[sugar] Viewing PDFs from Browse

[Eben Eliason]

On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 8:55 AM, Sayamindu Dasgupta <sayamindu at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 5:10 AM, Eben Eliason <eben.eliason at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hey, this looks pretty cool, actually.  One powerful addition which I
>> think is necessary in order to adopt this is the addition of a Keep
>> button in that toolbar, by which one *could* download the pdf for
>> offline reading later if wanted.
>>
>
> Yeah - the keep button is in my TODO list. However, something which
> might be a bit confusing is the fact that when Browse accesses a PDF,
> it creates an entry for that in the Journal, and once the user presses
> the Keep button, yet another entry will be created - which can be
> opened by Read later. Do you think two entries for the same thing
> might be confusing ?

Yes, this actually does run counter to intuition.  If we desire to
show the pdf within the Browse activity (which is certainly an
understandable goal), than we need to embrace the idea fully.  It's
just another file which gets temporarily cached for viewing purposes,
unless a Keep button is pressed to indicate the desire for permanence.
 We shouldn't be making a new entry when the pdf is viewed within
Browse at all.

>> In a similar vein, would it be possible to create a supplemental
>> toolbar like this for other media types which browse specifically
>> supports?  I could see having a similar UI for images, and a perhaps
>> for audio and video, too.  The ability to view various formats
>> directly, yet also have a one-click means to download the file, sounds
>> promising.
>>
>
> For audio/video, it's definitely doable. I'm not sure about images,
> since I think Browse has its own way of handling images.

Hmmm, interesting.  I had thought images would be the easiest to
handle.  I think the ability to scale, rotate, etc. would be really
slick to have, and images are something that one finds online quite
often.  Perhaps there is a way to override the default?  It would be
really nice to handle various media types consistently, with a short
list of tools for interacting with them, and a keep button.

- Eben

PS.  We'll likely want a copy button in addition to keep!  Clipping
media to the clipboard for direct integration in another activity is
just as valid as holding onto it as its own entity.


>> - Eben
>>
>> PS.  While I agree this is a nice thing to support in Browse, we'll
>> need to make this change very clear, as teachers and kids are familiar
>> with the current behavior which automatically downloads any .pdf
>> clicked on.  We wouldn't want to confuse them when it doesn't appear
>> in their Journal directly.
>>
>>
>
>
> +1
>
> Thanks,
> Sayamindu
>
>
>> On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 6:46 PM, Sayamindu Dasgupta <sayamindu at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> It looks like reading PDF files from the web via Browse is a pain,
>>> since, Browse saves the file to Journal, and then one has to go to the
>>> Journal and open up the saved file via Read (#8330). Can we treat PDF
>>> files like we handle media files (oggs mostly) by means of a Browse
>>> plugin ?
>>> I took a look at this during the weekend, and came up with a hack
>>> which looks like
>>> http://dev.laptop.org/~sayamindu/Screenshot_browse_pdf.png
>>> I used mozplugger and a simple PDF viewer using the Evince python
>>> bindings to make my work simpler.
>>> Can this be a possible workaround till we find a better solution ?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Sayamindu
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Sayamindu Dasgupta
>>> [http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Sugar mailing list
>>> Sugar at lists.laptop.org
>>> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
>>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Sayamindu Dasgupta
> [http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]
>