[sugar] Release schedule and process

[Edward Cherlin]

On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 5:09 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz
<bmschwar at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
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>  Edward Cherlin wrote:
>  | Those of us planning for a
>  | next-generation textbook want to know for sure
>  | what software they can count on. Otherwise, every active document will
>  | have to be packaged with dependencies.
>
>  You cannot count on any software other than the shell itself.  The Sugar
>  design does not support inter-item dependencies, and explicitly allows the
>  user to delete any Activity, independently of any other.
>
>  You are welcome to propose a dependency mechanism, but we have had this
>  discussion many times, and you are unlikely to discover the magic bullet
>  that avoids the pitfalls of UI complexity, bundle identity, versioning,
>  and location.  Rather than attempt to solve this hard technical problem,
>  you are much better off simply avoiding dependencies.
>
>  In the particular case of "software textbooks", this is really not an
>  issue.  If your textbook suggests exercises in a particular group of
>  Activities, it should say so on the first page.

Going out of the book into the Activities isn't the model. The MatLab
or Mathematica Notebook is a starting point. Having every math
expression in the book be executable by clicking and graphable via
NumPy or Measure is good. Building in simulations rather than static
graphs takes it further. Including a kit of Smalltalk objects that can
be snapped together to build visual or computational models goes
further yet. There are many other possibilities.

> You should not feel the
>  need to limit your scope to some default set; rather, you should provide
>  copies of all the ancillary Activities for download along with your
>  textbook.  You can even include copies of those Activities as .xo bundles
>  inside the textbook, like the Library does.  Free redistribution is one of
>  the beautiful things about free software.
>
>
>  - --Ben
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-- 
Edward Cherlin
End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business
http://www.EarthTreasury.org/
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay