[Dextrose] [AC Update] We are what we do.

[Bernie Innocenti]

[cc += sugar-devel]

On Tue, 2011-03-29 at 23:17 -0500, Sebastian Silva wrote:

> Hunting for git repositories and then for mantainers made me wish each
> Activity had an "About" pane maybe with options like "Report bug",
> "View Source". "Git clone". Also a "Mantainer" field on it.
>
> I think we should consider activity developers in a very real sense
> like "users" of Sugar. Programming is as joyful as it is powerful but
> we could really work on making the workflow an integrated experience.
> We have such wonderful tools but few can really keep up with them all.
> If we streamline and document certain workflows we may catalyst the
> availibility and quality of our Activity Library.
>
> "About pane" has a psychological effect, it provides recognition and
> maybe a sense of ownership for developers and mantainers. I will
> propose it on sugar-devel and the HIG once I've implemented a design.
> Also it gives a starting point for eventually getting involved in the
> development and improvement of each activity.

The idea of an About dialog (or menu) already came up on sugar-devel,
not long ago. IIRC, Gary Martin was quite opposed to increasing UI
clutter with non-essential information.

Perhaps we could still define a few meta-tags for activity.info and
_not_ display them in the UI at all? They would still be easy to find
for developers.

Alternatively, couldn't we put this information in ASLO, where it could
be kept up-to-date?


> The dream of Sugar is to further blur the line between the user and
> the developer. Consumer and producer. In this I resonate with Silbe's
> argument that perhaps we should be using Sugar ourselves. Particularly
> for Activity Developers, I believe this is the case.

+1, but a link to the activity home page should be sufficient to let the
user discover additional details, including developer information.

IIRC, the idea of linking to the home page was discussed and discarded
because it required starting a browser when the user clicks the link,
something that Sugar's HIG does not yet contemplate (quite
surprisingly).


> But we are far from this overall vision at this point.
> At this point we're getting the hang of the current workflows and
> tools for producing what we are ambitiously calling "Dextrose Activity
> Pack" which we plan to start deploying in Anish's testing round in
> Paraguay (see http://openetherpad.org/EL5g7TqHEI ).

Great selection! Personally, I'd drop TuxPaint and add Edit & JukeBox.


> The general idea is to improve the activities but also to help
> developers make activities great. This would be true success.
> 
> For this they need iteration. Fix, test, deploy. Repeat. Polish.
> 
> Peru
> 
> Activity Central is providing consulting and custom development as a
> way to support Escuelab's incursion in native communities of Lima
> (Shippibo) and Puno (Aymara) for shooting a documentary. I'm helping
> Neokinok.tv use the XO's to record and then collect all videos to a
> server. For this I'm patching File Share Activity and maybe Record. My
> idea is to avoid doing a one-time hack but to try and make the
> procedure as simple as possible and document it so maybe it is
> replicable. Suggestions welcome.
> 
> They're also planning a translation marathon to complete Sugar
> translation to Aymara and Quechua, for which Rafael's pootle work will
> be invaluable. Here are some links:
> http://escuelab.org/contenido/amtawi
> http://experimentaltv.org/xotv
> http://shuawa.org/content/xotv
> http://sites.google.com/site/olpcdrepuno/ (drep puno = direccion
> regional de educación)
> http://openetherpad.org/requerimientos-neokinok-escuelab
> 
> Saludos,
> icarito 
> _______________________________________________
> Dextrose mailing list
> Dextrose at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/dextrose

-- 
   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
 \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/