[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Views: search behavior (was Re: [PATCH sugar] Views: move the ViewToolbar to the HomeWindow instead of having one in each View)

[Gary Martin]

Hi Gonzalo,

On 29 Aug 2012, at 13:51, Gonzalo Odiard <gonzalo at laptop.org> wrote:

> 
> Btw, re Activity list view. We said at one point that the date displayed in the list has not much meaning (at least at the moment). Did we have an idea for a replacement?
> 
> +1
> 
> I know is not a trivial change, but IMHO, would be great have a short description here.
> We can add it in the activity.info file, and get it translated as the activity name today.

+1

FWIW I'm sure I saw this working in an alpha build once (I remember being surprised when I looked in list view, just a few activities had text extra minimal descriptions showing). I don't remember who was responsible but I did have a little dig and found the below existing strings in some activity.info files:

Garys-Computer:All Activities archive gary$ grep -r summary */activity/activity.info
CartoonBuilder.activity/activity/activity.info:summary   = Make a cartoon by creating a sequence of poses inside a filmstrip
Chat.activity/activity/activity.info:summary   = Text chat
FlipSticks.activity/activity/activity.info:summary   = Using keyframes, program a stick figure to twist and dance
ImageViewer.activity/activity/activity.info:summary   = The Image Viewer activity is a simple and fast image viewer tool
Speak.activity/activity/activity.info:summary   = An animated face that speaks whatever you type
TamTamEdit.activity/activity/activity.info:summary = A music and sound exploration application for Sugar
TamTamJam.activity/activity/activity.info:summary = A music and sound exploration application for Sugar
TamTamMini.activity/activity/activity.info:summary = A music and sound exploration application for Sugar
TamTamSynthLab.activity/activity/activity.info:summary = A music and sound exploration application for Sugar
TuxPaint.activity/activity/activity.info:summary   = Drawing program designed for young children

Perhaps we could officially adopt the "summary" keyword if we go this route? I put together a quick mockup [1] using some of the above strings and close to the descriptions as found on ASLO to give an idea for what type of strings misc developers would probably fill this with. Note that an ellipsis ... is used for clipping overly long strings. We would want to provide a style guide for that text, so it is a short, friendly, and as succinct as possible (i.e. say what it does, or what you can do with it in less than 7-10 words).

Regards,
--Gary

[1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Home_list_view_comment_summary_mockup.png

> 
>  Gonzalo