[Sugar-devel] Physics activity development

[Gary C Martin]

Hi Brian,

On 24 May 2009, at 18:36, Brian Jordan wrote:

> Hey all,
>
> Gary -- when you get a chance, can you add me as a committer on
> git.sl.o?  I'd like to help clean things up!

You're added! :-)

Can I request we try and make small clean commits and try to let  
others know what we are doing. If you want to hack, Gitorious supports  
quite a nice 'Clone repository' and then 'Request merge' process (no  
commit rights needed for the main project). The alternative, if you  
know what you are doing, is just make your own local git branch to  
hack on, so you can take care of any merge/conflict issues yourself  
when you fold it back into the current master.

I'm far from a git expert, but I can recommend some bed time reading at:

	http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~cduan/technical/git/

and/or

	http://gitready.com/

I'd like to get on with Labyrinth work, if you're willing to have an  
initial clean up of the Physics source in the next few days... so what  
was 'joysitck' feature all about? ;-)

Once the dev.sugarlabs.org component is added we should add the  
features/bugs in there to keep them all together. FWIW, from a UI  
point of view I had in mind:

1) remove/disable 'joysitick' feature as I have no idea what it was  
meant to be ;-)
2) build tool buttons correctly using RadioToolButton so they display  
state correctly
3) use set_accelerator to define visible keyboard shortcuts for the  
tools

> Asaf -- do you have a http://git.sugarlabs.org account yet?
>
> This is some feedback from Asaf (these could fit as enhancements in
> http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ ):
>
>> While playing with the activity I found a "pause" button to stop time
>> could be very useful. It's complicated to build elaborate  
>> contraptions
>> if everything keeps falling. Maybe while everything is paused,
>> positions an velocities of objects could be modified.
>>
>> A minor modification I suggest is to create a separate button for
>> adding push pins. It is not intuitive to add them using the link  
>> tool.
>> If there are plans about creating tutorial levels this isn't that
>> necessary although I don't see any harm on adding it.
>>
>> An other thing I think could be grate is to be able to create
>> attractors an repulsors. With stuff like this it gets pretty
>> interesting, we could have objects orbiting around the attractors.

Yes, all good stuff, there's also a list on http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Physics_%28activity%29 
  as well, but I'd vote for cleaning up what we have first, perhaps  
adding a play/pause, and keeping Journal state so kids can actually  
keep their Physics creations (and send them to friends when using  
sugar 0.84).

Regards,
--Gary

> Thanks
>
> Brian
>
> On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 4:17 PM, Gary C Martin  
> <gary at garycmartin.com> wrote:
>> Hey Brian,
>>
>> On 24 May 2009, at 13:57, Brian Jordan wrote:
>>
>>> Hey Gary,
>>>
>>> First, I'm attaching Asaf Paris Mandoki, who contacted me last week
>>> with an interest in developing on the Physics activity, and has  
>>> great
>>> ideas of things to add.  This is a great opportunity!  :)
>>>
>>> I can handle getting Physics on gitorious, the bug tracker and  
>>> a.sl.o.
>>> I will try to complete this by the end of today.
>>
>> Having chatted with Alex Levenson, I've already kicked off the  
>> migration for
>> Physics (rep is now in Gitorious, trac request is in, and I've  
>> started to
>> poke at the code, running well at least in sugar-jhbuild and sugar  
>> 0.84).
>> X2o is next on my hit list once Physics is in a reasonable state.
>>
>>> The things I can use some help with are (1) integrating proper
>>> localization to the activity and
>>
>> Yep, I'm going to do a pass at the code and tidy up some partially
>> implemented / broken UI stuff, before requesting it's addition to  
>> pootle
>> (best to start with a reasonably stable set of strings). Would also  
>> like to
>> get/text resolution independence (for non XO hardware) and get the  
>> scene
>> state saving to Journal...
>>
>> Want to get the basics out the way first before we break it again  
>> with
>> exciting new features ;-)
>>
>>> (2) figuring out a good way to include the pybox2d source in the git
>>> repository, while including an
>>> F9-compatible binary on a.sl.o (this was brought up w.r.t. Pippy a
>>> couple of times on the fedora devel lists, but I don't remember  
>>> seeing
>>> a clear way of how to handle it).
>>
>> Yea I was worried this might be an issue needing resolved, it's not  
>> my area
>> of speciality, I'll need to take a deeper look at the source.
>>
>>> Thanks for the ping and your help!!
>>
>> No, thank you! I was expecting a wall of silence :-)
>>
>> Regards,
>> --Gary
>>
>>> Brian
>>>
>>> On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 3:19 PM, Gary C Martin  
>>> <gary at garycmartin.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi Guys,
>>>>
>>>> I'm making contact to see if any of you are still interested in
>>>> developing
>>>> your great Physics activity? Most of the active activity  
>>>> development has
>>>> now
>>>> moved over to Sugar Labs infrastructure, and we've been getting  
>>>> some
>>>> requests for localising Physics.
>>>>
>>>> We have a Gitorious based source repository (there's no admin  
>>>> request
>>>> procedure, you can just register an account and migrate/create a
>>>> project):
>>>>
>>>>       http://git.sugarlabs.org/
>>>>
>>>> Our bug-tracker trac is at:
>>>>
>>>>       http://dev.sugarlabs.org/
>>>>
>>>> For activity distribution, Sugar Labs is customising Mozilla  
>>>> addon's web
>>>> front/back end (we're trying to encourage activity developers to  
>>>> post
>>>> there
>>>> activity bundles here), it's still a little ugly but the theme/UI  
>>>> is
>>>> still a
>>>> work in progress :-)
>>>>
>>>>       http://activities.sugarlabs.org/
>>>>
>>>> If no one is available to help, I'd be happy to migrate Physics  
>>>> over to
>>>> the
>>>> Sugar Labs infrastructure, get it added to pootle so we can start
>>>> localisation and make sure bundles get released for easy download  
>>>> and
>>>> inclusion in images/distrobutions. If someone finds they have  
>>>> some time
>>>> to
>>>> come back later just ping me and I can easily add extra  
>>>> commiters; though
>>>> with Gitorious, any one can branch anything, hack a bit, then  
>>>> submit a
>>>> merge
>>>> request (great workflow for dipping in and out of projects).
>>>>
>>>> Kind Regards,
>>>> Gary C Martin
>>>> Sugar Labs Activity Team
>>>> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activity_Team
>>>>
>>
>>