[IAEP] Sugar on Android via HTML5

[Manuel Quiñones]

2013/9/13 David Farning <dfarning at activitycentral.com>:
> On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 6:54 PM, John Watlington <wad at laptop.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Sep 10, 2013, at 5:04 PM, Sameer Verma wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 7:51 PM, Caryl Bigenho <cbigenho at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> One of the things that makes Sugar the ideal learning platform for
>>> children (and youth) is the wonderful compatibility of so many of the
>>> Activities ... both from Activity to Activity and from student to student.
>>> This facilitates the sort of learning we are all hoping to see more of...
>>> creative problem solving, project based learning and cooperative learning.
>>> Without this ability to integrate parts of projects, it would just be
>>> another collection of apps.
>>>
>>
>> I did not want to muddy the picture by injecting my own viewpoint, but now
>> that I've heard from others (on and off list) it is clear that the split is
>> driven by the role they play in the ecosystem.
>> Most technologists have come up with reasons why they don't think a complete
>> Sugar experience would work on Android. Therefore, activities must run like
>> any other app on Android. On the other hand, as Caryl said, "Without this
>> ability to integrate...it would just be a collection of apps".
>>
>> Somewhat knowing the limitations of what can be done with Sugar stuff on
>> Android, but disregarding that for a minute, I would say that Sugar as a
>> *platform* is an experience. It has a UI. It has a UX. Everything from the
>> Zoom interface to the activities to the Journal is Sugar. We have taken the
>> original "Sugar on the OLPC XO" experience and replicated that to the
>> classmate PC, SoaS, and other spins and distros, but in none of these cases
>> did we break the holistic Sugar experience. Now, along comes a popular OS,
>> and because the tech parts don't fit, we are advocating breaking up the
>> pieces and taking whatever flies. Memorize will become one of the few
>> hundred thousand apps on Android.
>>
>> I disagree.
>>
>> It's like saying we'll do the cat sprite from Scratch, but nothing else.
>> It's like saying we'll do the birds and pigs from Angry Birds, but not the
>> slingshot. Sugar, without all its pieces isn't worth the trouble.
>>
>>
>> Sameer,
>>    I disagree somewhat with your thesis (and am very glad you started this
>> discussion.)
>>
>> From a technological standpoint, it is actually probably easier to implement
>> what you describe:
>> Sugar as a monolithic Android application, which takes over the entire user
>> interface when
>> launched.   The reason I never considered it seriously was the larger
>> ecosystem.
>>
>> The reason to move to Android from Linux is two-fold:
>> - Chip vendors are dropping Linux support in favor of Android.   The cheap
>> chinese ARM
>>  vendors only support Android.
>> - Android/iOS are where application development is happening.  There is a
>> much larger
>> community of Android developers than Linux or Sugar developers.
>>
>> The hope was to provide the infrastructure underlying Sugar (the Journal
>> datastore and
>> collaboration) as Android services, encouraging their use in new Android
>> applications.
>> In this model, the Journal is another Android application, accessing the
>> Journal datastore service.
>> New Sugar activities written in HTML should be capable of running in Sugar
>> on Linux
>> or as Android activities (although perhaps with different execution
>> wrappers).
>> In this manner, perhaps we can enlarge the Sugar community with developers
>> mainly
>> targeting Android.
>
> Just to clarify:
> 1. OLPC-A's intention is to create a HTML5+JS  framework for creating
> Sugar Activities.

A small correction: activities using web technologies has been
discussed for a while in the Sugar community, and is now being
actively implemented as part of Sugar roadmap.

> 2. Sugar Activities created using this framework will run equally well
> on both 'Sugar for linux' and Android.
> 3. This requires two separate abstraction layers "wrapper" one for
> Sugar on linux and one for Android.
> 4. These abstraction layers make Sugar Services such as collaboration
> and the journal available within the HTML5+JS framework.
>
> Is there an implementation plan and roadmap available? Are there
> sufficient resources committed to these projects to see them through
> to completion?
>
>> If we pursue Sugar as a single Android application,
>> with embedded
>> Python activities, we are isolating ourselves from the Android community.
>>
>> The danger of this approach is the loss of an integrated UX.  This could be
>> addressed
>> by customizing the home UI, in the same manner that the XO tablet has a
>> custom home UI
>> implementing the Dreams interface, but that would require "rooting" the
>> tablet in some manner.
>> But the native Android UI isn't that bad...
>>
>> Cheers,
>> wad
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> David Farning
> Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com
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