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

[Martin Abente]

On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 3:51 PM, Anish Mangal <anish at activitycentral.com>wrote:

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> On Thursday 19 July 2012 11:10 PM, 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.
> >
>
> What kind of objects are we looking at? I assume it could mean:
> * Some sample programs in case of TA
> * Some sample setups in the physics activity
>
>
Exactly that kind of objects.



> The current way to go about doing that would be sample journal
> entries, so would I be correct in assuming that we're looking for a
> way to group those journal entries (in a way)?
>
>
Its about delivering these examples with the activity package and having
them separately from the journal.


> If not, and it's only the 'activity author/developer' that has the
> ability to bundle these example objects, then it places limitations.
> You'd ideally want to have teachers and others be able to bundle these
> examples as they best see them fit according to curriculum.
>
>
I don't think is a limitation since these are just separate things,
teachers could still deliver their own examples as they do now. In more
complex scenarios we could think of ways of how to easily redefine these
examples.


> > 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).
> >
> > I will stop here and I would like to hear what you guys think
> > regarding the general idea first.
> >
> > Saludos. tincho.
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________ Sugar-devel mailing
> > list Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
> >
>
> - --
> Anish
>
>
>
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