[Sugar-devel] journal / datastore question

[James Simmons]

Erik,

I believe that the write_file() is always to the Journal entry you
resumed from.  You can certainly read and write to any number of other
Journal entries, but the write_file() only writes to the resumed
entry.  It is possible to avoid creating a Journal entry.  For
instance, Get Internet Archive Books downloads e-books from the IA
website and puts them in Journal entries, but it does not create its
own Journal entry and cannot be resumed from a Journal entry.  There
are a few Activities that could benefit from that approach.  For
instance, both Terminal and Log create Journal entries that do nothing
useful.  (resuming from one of these entries does nothing that
starting the Activity from the ring does not do).

In my opinion you should stick to flows that the user expects instead
of inventing new ones.

James Simmons


On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 7:55 PM, Erik Blankinship <erikb at mediamods.com> wrote:
> Let's say I have a gimp-like activity.
> I launch the activity and it is "empty".  I open an image file via object
> chooser, save the file back to the datastore.  I do this a few times.  When
> I close my activity, I keep a reference to the datastore-id of the last
> photo I edited so that it will resume with that photo.
> When I reopen that activity-instance, I look up the last edited photo by its
> saved datastore id and can resume work on it.  I close the activity again
> and the datastore-id of the image is preserved.
> Now, I go to the journal and open the gimp-line activity via an image file
> (A.png) in the journal with a supported mime-type.
> My activity's read_file figures out we are opening an image, and handles it
> accordingly (it also keeps a reference to the open file).
> The child makes some edits and saves their changes to the image.   I write
> the changes to A.png in the datastore via the file handle I kept open.
> In the same activity instance, I close A.png and open another image (B.png)
> via an object chooser.  I work on that file and then quit the activity (with
> an intention to save changes to B.png).
> At this point, I am  prompted with a dialog box asking me to add metadata to
> A.png  ... (i guess because that is the file used to open the activity?).
> Is there a way to end this activity session with the final write_file being
> to an activity instance -- not to the file used to open the instance?
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