[Sugar-devel] Journal-like activities (was: Re: [ASLO] Release Read ETexts-19)

[James Simmons]

Martin,

My peeves with the Journal are:

1).  It represents mounted media (USB and SD cards) just like Journal
entries.  I think Journal entries should be represented like Journal
entries and anything in the regular file system should look like a
hierarchical file system with folders.  Making a USB drive look like
the Journal creates false expectations for the user.

2).  I'd like to sort Journal entries by something other than time
last used, descending.

Other than those two things, not much.

Gabriel's utility is a gtk.FileChooserWidget that lets you copy files
to the clipboard.  Mine would use a gtk.Notebook to display two tabs:
one for the Journal and one for the file system.  It would let you
copy files from the file system directly into the Journal.  The
Journal would be shown as a table with column headings.  You could
sort by clicking on the column heading.

Maybe you could resume Activities from the Journal view.  You would
not be able to do that from the file system tab.

This should be pretty trivial to put together.

James Simmons


On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 10:07 AM, Martin Langhoff
<martin.langhoff at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi James,
>
> I am very glad people are exploring alternatives around the Journal.
> Not sure what your goals are -- would be interesting to hear.
>
> Comments
>
>  - I don't know how "pluggable" the Journal is, but I'd encourage
> working on patches to the Journal itself. I don't think a proper
> activity can take the role of the Journal, as it is pretty "special".
>
>  - There's been interesting discussions around teaching the Journal
> about it's backup, which is on the XS (if there is one). An exciting
> idea bandied about was to do something inspired by Apple's Time
> Machine. I am happy to improve things on the XS side if needed.
>
> Aleksey is the current maintainer, he'll probably have suggestions ;-)
>
> cheers,
>
>
> m