[Sugar-devel] updates and testing SocialCalc on the Sugar Live CD

[Edward Cherlin]

I ran through all of the basic functions of SocialCalc, including
every icon on every tab. I have tested some but not all of the 109
functions provided, with good results so far. Although there are
functions I could wish for, the only real deficiency I have found is
in the documentation.

I have created a page for elements of Sugar that children are not
likely to discover on their own,
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/The_undiscoverable. I recommend it to
developers who want to think about whether more of Sugar can be made
discoverable, or whether we need to write lesson plans for the
features that cannot be made obvious to the novice. I will put in a
section for SocialCalc. These are not bugs in the sense of incorrect
behavior or missing explanations, so I omit them here.

Here is a summary of the other issues I have encountered.

o The database functions are severely underdocumented. What database?
What are databaserange, fieldname, criteriarange?

o Where does Paste Formats get its formats from?

o What does Swap Colors do?

o The financial and statistical function definitions in the Help might
be clear to one who uses other spreadsheets a lot, but certainly are
not to a beginner.

o More explanation is needed on angles in degrees and radians.

o I understand Move From and Move Paste, but not Move Insert.

o I see how to set names, but not what to use them for or how.

o I don't see the Sheet setting control on the Format tab that the
Help refers to.

o I found the OK and Sort... buttons on the Sort tab confusing. It has
since become clear to me. Perhaps OK should be renamed Set Range.

Not bad for a beta.

On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 12:16 PM, Manusheel Gupta<manu at laptop.org> wrote:
> Dear community members,
>
> We are preparing for the next release of SocialCalc on Sugar. Localization
> infrastructure, canonicalization of the save format and collaboration will
> be the key features available in the next release. We are also looking
> forward to develop interoperability between SocialCalc format and a number
> of other spreadsheet formats like .wk3/.wk4/csv/excel/open office
> spreadsheet. We have recently received a number of requests on developing
> interoperability between SocialCalc and .wk3/.wk4 format, which has been a
> challenging problem to work on. Hope to get this feature ready before the
> next release.
>
> Lately, I have been testing SocialCalc on the Sugar Live CD, and have run
> into issues. I can't seem to get SocialCalc to start.  I fired up the Sugar
> LiveCD, and opened up the USB icon in my journal.  I can see the file
> SocialCalc.xo on my USB stick.  When I click on it, I get a start button,
> but then nothing happens.  Below is a gears image, which starts something
> that looks like a developer interface. Not sure, where I have been going
> wrong. Any help on this issue is highly appreciated.
>
> Please visit the SocialCalc on Sugar page at
> http://seeta.in/j/products-and-services/socialcalc-on-sugar.html. The
> activity is available for download both from the SEETA website
> (http://seeta.in) and from activities.sugarlabs.org. If you have any
> questions, or would like to add suggestions/comments/feature requests,
> please do so here.
>
> Thank you for your continued support.
>
> Regards,
>
> Manu
>
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>
>



-- 
Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://earthtreasury.org/