[Sugar-devel] Physics activity development

[Brian Jordan]

On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 8:59 PM, Gary C Martin <gary at garycmartin.com> wrote:
> 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/
>

Thank you, will devote some to that!  Need to learn to keep my crazy
features in branches.

> 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? ;-)

This would probably be best to describe on the wiki page, the idea was
to make a UI for assigning keys on the XO-1 to impulses or changes on
certain objects, so simple 2 player physics based games could be made
from within Physics.

Agreed, though, I will rid that from the code so we have a nice base
line for crazy-feature branches.

> 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).

+1 +1 +1

Brian

>
> 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
>>>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>



-- 
Brian Jordan
OLPC Learning Team Technical Contractor
Mobile Phone: +250 0783864924
Skype: bcjordan