[Sugar-devel] [SLOBS] [IAEP] Sugar Labs Website Revamp IRC Mtg 1-8-12 11:00amEST(16:00UTC)

[Aleksey Lim]

On Sun, Jan 15, 2012 at 03:17:27PM +0000, Aleksey Lim wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 15, 2012 at 09:58:17AM -0500, Steve Thomas wrote:
> > Folks,
> > 
> > So one form of content would be project kids/teachers create using various
> > activities (Turtle Art, Etoys, etc.)
> > 
> > I am working on a project hosting site for activities (similar to the
> > Scratch Website) where Sugar users can post projects they create.
> 
> There is also ongoing work for Sugar Network initiative [1][2][3].
> This initiative is not only about hosting artefacts, but about also
> about full cycle of collaborative work, i.e., bunch of feedback features
> (Questions/Ideas/Problems/Reviews), various content sharing (for now
> only .xol but it should support Wiki natively (not only HTTP pages like
> Wiki activity), collect fail reports, share activities itself.
> The original purpose was about supporting offline schools (with
> possibility to connect offline and online people via sneakernet),
> but all mentioned features should be useful for online community
> directly.
> 
> > I am using Google App Engine, but would also need some other infrastructure
> > (ex:WebDav server for storing/serving project files)

The Sugar Network implementation details in short are:

* server (might be the central one for online case or bunch of
  distributed servers for offline, eg, on servers at school)
  that provides RESTful API for all resoures within the SN
* clients use this API to interact with resoures that SN has

In case of activity artifacts, there are SN resoures:

* "Context" that will represent particular activity here
* "Artefact" objects associated with the "Context", ie, with activity's
  projects

So, clients can request (search) for Context(s) and Artefact(s).

For now, clients will be local (on users' side), because:

* the original purpose is supporting offline schools when the only
  server is a teacher's XO, thus, having full functional server side
  web application is overkill (the work will be separated between server
  and clients)
* SN will be close integrated with the local environment (installing
  activity dependencies, build activities that need the be built, run
  activities)

---

If you are working on Scratch like sharing of artefacts, that might
be useful to avoid dups and join efforts.

-- 
Aleksey