[sugar] [PATCH] Journal able to use "open with" for activity bundles

[Eben Eliason]

On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 9:52 AM, Michael Stone <michael at laptop.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 10:58:54AM +0200, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>> Isn't "resume with" an oxymoron?

Nearly so, yes.  I admit openly that this is bad grammar, but have yet
to discover better terminology. "Open with", "Resume in", "Resume
with", "Resume as"; they are all bad.  Maybe something like "Convert
to" or "Translate to" is more appropriate, but still pretty terrible.
The heart of the matter, as the dialogue Michael linked to reveals, is
that instances are like closures where the metadata serves as the
bound variables.  The activity is part of this context, and so
swapping out this or that variable in the closure feels wrong.  In
fact, it might /be/ wrong.  What we might really mean to say, with the
action/object split, is "take a specific object from within this
closure and act on it within some other activity."  This is something
that could be done easily from the object view, since there we look
only at the objects themselves, and not at the actions/instances.
This also makes it trivial to choose the specific object desired
directly.  It might also open up the possibility, via the palette of
an object inside an action/instance, to perform "modify in place" type
operations. (But let's table that discussion entirely for now!)

The question to ask ourselves here is if this split can be made
intuitive to kids.  It might be the answer to the question, really.
Once we have the new designs of the Journal in place, every action can
be expanded to reveal its associated objects.  If we drop the "primary
object" notion discussed before, and instead /always/ show /every/
associated object /in addition to/ the instance itself (where the
instance is represented by the colored activity icon, and the object
is represented as distinct from that...I have new mockups to reveal
this idea), then it would be relatively trivial to resume the instance
by clicking it (the activity icon), act on the object with the default
activity by clicking it (the object icon), or act on the object with
some other activity by selecting from its palette.  Actually, writing
this, it almost makes too much sense to do things this way, as it
always associates the activity icon with a specific activity (You
can't right click on a paint activity icon and morph it into a draw
activity).  We can attach the "open with" type functionality to the
objects themselves, instead of the instance, and solve the issue
rather painlessly.  It's not too much of a discoverability/usability
issue because  the ability to expand actions/instances reveals the
objects contained within in the same view. What does everyone think?

- Eben

PS. I know there was resistance to the notion of a "primary object"
before as well, and Bert was among those speaking against it.  I
apologize that I was blind to the benefits of your perspective!



> Yes. I refer you to the grammar discussion we had a few weeks ago:
>
>  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Mstone/Commentaries/Bundles_2#Grammar_and_Criticism
>
> (also see the diagram at the top of
>
>  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Mstone/Commentaries/Bundles_1
> )
>
> Michael
>