[Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Journal criticism

[Albert Cahalan]

Tomeu Vizoso writes:
> On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 20:20, Lucian Branescu
> <lucian.branescu at gmail.com> wrote:

>> I'm new to Sugar, so I may be horribly wrong.
>>
>> But to me, the Journal seems more of an annoyance than anything else.
>> A lot of the work I see done is towards bringing back some of the
>> properties that regular filesystems have
>>
>> What advantage does it have as opposed to a regular filesystem with
>> support for versioning and metadata? A filesystem would be more
>> compatible with existing software (which could just ignore the
>> metadata), at least.
>
> I can very easily understand that for someone who is used to a regular
> filesystem, the journal may seem as an annoyance when an attempt to
> use it in the same way is done. The same can be said of any other
> diversion in Sugar from how Windows/OSX behave.
>
> Though, interestingly, many people have successfully switched from
> files-in-folders-in-folders email clients to GMail. Maybe it is
> because the journal is not as mature as gmail?

There are big differences in the problem space.

GMail is dealing with text. Text search is somewhat reliable.
Sugar is dealing with all sorts of random data, like video.

GMail can briefly throw **lots** of beefy hardware at the
problem, allowing searches to be fast. Sugar can operate a
single wimpy processor.

Also, lack of folders in GMail is a common complaint. People
put up with it because they like other things about GMail.
I switched partly because Evolution was eating my inbox.

> If I think that something like the journal is worth having, it is:
>
> - because I can easily observe how non-technical users are unable to
> find the files that they stored in folders some time ago, or forget to
> save an important document, or modify a file that Firefox saved to
> /tmp and it got deleted after a reboot, etc,

Now we have equality. The technical users are now also unable to
find their files. :-(

> I think it's very important if we want to keep pushing Sugar that we
> distinguish between design decisions and bugs and unimplemented
> features. If we bring down good design ideas not by themselves but
> because of its implementation status, we risk ending up with nothing
> that brings new value compared to existing desktops.

You say that like it would be a bad thing. The existing desktops
are at least time-tested. Learning to deal with the common features
of modern desktop systems is very valuable for children.

> And btw, the Sugar people aren't alone in this, as GNOME will ship
> with a very similar journal concept in their 3.0 version. You can
> find info in the net and read their own justifications for it.
>
> Would be awesome if the Sugar Journal and the GNOME one could share
> its backend. Could someone check out the current state of the GNOME
> one and compare with our needs?

It looks like a heavy-duty version of "Recent Documents". It's far from
being a Journal clone as far as I can tell, but it certainly deals with
the concerns that led to the creation of the Journal.

Converting the Journal database is possible I think, allowing for an
excellent migration path.