[Sugar-devel] Sugar Activity template for HTML5/Enyo

[Aleksey Lim]

On Sat, Aug 25, 2012 at 10:50:17PM +0200, lionel at olpc-france.org wrote:
>  
> 
> Hi all,
> 
>  
> 
> I've enhanced the work of Manuel Quinones to create an activity template
> using Enyo JavaScript Framework.
> 
>  
> 
> My objective was to provide a template to write a Sugar activity using HTML5
> but without losing advantage of the Sugar integration. Plus, I didn't want
> using a HTTP Server integrated into the activity like in the Wikipedia
> activity.

Hi, I also found that JS is a good option to have cross-platform environment
for easy starting applcations on all current mainstream systems (from
desktops to phones). Even that JS doesn't look, for me, as good as
Python. But having frameworks like Enyo2, that makes coding UI lot easier
(in Enyo, it looks like coding in domain language within the JS), this
might be a really good option to write cross-platform applications.

Right now, I'm working on Sugar Network Contributor Hub application [5]
that will be a place for people who need "doing" oriented interface and
exactly low aged kids (in comparing thih sugar-network-webui). It is
Enyo2 based pure JS application.

> Finally, using some WebKit tips & tricks (calling a JavaScript in the
> current page and console message handling), I finally conceived a simple
> framework that allow bi-directional communication between Python code and
> JavaScript code (using Enyo Framework). You could find the resulting source
> code from this framework here [1] for Python and here [2] for JavaScript.

I'm following a bit differnt way. JS applcation is working with outer
world only using RESTful api. This api might provided by either Sugar
Network server[6] (and it is possible to run Hub applcation as-is even
on Andriod) or local sugar-network-service (and client side needs to
have it launched). In the last case, local service does extra work (providing
it as RESTful api) like access to Journal, access to Sugar Network data
in home directory and on mounted devices, caching images.

The developing process is just started, but I'm planing to present some
useful features in Sep. for Sugar Network deployment pilot in Peru.

To see how it looks right now, clone sources:

    git clone git://git.sugarlabs.org/network/contributor-hub.git
    cd contributor-hub
    git submodule init
    git submodule update

It will fetch Enyo submodules and network/client-js library created to
simplify access to Sugar Network for JS (but right now, only for Enyo2)
applications.

To launch application just open index.html from cloned root directory.


[5] http://git.sugarlabs.org/network/contributor-hub
[6] http://api-testing.network.sugarlabs.org/
[7] http://git.sugarlabs.org/network/client-js

-- 
Aleksey