[Sugar-devel] Advice request: XO sound recording

[James Simmons]

Art,

Getting a list of Journal objects that have the MIME types you want is
simple.  Putting this data into a table requires a fair amount of
code.  It isn't difficult code, but there is a lot of it.  If you just
want to get one entry from the table the Object Chooser would be less
work for you.  The downside is that older versions of Sugar don't let
you restrict what you're seeing, plus there is a bug where when the
dialog first opens it shows items that are in the Journal AND on the
SD card (if you have one).  It looks like it's supposed to just show
the Journal objects, but it shows both.  It's a hard bug to describe.
You have to click on the icon for the SD card, then click back on the
Journal icon to see just Journal objects.

The XO-1 can run newer versions of Sugar than .82, and it looks like
more of them will be doing that soon.  Using the Object Chooser
doesn't necessarily mean it won't work on an XO-1.  The reason I gave
up on this dialog was that it wasn't doing what I wanted for View
Slides, which was to browse through a list of images, view them, and
add them to a slide show.  That kind of interaction would be slow and
painful with the Object Chooser.  In your case it might be just fine.

I guess a future version of my book will have to discuss the Object Chooser.

James Simmons


On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 12:33 PM, Art Hunkins <abhunkin at uncg.edu> wrote:
> OK, James and Sasha - then I need additional advice.
>
> There is the Object Chooser method, which seems to do what I need (a
> *general* audio files listing is the appropriate), but is basically
> inoperable on XO-1. OTOH, the FLOSS manual solution(s) would seem to be
> considerably more complex (is this correct? Please recall I am a beginning
> Python programmer.)
>
> I am leaning toward investigating James' algorithms except for one fact: I'm
> not sure that Sugar 0.82 is important to me. Facts: Record on the XO-1 only
> outputs Ogg Speex audio, and Csound on the XO-1 doesn't accept any kind of
> Ogg. OTOH, with 0.84 and up, Record outputs Ogg Vorbis and Csound handles
> the same (on 0.84 Strawberry, a libsndfile update is required). Since Record
> is the primary way that children will get soundfiles into the Journal, I
> wonder whether 0.82 is worth the trouble (i.e., the capability of importing
> child-generated soundfiles).
>
> I know I've not mentioned eToys, but I'm not aware that actual soundfile
> objects that it produces are available through the Journal. (If so, I may
> need to rethink - and would appreciate comments by Bert.) It is also true
> that soundfiles in various acceptable formats (WAV, AIFF, VORBIS) can be
> imported to the Journal via wireless, and presumably accessed there. This
> *might* be an important capability, even for the XO-1.
>
> I *am* convinced that accessing the Journal (nothing else) is the way to go.
>
> So?
>
> Art Hunkins