[sugar] Resuming by default

[Benjamin M. Schwartz]

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Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
> About making easier to resume existing entries, well... I have already
> said that we aim to improve this situation. Any other ideas in this
> direction are welcome.

The problem is that the Activity's developer thinks users should usually resume
an existing entry, but users are taking the path of fewest clicks, which results
in creating a new entry instead.  This is a well-known problem in normal GUI
design.  For example, OpenOffice.org Impress has this problem.  The developers
expect that people will usually want to open an existing presentation, not
create a new one.

In Impress, they have dealt with this issue in a very common and reasonable way.
 If you start Impress directly, without specifying a file to open, the first
window it shows is the "Presentation Wizard".  The Presentation Wizard is
essentially an Open File dialog, with an option to create a new, empty
presentation instead.

An Activity may use the same behavior.  If you think students are most likely to
want to open an existing Jokebook, you can make the Activity's first screen a
Select Journal Entry screen, filtered for entries of type Jokebook.  If they
decline to open an existing entry, they will be provided with a new one.

This requires no changes to the Journal, or Sugar, and solves a large class of
these problems.  There may be changes to the Journal dialogs (like an optional
"New" button) that could make this even prettier, but they are not necessary.

- --Ben
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