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

[lionel at olpc-france.org]

Hi Aleksey,

> 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 not
exactly
>  low aged kids (in comparing thih sugar-network-webui). It is Enyo2 based
pure JS application.

Hmmm, very impressive. A really ambitious project.
My project is lot of easier comparatively.


> 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.

Wow, your diagram on the Sugar API Network Objects is very complete. And
accessing Sugar from REST commands is a very cool idea.
But of course, the service should have to be hosted and started before the
first app.


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

Great.


> btw, are you thinking about creating something like sugar-toolkit.js
library to create cross-platform applications/sugar-activities?
> If yes, whats the teargeting workflow, HTML5/JS/Web integration to sugar
shell itself (and activities) or writing pure JS activities.

No, having a cross platform library is not an objective for me (see below).



>For example, if I would be an activity developer, I will prefer launching
my application in many environments as possible (including
Android/WebIS/iOS/etc), e.g.,
> from Sugar Shell and on Android after downloading it from particular
AppStore.

Yes, you're right. I'm a big fan of PhoneGap that allow easily writing cross
platform apps in this way.
BTW I'm convinced that we can't have a good level of integration in Sugar
with a cross platform framework. Lot of Sugar features are very specific
(Journal, Sharing, ...) and I don't think that a developer could fully adapt
its application to Sugar without a small amount of Python coding (10 to 15%
I guess). So, my idea is more to facilitate the conversion from HTML5/JS
than allowing development of a full Sugar application into JavaScript. It's
why I think more to an activity template as deliverable.


>  Sugar Network might be a direct analogy of AppStore to run real
cross-platform activities. In comparing with pure Python activities on Sugar
Network
> (synchronized from ASLO), the only thing that is required is a recent Web
browser, ie, it will work as-is on many platforms.

It make me think to the future Windows 8 Windows Store (I'm also a Windows 8
developer). In the Windows Store you can find Metro Apps but you can find
also some Desktop (old-fashioned Windows) apps. Your Sugar Network apps are
like Metro apps. My templated-apps are like Desktop apps :-)

	Lionel.