[Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Sugar as a Mac Ap?

[Peter Robinson]

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 5:42 PM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 12:30 PM, Frederick Grose <fgrose at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 4:27 AM, Peter Robinson <pbrobinson at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 8:52 AM, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de>
>>> wrote:
>>> > On 2012-06-13, at 07:50, Steven Thompson wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> Even just in English in Japan could help kids. The common denomenator
>>> >> for jhs and hs kids is an iPhone or android and the iPad at home...much more
>>> >> so than buying an Intel Classmate or having a hope of getting an XO.
>>> >
>>> > Sugar can be installed on any PC, not just Classmates or XOs.
>>> >
>>> >> It's not about price or energy requirements here, its about good
>>> >> education for kids.
>>> >>
>>> >> Can we get sugar as a Mac Ap at the Ap Store?
>>> >
>>> > I think Sugar-on-a-Stick (SoaS) can be plugged into recent Macs and
>>> > works.
>>>
>>> You've always been able to plug SoaS into x86 Macs and have it work
>>> (just like any Linux distro), the latest version adds much better
>>> support for it and there's been specific interest in making it work
>>> properly with uEFI and all the Mac quirks.
>>>
>>> It's quite easy to use SoaS on a usb key on Macs and with something
>>> like VirtualBox you can run Sugar in a Window on Mac without too many
>>> issues.
>>>
>>> Sugar as an App on Mac is an interesting concept and with improving
>>> Mac support within GTK3 something like the Sugar in a Window concept
>>> we use for testing is quite conceivable once the Sugar port to GTK3 is
>>> complete, of course like everything it needs someone to step up and do
>>> the work.
>>>
>>> Peter
>>
>>
>> In the spirit of exploring interesting concepts that might stimulate new
>> development, might someone explain the obstacles that prevent Sugar from
>> running on an iPad, as well, discuss potential approaches to overcome those
>> obstacles.
>>
>> For example, Etoys, an independent but significant component in Sugar, can
>> be run on an iPad since June 2010,
>> http://croquetweak.blogspot.com/2010/06/squeak-etoys-on-ipad.html
>> http://etoys.squeak.org/experimental/ipad/
>>
>> Also with time, the current crop of iPads will become secondary devices as
>> newer tablets are released.  Folks will then be more willing to
>> void warranties and experiment with the operating systems.
>>
>>           --Fred
>>
> Etoys runs in a virtual machine. Once that VM is ported to a new
> environment, Etoys will run.
> Sugar on the other hand is a desktop and collection of applications
> that require Linux and the Gnome toolkit (among other dependencies).
> Once a Linux VM with Gnome is running in an environment, the process
> of porting Sugar is *relatively* painless.
>
> So the question is: is there a Linux/Gnome VM for the iPad? iPhone? iWhatever?

No because Apply explicitly doesn't allow other languages so we can't
run python which means we need some form of python -> objective-C
compiler or similar to be able to run it on those sort of devices.

Peter