[sugar] Develop Activity

[Owen Williams]

On Tue, 2006-12-19 at 11:37 -0600, Ian Bicking wrote:

> An option at that point is whether objects are linked or truly 
> contained, or perhaps both.  Typically an object knows what its 
> container is, and for instance when the container is deleted the 
> subobjects are deleted.  But if you make an image, then use it in an 
> activity, what happens?  Is the image copied, and then the copy 
> contained?  Is the image simply linked?  Is the image moved?  When you 
> edit the image later, is the image in the activity updated?

I'm just making stuff up, here, but I think it would be interesting if
the ideals and concepts that Python uses were reflected in the user
experience itself.  

For instance, in Python all objects are references, so an assignment
operation creates a link, not a copy.  In the OS, this would mean that
inserting an image from one activity in the other would create a link,
not a copy.  If everything is a "reference," then updating a copy would
update the original.  The user could make a clone if they wanted an
object to be distinct from the original. (Also, creating links instead
of copies is more space-efficient, which is better on this platform.)

As for the deleting issue, maybe the journal could perform reference
counting.  If I delete an image from the drawing activity but it's still
used elsewhere, the journal would know not to delete the data.  Sort of
like garbage collecting.

Again, no user would have to know about Python, I just think that these
concepts are simple and powerful. 

owen