[Sugar-devel] Sugar Digest 2011-08-22

[Walter Bender]

On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 6:10 AM, Simon Schampijer <simon at schampijer.de> wrote:
> On 08/22/2011 05:50 PM, Walter Bender wrote:
>>
>> == Sugar Digest ==
>>
>> 1. The OLPC XO 1.75 machines (beta units) are starting to be
>> distributed to developers. This machine is ARM based, which means that
>> it will have superior battery life once all of the fine-tuning is
>> complete. It also means that it uses some different components, e.g.,
>> audio circuitry, so there is some driver work to be done. But so far,
>> so good.
>>
>> One of the nice things about the 1.75 is that the OLPC engineering
>> team threw in a few additional sensors. Saadia Husain Baloch got the
>> accelerometer working and I immediately wrote a Turtle Art plug-in
>> (included with v114). Saadia wrote a fun 'etch-a-sketch' program in
>> Turtle Art that works by shaking the machine.
>>
>> Not to be outdone, I added an enhancement to the Portfolio activity
>> while I was on a short flight last week. If you hit the left side of
>> the XO, it will advance to the next slide. If you hit the right side
>> of the XO, it will return to the previous slide. The person sitting
>> next to me on the plane told me, "That's the strangest thing I have
>> ever seen anyone do with a computer."
>
> Congrats, nice work!
>
> Some thoughts on Portfolio:
>
> Is there a way to reload the starred items for the slides? For example, if I
> do:
>
> - star two items
> - open portfolio
>  (keep portfolio running)
> - take a few screenshots and star them as well
> - I want these to be added to my portfolio...
>
> The latest item in the Journal is what is shown when you open the activity.
> I might have expected the other way around :) Maybe there could be a config
> option for that.
>
> I actually wonder if just using the starred icons is the best way of dealing
> with it. How can I change the order of the items? How can I make different
> portfolios with another subset of items?

I have thought about this quite a bit.

Note that if you change the Journal entry for a starred item,
Portfolio picks up the changes. But right now, I don't rescan for new
items... easy enough to add a button for that.

I like the simplicity of using the starring mechanism in the Journal.
If/when we add more tagging options, I could use those as well. But I
want the bulk of the work to occur in the Journal itself, not in the
Portfolio.

I have a conundrum regarding saving as well: should I be saving the
status in the Journal or always reflecting the current status on
launch? I chose the latter because I think it is more intuitive. That
is one of the reasons I added the save-to-HTML option as a way to
preserve a moment in time.

thanks for the feedback.

-walter
>
> Regards,
>   Simon
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-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org