[Sugar-devel] [Physics] New features

[Gary C Martin]

Hi Asaf,

On 31 Aug 2009, at 17:24, Asaf Paris Mandoki wrote:

> I'm not sure if you saw my commit with the trace feature so here's a  
> ping.

Thanks for the ping :-) Yes saw your commit, but haven't had time to  
try it hands on yet (trying to put my available time into new Sugar  
toolbar work for 0.86, BTW will need to pick that up for Physics also,  
I hope all that olpcgames/pygame wrapper stuff doesn't bite us too  
hard ;-)

It's likely going to be the end of the week before I can spend much  
time on Physics. We need to carefully think about how to avoid  
complicating the user interface with too many new tools – I can see  
the need for a "World" tab, and "Material" tab, so that we don't  
overload on too many features all at once (i.e a young kid could  
ignore World and Material tabs, and just get on with building things  
as they do now).

> I was also thinking on another new feature. What about joint's
> displaying the tension they're in by changing their color?

Ooh, yes I like that one, colour would be good, black --> red? Have  
you had a look at the old Bridge Activity? It did this for the "rivet"  
colour.

> We could even break the joints if tension is too high.

We could. But perhaps save this for when we have more material  
controls else where, quick thought is that once we have a "Materials"  
tab, there would be radio buttons for solid links (the default), and  
breakable links... (and could we manage a 3rd elastic/stretchy links  
in the code? That's another nice way to store potential energy in a  
contraption).

Regards,
--Gary

P.S. I'll likely try and tackle Bills single click bug reports in the  
main git repo before getting to play with new features, but don't let  
that stop you! :-)

P.P.S. Did you like the attempt at illustrating longitudinal wave  
prorogation? It's a but more tricky to set-up than the transverse wave  
example, as you need to get the spacing right to see a nice  
longitudinal wave propagate before the energy is too dissipated.

	http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Physics_longitudinal_waves.png