[Its.an.education.project] Sugar on the EEE PC

[Albert Cahalan]

On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 10:43 AM, Bernie Innocenti <bernie at codewiz.org> wrote:
>  Bobby Powers wrote:
> > On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 1:11 PM, Bernie Innocenti <bernie at codewiz.org
> <mailto:bernie at codewiz.org>> wrote:
> >    wolfgang at rohrmoser-engineering.de
> >    <mailto:wolfgang at rohrmoser-engineering.de> wrote:
> >
> >        Yes I made it work on a EEE PC using a dual boot configuration.
> >        Sugar runs, but activities suffer because of the limited screen
> >        resolution. I am waiting for the new Asus 900 Model.
> >
> >    I think I should remind Albert Cahalan about that discussion we
> >    had on devel@ some time ago about getting activities to adapt to
> >    different resolutions :-)
> >
> > What would you recommend to people developing activities?  Are there any
> best practices yet?
>
>  I wanted to put a few guidelines in our wiki.  Nothing too rigid,
>  such as:
>
>  - Prefer vector graphics over bitmap graphics

Often not, as this can be slow.

Also, note that this doesn't actually work. Sugar's
icons have to be a specific size. With that and the
two-color restriction, we might as well go back to
using *.xbm files! It's like the 1980's all over again,
but incompatible. At least we get similar performance.

>  - Never hard-code pixel coordinates you could compute at
>   run-time (such as 600,450 to find the center of the screen)

The choice is not merely between hard-code and run-time.
There is also compile-time. There can be builds for the EEE PC,
complete with appropriately-sized layout.

One can have a Makefile scale images during the build.

Scaling down from giant-size is not something you'd want
to do at run-time, but it looks better than scaling a few percent
and it looks way better than vector junk.

>  - Use the layout engine of your toolkit to position GUI elements
>   automatically.  Toolbars, menus and other containers usually do
>   something reasonable when there's not enough room to display all
>   the elements

SDL doesn't have a layout engine, you insensitive clod!

>  - Ask for a review of your UI design

Think really hard, and test with 2-year-old kids.

>  - Post your code for public peer-to-peer review

Somebody tell Microsoft.