed, rather than what custom patches we still
> ship.
> 
> Sascha
> 
> [1] message-id:1255401372.1477.549.camel at giskard [2]
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2009-October/thread.html#20266
>
> 
[3] https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.96/Feature_List
> [4]
> https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Write_to_journal_anytime [5]
> https://patchwork.sugarlabs.org/patch/557/ [6]
> https://patchwork.sugarlabs.org/patch/536/ [7]
> https://patchwork.sugarlabs.org/patch/534/ [8]
> https://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/39 [9]
> message-id:787b0d920906080335u381f8bcbs790583974a236e95 at mail.gmail.com
>
> 
[10] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2009-June/015051.html
> [11] http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/sugar-settings-manager [12]
> https://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1692 [13]
> https://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1660 [14]
> https://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1660#comment:1 [15]
> https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Talk:Design_Team/Meetings#Outstanding_topics_raised_for_discussion
>
> 
[16] https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Notification_system_draft
> [17] https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Problem_Reports [18]
> https://patchwork.sugarlabs.org/patch/129/ [19]
> https://patchwork.sugarlabs.org/patch/130/ [20]
> https://patchwork.sugarlabs.org/patch/131/ [21]
> https://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/870 [22]
> https://patchwork.sugarlabs.org/patch/594/ [23]
> https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Server_Kit/sugar-server#Vulnerabilities
>
> 
[24] https://patchwork.sugarlabs.org/patch/845/
> [25] http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4326 [26]
> http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4327 [27]
> http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4208 [28]
> message-id:4ECC7F22.9080301 at usa.net [29]
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2011-November/034463.html
>
> 
[30] https://patchwork.sugarlabs.org/patch/174/
> [31] https://patchwork.sugarlabs.org/patch/175/
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________ Dextrose mailing
> list Dextrose at lists.sugarlabs.org 
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/dextrose


- -- 
Anish Mangal
Dextrose Project Manager
Activity Central

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