[Sugar-devel] Several chapters of "Make Your Own Sugar Activities!" ready for review, feedback

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 12.01.2010, at 16:43, Jim Simmons wrote:
> 
> http://objavi.flossmanuals.net/books/ActivitiesGuideSugar-en-2010.01.11-23.05.32.pdf

Very nice, Jim!

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a Sugar activity should be written in Python.

However, there are other means to go about that, and special circumstances may lead a developer to consider alternatives.

In "WHAT IS A SUGAR ACTIVITY?" you make it sound like Python was a necessary ingredient for all Sugar activities. That is not true, an activity *can* be written without any bit of Python code. Not even "Python bindings" are needed. See

	http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Low-level_Activity_API

"Activities can be written in any language, as long as it can connect to D-Bus and provide an X11 interface."

While it's most convenient and also encouraged to write new activities in Python, it is not mandatory. The Sugar API was carefully designed to allow activity development in any language. There are a couple of non-Python activities, most prominently Etoys which is even part of the Sugar platform, emphasizing it is *not* Python-only. It would be nice if you could rephrase that introductory section.

Other than that, very nice book. I love your style :)

- Bert -