[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Examples objects support for activities.

[Gary Martin]

On 19 Jul 2012, at 18:40, Martin Abente wrote:

> Hello Everyone:
> 
> In a recent conversation with Walter, he mentioned that it would be very useful if activities could include examples objects. From my experience in the field, I can tell this feature can be a really useful indeed. Therefore I would like to bring this idea to the general discussion and see what others think.
> 
> The idea is  simple: Activities include examples objects that can be bundled with and accessed from the activity.
> 
> For the ones that also think this could be useful: I am sure you must have your own vision of how this feature should work and look like, so please share it here.
> 
> In general terms and from my POV it should be something:
> 
> (a) simple to access.
> (b) with a familiar interface to the users.
> (c) low-cost for activities developers to include.
> (d) Safe.
> 
> One of the ideas, that meets these requirements, is to include a standard "Examples" folder in the activities root directory that would be accessible through a regular ObjetChooser. The ObjectChooser is already capable of presenting any folder's contents, thanks to recent years improvement in the journal to present external-media and documents-folder contents.
> 
> Accessing to these objects would be as easy as just opening a ObjectChooser instance, many activities already do this (but limited to journal content). As I just said, the ObjectChooser interface is widely used, therefore users are already familiar with it. To ease the costs for activities developers I think that having this standard folder approach is crucial. One open question I still have is how this ObjectChooser should  be opened from the activities in a standard way (suggestions?). By "safe" I mean that it should guarantee that it only presents this standard folder objects in read-only mode (at least from the GUI POV).

Sounds good +1, we already have an icon design for activity 'collections', see Turtle Art for an example, but it is basically a small version of the activity icon, a box container with an arrow coming out of it (Walter currently raises a completely un-sugarised and scary GNOME file dialogue pointing inside a folder in the TA bundle, so it would be good to see this go ;) ).

> 
> I will stop here and I would like to hear what you guys think regarding the general idea first.

I've added it to the agenda for Mondays design meeting.

Regards,
--Gary

> 
> Saludos.
> tincho.
> 
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