[IAEP] guidance for developing activity

[James Simmons]

Parichay,

Flash is problematic for developing Sugar Activities.  Because it is a
commercial product it cannot ship pre-installed with Sugar, although
it can be installed later (but not as easily as you would like).  As
an alternative Sugar supplies Gnash, which supports a subset of Flash.
 It cannot display movies that use proprietary codecs like DivX, etc.
but it does allow some existing Flash plugins to run in the Browse
Activity.

You speak of writing an Activity, not just a plugin to run in Browse.
To do that with Flash you'd need to make an Activity that is a subset
of Browse that can display content stored inside its Activity bundle,
which would include your Flash plugin.  Frankly, this might be more
trouble than it's worth.

You could use the Karma framework as an alternative.  I understand
that it uses HTML and JavaScript to do Flash-like things.  You might
also use EToys or make an Activity using PyGame.  My book will soon
have a chapter on using PyGame.  I started writing it this weekend.  I
have a demo program with an animated airplane.  You can check out what
I've written so far here:

http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/ActivitiesGuideSugar/WebHome

Linux has a program called The GIMP which is a good alternative to
Adobe Photoshop and may be of interest to you.

I hope you'll check out my book.  It should help you learn just what a
Sugar Activity is and is expected to do and hopefully will convince
you that Flash can't get you there.

James Simmons


> Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2010 00:18:41 +0000
> From: Parichay Parivesh <parivesh.parichay at googlemail.com>
> Subject: [IAEP] guidance for developing activity
> To: iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org
> Message-ID:
>        <5967519c1003011618m67684ad9w81345317471b38d7 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Hello,
>
> I am developing an activity for XO laptop. Through which child can learn
> about the various mode of transpiration. Can any body suggest me which
> software I can use to develop the activity.
>
> I thought of using Adobe Illustrator for design and all other development
> will in Flash. Which means final game will be in flash. As far I research I
> didn't find good feedback to develop the activity in Flash. So, I need for
> help and guidance.
>
> Thanking you,
>
> Kind Regards
> Parichay Parivesh
> +447503433720