[Sugar-devel] Accessing external media from within an activity (was: Re: Problem listing journal objects)

[Gary C Martin]

Hi Eben,

On 26 Aug 2009, at 14:53, Eben Eliason wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 5:43 AM, Sascha
> Silbe<sascha-ml-ui-sugar-devel at silbe.org> wrote:
>> On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 08:41:28AM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
>>
>>> The public API is the POSIX one, though I don't know how this will  
>>> be
>>> affected by future versions of Rainbow.
>>
>> I can't find anything regarding mount points in POSIX 2001. How do  
>> you
>> expect Jims activity to discover them?
>> Two ways come to my mind:
>> a) parse /proc/mounts periodically
>> Linux-only, time-wasting but future-proof
>>
>> b) use what the Journal is using internally, i.e. the Gnome way of  
>> the day
>> cross-platform (as much as Gnome/Sugar are), event-driven, but  
>> likely to
>> break on next release
>>
>> Just as a reminder: The intended workflow for Jims activity seems  
>> to be:
>> 1. Start activity
>> 2. Plug in USB stick with photos
>> 3. Select and/or manage(?) photo from within the activity
>>
>> Answering "use POSIX" is like "use a computer", it doesn't help  
>> getting the
>> job done. If the answer is "we want the user to copy the photos to  
>> the data
>> store first", that doesn't get the job done either, but it's a  
>> policy and
>> can be catered for (i.e. documented).
>
> The way I saw this working would be to extend the object chooser to
> allow multiple sources, including external media. Where there is
> currently a Journal icon in the chooser, we would also show any USB
> sticks and SD cards present, and these would be selectable (with the
> Journal the default, of course). Any activity could then invoke the
> object chooser to select objects from the Journal or from external
> media, without the overhead of building their own UI. Once the objects
> are loaded into the activity, they can be bundled up and saved as
> desired.
>
> We even have some preliminary design sketches for this feature:
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Designs/Object_Chooser#04

You really do need to upgrade ;-p

It's implemented and displays the content of external media (see  
attached image). You can even eject and insert new sticks all from  
within the ObjectChooser while you hunt about for that stick with  
those embarrassing holiday photos on. But before you get too excited,  
I'm not having much luck actually opening any files displayed from an  
external USB stick, (though I am running sugar-jhbuild that seems to  
be a 'between releases' hybrid just at this point in time). I've filed  
ticket http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1241

Eben: While I've got you here, can you confirm or deny that the icon  
being used to represent the Journal data-store is wrong. Note that for  
a release or so (~0.84 I think) the icon being shown here  
(ObjectChooser) and in the toolbar at the bottom of the Journal is an  
XO icon – it used to be the Journal icon (aka, note pad/book). I'm not  
convinced this change was intentional.

Regards,
--Gary

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