[Sugar-devel] Object Chooser (selecting user-created audio objects from the Journal)

[Art Hunkins]

I'd like to thank all those who helped me get Object Chooser in the Journal 
up and running in my FileMix activity. I'd also like to share my results, in 
case the code could be helpful to others.

Excerpts follow:

from sugar.graphics.objectchooser import ObjectChooser
from sugar import mime

   self.jname1 = "0"
   self.jobject1 = 0

   if os.path.exists("/etc/fedora-release"):
     release = open("/etc/fedora-release").read()
     if release.find("OLPC release 9 ") == -1:
# Insert here code relevent to Sugar 0.84 and higher
# I use this to only display Object Chooser callback buttons only for >= 
0.84
# Clicking one of the displayed buttons calls the choose1 method

 def choose1(self, widget):
  chooser =  ObjectChooser(parent=self, what_filter=mime.GENERIC_TYPE_AUDIO)
  result = chooser.run()
  if result == gtk.RESPONSE_ACCEPT:
    jobject = chooser.get_selected_object()
    if jobject and jobject.file_path:
      self.jobject1 = jobject
      self.jname1 = str(jobject.get_file_path())
  else:
    self.jname1 = "0"


Random observations:

1) I exclude Sugar 0.82 for two reasons (which means, unfortunately, "no 
user soundfiles for 0.82"):
 a) its version of Object Chooser does not allow filtering for the audio 
mime type;
 b) Sugar 0.82's Csound (5.08) - or more specifically its version of 
libsndfile - does not handle ogg vorbis soundfiles, the type that the Record 
activity creates. Record is the most likely/accessible means that children 
would use to create their own soundfiles. (The whole idea behind using 
Object Chooser here is to select user files that have been placed in the 
Journal [as Record does by default] for performance in FileMix.)
 c) In addition, earlier versions of Record (<v64 or so) create ogg SPEEX 
soundfiles; even the recent versions of Csound (actually, libsndfile) do not 
handle this (lo-fi) format.

I found that a search for "OLPC release 9 " in /etc/fedora-release 
identifies all current 0.82 incarnations of Sugar of which I'm aware.

2) jname1 stores the soundfile name (complete path); jobject1 stores the 
object itself. This is key to being able (in Csound) to locate and load the 
selected soundfile. jname1 is then a channel opened to send the named 
soundfile to Csound.

3) If the user closes the Object Chooser box instead of clicking on a sound 
object, the result is not accepted, and jname1 reverts to "0" - which is a 
flag (in Csound) to revert to the default soundfile included in FileMix.

4) The str() cast for self.jname1 converts the filename to the usual path 
format readable by Csound (this too is required).

Art Hunkins