[Sugar-devel] [IAEP] turtle art: 2 instances, no?

[Gary C Martin]

On 7 Sep 2009, at 15:03, Bill Kerr wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 9:45 PM, Gary C Martin <gary at garycmartin.com>  
> wrote:
> Hi Bill,
>
>
> On 7 Sep 2009, at 12:09, Bill Kerr wrote:
>
> I can't see any way to load 2 instances on the SoaS version
>
> If I have a project loaded, saved and named
> Then go into the journal and try to load an older saved version then  
> it doesn't load but puts me back to the current open version
> I have to first close the current version and then open the older  
> version to get it
>
> This is not a bug with TurtleArt. It's (in my view) the major design  
> backfire that is the "Keep" button... Keep is not like a copy,  
> duplicate or 'save as' file operation in other OS environments.  
> Sugars "Keep" is actually a (bad) attempt at "Keep version snap  
> shot", unfortunately no where in the Journal UI is this visually  
> indicated/referenced. Think of "Keep" a little like non-linear undo  
> states stored to Journal.
>
> The problem with all this is that Sugar currently treats all  
> versions you "Keep" from an activity as the same activity. You can  
> only have one of the versions active at once, this is what you're  
> seeing when you try to resume (what you think is another old  
> activity is actually a version) and Sugar switches to the current  
> version of it you already have open.
>
> To create fresh new activities, you need to:
>
> 1) start new activity
> 2) create masterpiece
> 3) stop activity
> 4) goto step 1
>
> If you ever find yourself clicking "Keep" give your self a small jab  
> in the hand with a sharp protractor ;-)
>
>
> hi gary,
>
> I'm doing some of the barry newell 40 shapes challenge I posted on  
> another thread
>
> Some of the shapes are related to other shapes
> eg. after I do shape 6 then I want to Keep that as BN6 then use it  
> again to make BN7, etc
> So I change the name in the box from BN6 to BN7 and click Keep
> It does work similar to Save As ...
> If I go to the Journal and click the arrow on the right the image  
> represents the different versions
> But the confusion arises when I try to open an old version and just  
> get back to the currently open version
>
> So I can achieve something like Save As ... but can't achieve  
> opening two versions at once, as you say

I did just the same thing last year with a set of shapes from a Logo  
work sheet from one of the deployments, use keep to modify a  
previously similar TA setup. I got to about 30 before "Keep" got me  
into a total mess. In the end I had to take screen shots of each of  
the TA project tile sets, and manually recreate each so I could have  
several examples open at the same time.

Using "Keep" will get you into even more hot water if you intend to  
share such examples via collaboration... As shared versions will be  
seen as "the same activity", a remote user will likely just get  
whatever they version they first joined, then each time then join  
(what you may think is) a different shared activity example, they will  
just resume/switch to the previous one.

The "Keep" button is quite the Sugar usability land-mine :-( I think  
Walter has added a new "Save snapshot" button to a recent version of  
TurtleArt to avoid just this very issue.

Regards,
--Gary