[IAEP] Sugar Digest 2013-03-03

[James Simmons]

Walter,

I'd like to fix my Activities to work with an on-screen keyboard.  Is there
any way to simulate having one of these for desktop testing?  Also, a few
of my Activities use the arrow keys for paging and scrolling.  The numeric
pad arrow keys map to one of the gaming controls on my XO-1 so you can use
that control to page through books when the XO-1 when it is in "tablet"
mode.  Will there be a similar control on the XO-4?

James Simmons


On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 11:15 AM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>wrote:

> == Sugar Digest ==
>
> 1. It has been crazy busy. With the upcoming XO4 launch, Sugar with
> touch support will be making its debut. The developer team has done a
> great job but we are lagging behind a bit on the activity level:
> Activities that use keyboard input need to be modified to use the
> on-screen keyboard; and now that tablet mode will be used more often,
> we need to better attend to the issue of screen rotation.
>
> In order to adapt to the on-screen keyboard, there are two adjustments
> that need to be made: (1) use either a GTK Entry or TextView instead
> of directly querying the keyboard; and (2) make sure that the Entry is
> visible when the keyboard is visible. To address both issues, I have
> been mostly using GTK Fixed in order to re-position the Entry
> appropriately. But also, I have been using a strategy of moving the
> Entry to the top of the activity.
>
> There are two issues with dealing with landscape vs portrait mode. One
> is to make sure that the work area of an activity accommodates the
> change in size and aspect ration. Perhaps the easiest way to do this
> is simply to define a square work are inside of a scrolling window.
> There are times when this strategy won't work, such as with Paint, but
> for the most part, it is a simple solution.
>
> The toolbars are another matter. It is often the case that not all of
> the elements fit when in portrait mode. The default behavior of Sugar,
> to make a list on a palette that displays on the edge of the screen is
> somewhat lacking, both in that many toolbar items are either not shown
> or inoperable in that form. And aesthetically, it is not very
> Sugar-like. I've been experimenting with some different approaches to
> generating palettes, and also moving some toolbar elements around
> (e.g., moving some buttons to secondary toolbars). Alas, none of these
> solutions are idea or completely generalizable. But I think there are
> harbingers of a solution.
>
> Another issue with touch is that Gtk2 ComboBoxes don't work. The
> problem has been fixed in the Gtk3 version of the Sugar tool-kit, but,
> not being a fan of Combo Boxes to begin with, I see it as an
> opportunity to minimize their use. For example, using bigger/smaller
> buttons is arguably an easier way to adjust font size using touch.
>
> Ultimately, we'll want to add more gesture support as well. Many
> activities could readily support panning and zooming. And a "long"
> press can replace the un-Sugar-like reliance of right-click that some
> activities are using.
>
> I've packaged many of these ideas into some experimental (and
> production) versions of some activities (Please see [1-7]). Feedback
> most welcome.
>
> 2. It occurred to me that the Web Services framework that Raul and I
> developed a few weeks ago might make a nice home for a simple
> classroom service: handing in homework assignments and receiving back
> comments from the teacher and fellow students. Such a service could be
> dropped right into the same framework we built for Facebook, so in the
> Journal, there would be a Share with (or Copy to) Teacher and comments
> would appear in the Journal detail view (and be directly integrated in
> the Portfolio). Simple, but potentially quite useful.
>
> === Tech Talk ===
>
> 3. Adam Holt reported on the School Server Hack Sprint held in Toronto
> (See [8]).
>
> 4. Daniel Narvaez has been making great progress on "Agora", his
> attempt to achieve the goals of the Sugar Learning Platform using the
> web technologies (See [9]).
>
> === Sugar Labs ===
>
> Visit our planet [10] for more updates about Sugar and Sugar deployments.
>
> -walter
>
> ---
>
> [1] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Abacus-47.1.xo
> [2] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Chart-9.1.xo
> [3] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Chat-78.1.xo
> [4] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Labyrinth-14.4.xo
> [5] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Portfolio-41.2.xo
> [6] http://people.sugarlabs.org/~walter/Speak-44.6.xo
> [7]
> http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addons/versions/4027#version-173
> (TurtleBlocks-173.xo)
> [8]
> http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/server-devel/2013-February/006258.html
> [9]
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2013-February/041847.html
> [10] http://planet.sugarlabs.org
>
>
> --
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>
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