[Sugar-devel] Journal feature request--more data in main display

[Michael Stone]

Gary C. Martin wrote:

> I like the intent, but I don't think the "activity centric" view has  
> concrete enough spec to consider implementing yet.

I want to convince you that we actually have enough detail to make forward
progress with.

To that end, I'm going to offer a bunch of text on how I think this display is
supposed to work.

You should go through it to identify

   a) things that don't make sense
   b) things that are disputed or where I'm obviously wrong
   c) things that are insufficiently specified

and we should try to fix those.

Then we'll be ready to do another round of discussion and prototyping.

Regards,

Michael
   
---------------------------------------

The best picture I've ever extracted from people on this subject looks like
this:

   Mental Picture of the Experience of Recording Butterflies


                          *         - action
                         / \
           instance -   /   \
                     \ /     \
              *--/ /--*-------*       - object container
             /    |         //\\\
         bundle   |        / | \\\
                  /       /  | | \\
         prototype       /   | | | \
                        *    * * *  *    - objects


   This diagram represents the action of recording a roll of 10 photos of
   butterflies in an instance of a recording activity derived from a specified
   bundle. 

   Key points: 

     * I can paint on a photo but not on a record instance. 

     * On the other hand, I can use the instance to 

         a) resume recording butterflies or 

         b) to locate an activity prototype suitable for beginning a new
            recording action on a different theme. 

       (The instance functions a bit like a UI continuation.)

-----------------------

Analyzing

   http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Designs/Journal#02

we see that 

   * Each top-level entry in the display depicts an "action".

   * Each top-level entry can be zoomed in or out (i.e. "contracted" or
     "expanded", but as part of a large-scale zoom metaphor).

When contracted, each entry displays a horizontal summary of the action
containing:

   1) the past tense of a verb
   2) an "action resume display", consisting of 

        a) an initiator-colored activity icon, 
        b) a bold label with the action title, and
        c) a resume button

   3) an optional iconic summary of the actions's participants,

         [Eben -- how do we abbreviate this summary if there were lots of
          participants?]

   4) and a mandatory "freshness" indicator.

   [In Scott's journal2 work, we'd also have a tag cloud.]

When expanded, we vertically concatenate the "brief summary" display described
above with a second "details view" that is inadequately fleshed out.

In the single example suggested by Eben, this details view appears to consist of:

   5) a grid of cells, each containing

   6) a star-shaped colored selector

      [Eben -- is this used for favoriting or for acting on object-sets?]
  
   7) a summary display, which, for images, displays the image object and its title

   8) some sort of arrow-labeled button 

      [Eben -- I imagine that each of these buttons is supposed to represent
       some sort of "act on ____ with ____" button with both holes filled in,
       per our prevoius discussion:

       http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Mstone/Commentaries/Bundles_2#.22Act_on_____with____.22

       Perhaps you could flesh this out a bit, but explaining the interaction
       design you imagine for multi-object cross-action "act on ___ with ___"?

       Also, could you think about giving it a different icon from the "resume"
       icon?]


> The still raises lot's of questions, what happens when you resume some  
> image you painted from way back to take a quick look? 

We need to be more specific.

You can either 

   1) resume the /action/ containing that image, or you can 

   2) incorporate the image into a new action, (i.e. acting on the image with
      some selected activity+mode)

You tell Sugar that you want case (1) by clicking the resume button [or the
activity icon?] in the "activity resume display" that I described above.

Eben hasn't spelled it out, but I imagine that you indicate case (2) by one of:

   a) selecting the object and clicking the "add new entry" button in the
      Journal, which presumably prompts you, at some point, for an activity+mode
      with which to act on your objects

   b) copy-pasting a set of selected objects into a running instance or into a
      selected action

   c) dragging a set of selected objects object into an action or an instance
      icon

   d) selecting an activity+mode as a "current tool" [think of Photoshop] with
      which to process a sequence of objects that you're about to indicate

[By "activity+mode", I'm referring to issues like "do you want this activity to
display the object, a summary of the object, the object's source code, its own
self-test results, etc."]

> Where does it now show in activity centric view? Does it get removed from its
> old block positioning and to some new active block; perhaps it get multi- 
> linked so now appears twice (you can still find it in the original old  
> place and also find it in new place)?

The question of the proper versioning and ownership semantics of the links
between these icons and the underlying objects is a hard question which we have
all agreed to ignore in favor of making some progress on other problems.

For the time being, I think that everyone would be happy with if the icons in
the display were treated as simple hardlinks.

(In other words, the object goes away when you delete all its links and any
modification to the object is immediately visible in all the actions containing
that object.)

[I believe we agreed that there should be a "fork" action on objects which
copies its subject into a new history-stream, but good luck finding further
documentation.]

> - Better Anything toolbar filter palette (use a grid layout to  
> minimise scrolling)

How do you think

   http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Designs/Toolbars

would work out here?

> - Perhaps a Tag toolbar filter palette (could be a mini tag cloud)

What do you think of Scott's journal2 design here?