[Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Share sugar objects on a standalone server

[Gary C Martin]

On 17 Jul 2009, at 10:11, Aleksey Lim wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 10:48:10AM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
>> On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 04:43, Aleksey Lim<alsroot at member.fsf.org>  
>> wrote:
>>> On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 03:11:15AM +0100, Gary C Martin wrote:
>>>> On 17 Jul 2009, at 02:21, Aleksey Lim wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 08:03:15PM -0500, David Farning wrote:
>>>>>> On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 7:41 PM, Aleksey
>>>>>> Lim<alsroot at member.fsf.org> wrote:
>>>>>>> On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 12:17:13AM +0000, Aleksey Lim wrote:
>>>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> One of lacks that sugar environment has is simple way to
>>>>>>>> share sugar
>>>>>>>> objects for broad audience i.e. like scratch community has[1]
>>>>>>>> (thanks to davidmorris form #sugar).
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> So, I've created [2]. Original idea was having highly
>>>>>>>> integrated sharing
>>>>>>>> features into sugar shell but looks like we can do simple
>>>>>>>> things first
>>>>>>>> and even utilize only Browse for browsing/download/upload
>>>>>>>> sugar objects.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> The problem is - what web engine we should use.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> * Utilize AMO[3] engine which is used in  
>>>>>>>> activities.sugarlabs.org
>>>>>>>>  in that case we can create something like
>>>>>>>> library.sugarlabs.org to not
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Pro:
>>>>>>> * we do not split users behaviour, they need the same experience
>>>>>>> that ASLO requires
>>>>>>> * one common branding for activities and objects sites
>>>>>>> * AMO has sufficient(imo) functionality - reviews, ranking,
>>>>>>> collections
>>>>>>> and thumbs mode
>>>>>>> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:2/cat:all?sort=popular
>>>>>>> * we hack AMO code anyway - its not a problem in adding new
>>>>>>> AMO environment
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Contra:
>>>>>> * Locality - In may instances the stuff created by students  
>>>>>> will only
>>>>>> be of interest to their friends, teachers, and parent.  Serving  
>>>>>> via
>>>>>> ASLO publishes the content globally.
>>>>>
>>>>> "publishes the content globally" is the original purpose for this
>>>>> feature
>>>>> in contrast with
>>>>> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Peer_to_Peer_Objects_Sharing
>>>>>
>>>>> Or you mean possibility to share objects on local servers?
>>>>
>>>> Would be really good if we could just get the uploading of Journal
>>>> entries via Browse working reliably, right now it's only certain
>>>> simple object types (png, pdf, etc) that work reasonably.
>>>
>>> What do you mean exactly?
>>> Object chooser can pick any type of objects including "anything"  
>>> option.
>>
>> The root of the problem is that we are uploading files, not entries.
>> Some activities store files in their entries in formats commonly used
>> and known. But others will store a json file and after upload nobody
>> knows what to do with it.
>>
>> The good news is that we have already a format for packaging full
>> journal entries in zip files and after downloading such an entry
>> bundle it will be expanded and restored in the journal will all the
>> metadata, etc.

+1, had this same thought last night :-)

>> What we would need is for a simple way to upload these bundled  
>> entries
>> instead of just the file.
>>
>> Any ideas about how would look the UI like?
>
> I'm thinking about implicit behaviour,
> like while choosing objects for input fields in Browse
> we can package chosen object to bundle

As per my other email we currently have "Activities" and "Objects" in  
the Journal. Objects could be implicitly uploaded by Browse as regular  
files, Activities could be zipped up and bundled with all their meta- 
data.

I spent most of yesterday digging about in Mozilla classic.jar files  
trying to build a custom Sugar theme for Browse. A Mozilla .jar is  
just a renamed, zipped up directory. If Mozilla are doing this, so can  
we :-)

Regards,
--Gary