[Sugar-devel] Bundles with binary requirements (Was: The ARM is near)

[Benjamin M. Schwartz]

Gary C Martin wrote:
> How many ebooks could you distribute (and  
> store) for the bandwidth (and nand space) taken up by downloading the  
> required dependancies for Java.

A hell of a lot.  That's why we need to display prominently exactly how
much space each item in the Journal takes, including each Activity.  If
possible, users also need to know how much space something will use before
they download it.

Determining space usage is technically easy, but the corresponding UI
design problem has not gotten enough attention.  Running out of space is a
common problem on XO-1s, and will still be a common problem on XO-1.5.  We
need to help novice users manage their storage by providing a highly
visual indication of storage use.

> And once such a download system is in  
> place, what will be the next unsupported language someone will try to  
> ship an activity in?

C#, of course.

I think the right way to deal with these things is to let the user decide,
but show the user how much space is being used.  The users can judge for
themselves if they want to spend 100 MB on a Paint program.  The ones with
terabyte disks and 10 megabit downlinks probably don't care.

--Ben

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