[sugar] alt-tabbing to the Journal

[Gary C Martin]

On 7 Oct 2008, at 16:31, Eben Eliason wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 7:43 AM, Martin Dengler <martin at martindengler.com 
> > wrote:
>> On Tue, Oct 07, 2008 at 12:21:23PM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
>>> have we reached any consensus on [alt-tabbing to the Journal]?
>>
>> No, based on http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6251

Clearly a contentious issue :-) apparently split somewhat between  
Sugar running on the OLCP XO-1 hardware, vs. running on vanilla PC  
hardware.

>>> Perhaps someone that cares about changing the current behavior could
>>> do a summary of the arguments on each side?
>>
>> *Perhaps* there are only two opposing views; I am biased but will
>> attempt to summarize the pro (removing-from-alt-tab-list) and the
>> con (keep-it-as-is-now) views:
>>
>> Pro:
>>
>> 1. One never wants to Alt-Tab to the journal
>> 2. there is a dedicated key for getting to it
>> 3. the journal should be treated more like a zoom level ("lower" than
>> the home view).
>> 4. Unnecessarily makes itself the active activity when focused, so  
>> now
>> the Activity/F4 key as well as the search key are dedicated to it.
>>
>> Cons:
>> 1. One sometimes wants to Alt-Tab to the journal
>> 2. The journal is positioned like an activity in the Frame and UI
>
> You missed one of my biggest reservations in the cons:
>
> 3. The Journal wouldn't appear beneath the XO at boot.
>
> It's important to me that the Journal be one click (yes, click; not
> just keystroke) away when the child boots the laptop. The current
> activity gets positioned here under the XO, so in the current paradigm
> this happens implicitly.  I suppose you could argue that the Journal
> still gets shown here if no activities are open at all, but then we're
> special casing it a bit.  There may be other ideas for exposing the
> Journal in Home as well, but nothing brought up so far as really dealt
> with this dilemma.

-- snip --

> I'll just toss one more idea out there, for argument's sake.  The
> Journal, as a "place for storing things", might actually be related to
> a device instead (since it's UI may be the same or similar to that for
> USB/SD/etc.).  We could put it down there to meaningfully distinguish
> it.  This still leaves problem 3, of course.

As someone who thinks the Journal is part of the system and NOT and  
Activity, I just wanted to throw yet another idea out there: Make what  
we now call Journal, another view of the Home view. There, darn, now I  
said it out loud...

Some musings:

1) Ideally, the Home view should soon inherit the behaviour that you  
can resume recent Journal entries by default, so cutting away a _lot_  
of the Journal entry cruft that gets added accidently when starting  
fresh activities. This behaviour would be a little like a recent, per  
Activity, activity filter for the Journal, so why not make the current  
full Journal view just another home view? You could think of the  
current Home view as a Journal filtered view of available new  
Activities (supporting some pretty icon layouts).

2) The search key would still switch to Home journal view automatically.

3) It would be one click from boot up (as a new toolbar icon next to  
favourites, and list view). Or could even become the users default  
home view, and be zero clicks away if that's what the kid likes.

4) Current behaviour is a little wired regarding what you are left  
looking at when stopping an Activity. I seem to end up staring at  
either a Home view, the Journal, or some other running Activity.  
Making Journal be a Home view would at least cut down that randomness  
by one ;-)

5) Journal would be off the alt-tab list :-b

6) Journal would be a more core part of the Sugar UI, rather than its  
current special case Activity status sitting among a potential crowded  
top frame.

7) Want to an Activity? Goto the Home view, all (past and future)  
Activities are there.

--Gary