[IAEP] [SLOBS] Sugar Labs 2010 Goals Review

[Sascha Silbe]

Excerpts from Bernie Innocenti's message of Wed Jul 14 00:05:34 +0000 2010:

> BTW: who's using the XO-1 in tablet mode?
(Supposing you mean the ebook mode rather than using the tablet mode of the
touchpad)
I am regularly, but only for reading (Read / xpdf, Browse / conkeror,
sometimes long email threads using sup). The input devices available in
ebook mode are too limited for anything else I do.

> Believe it or not, in 3 years I have *never* seen anyone (adult or
> child) using it this way. Maybe a touch screen would change everything?
> The Classmate 3 has a touchscreen. Is it being used in tablet mode?
I definitely miss the touch screen on the XO-1[.5] and hope the XO-1.75
will have one.

> > Are developers using Sugar as their day-to-day development
> > environment yet?
I do while I'm using my XO-1.5. I even integrated my MUA with the Journal
using datastore-fuse. [1]
That being said, I'm most productive outside of Sugar and inside my
specially-tuned environment (ion3, lots of xterms, ...) using my desktop
with a 23" TFT. I don't see this as contradictory, though - the needs of
power users (*) are very different from that of "beginners". (**)
Sugar claims to be "low floor and no ceiling".  I interpret "no ceiling"
as being able to tune it to your needs. That includes being able to
exchange parts of it (like the window manager) for others that better suit
the needs of an _individual_ user. Of course we are not there yet but that
doesn't mean it isn't a goal.

> However, I've seen many teachers using Sugar. Not just Browse. They also
> use Write and Record.
Wow, they use a whopping three activities (sorry for the sarcasm - and
yes, my most used activity is Terminal).
What other applications do they use? Only from within Gnome or inside
Sugar as well (using Terminal or a wrapper activity to start them)?
(probably best handled in a separate thread)

> The most effective way to influence a community is becoming part of it
> and leading the change from the inside. [...]
> 
> Sadly, it doesn't seem to work so well for non-technical folks. [...]
Michaels suggestion to let Sugar Labs members (esp., but not only
developers) team up with users they know personally definitely has merit.
He might have used the phrase teacher instead of user, but I don't
think we should restrict this to traditional learning institutions.

Sascha

(*) Unlike Wikipedia [2] I define power user as somebody advanced in a
    *particular* task / field of work. Not only developers and unix
    geeks are power users (each in their respective area), but also,
    say, a designer using Gimp in advanced ways (scripting etc.).
(**) There's some nice essay about this topic, but I don't find it anymore :(
[1] http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/datastore-fuse
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_user
--
http://sascha.silbe.org/
http://www.infra-silbe.de/
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