[Sugar-devel] Bundle Activity

[Jim Simmons]

Eben,

I tried out this Bundle Activity just now.  It isn't fully functional
and throws Keep errors.  The concept of it seems sound though.  If I
was to create a version of this I'd try to implement a subset of View
Slides, the part which enables a user to take images in the Journal
and add them to a zip archive to create a slide show.  For Bundle I
would open it up so it could add any kind of Journal entry, but I
would keep the preview for images.  I would also support extracting
individual zip entries to create Journal entries (something I had
planned to add to View Slides already).

If there was an Activity like that the Children's Library project
could use it to distribute their collection.  They would simply
package the GIF previews and DjVu files together, giving them
meaningful names like this:

The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain.djvu
The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain.gif

The children browsing the archive could get a preview of the book by
selecting the GIF then select the book itself to create a Journal
entry for it.  No catalog file would be needed; it would only be
necessary to give the files meaningful names.

James Simmons


> Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2009 21:47:45 +0100
> From: Gary C Martin <gary at garycmartin.com>
> Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] Book bundles and Read
> To: Eben Eliason <eben at laptop.org>
> Cc: Sugar devel <sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org>,
>        jake.kurzer at richmond.edu
> Message-ID: <384847CD-4D67-43D4-91C2-48A5E560E559 at garycmartin.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252; format=flowed;
>        delsp=yes
>
> On 26 Jul 2009, at 20:16, Eben Eliason wrote:
>
>> I've always envisioned a "Bundle" activity which is a glorified
>> tar/zip/other-bundle-format viewing and creation tool. With Bundle, it
>> would be possible to open any such file in the Journal (including
>> activity bundles, of course) to view its contents. It would also
>> support extracting all or part of the bundle contents to separate
>> Journal entries, as well as creating new bundles from arbitrary
>> collections of objects.
>>
>> It would even be possible to add collaboration on top of this, so
>> groups of kids could create bundles together, aggregating entries from
>> each of their Journals into a single product. This would be useful for
>> group projects, for instance.
>>
>> I know a class took this on as a project at one point, though I never
>> heard how that turned out. I believe
>> this?http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4079?is the
>> result, but I haven't had a chance to try it yet. In any case, it
>> might be nice to keep it in mind, and perhaps extend its features in
>> line with these new discussions for object bundles if appropriate. For
>> instance, it might be possible to add some GUI tools for
>> viewing/populating Sugar-specific manifest files, when desired.
>
> Ah! thanks Eben, it had slipped under my radar (had been looking for
> it on out Gitorious site). I'll give the Activity a test and see
> what's what.
>
> Regards
> --Gary