[Sugar-devel] Hacking on HTML activities UI (was Re: GSoC 13)

[lionel at olpc-france.org]

Hi Suraj,

 

To initialize your knowledge about the project, I can suggest you several
steps:

 

First, install Sugar on your computer. I understand that you're on Windows
but it's pretty easy to install SugarOnAStick in a Windows VirtualBox. It's
a good way to discover it. Have a look on [1] (in French but easy to
translate or follow steps using screen capture). 

 

Second, learn how Sugar activity are developed and packaged today. The
better introduction about that is in the great book of James, "Make your own
Sugar activities" [2]. It will be very interesting for you too to install
and explore the HelloWorld Activity [3] in your VirtualBox.

 

Third, explore the first experience of Sugar HTML5 activities I've wrote. A
chapter in the book "Make your own Sugar activities" talk about that [4].
Gridpaint [5] is one of the first activity to use this framework. Install it
and try to understand how it works: have specifically a look on Log (using
Log activity) then to Enyo.py and Sugar.js files.

 

Once you've done it, there is few issue with the current way of works of
this first Sugar HTML5 framework:

1.       It depends on "console-message" to interface WebKit and JavaScript.
It's a bad hack. This message could be deprecated on future version of
WebKit. We should work one another interface. Exploring PhoneGap/Cordoba way
of working for iOS (using a hidden Iframe) could be interesting.

2.       It depends of the standard Sugar Toolbar and HTML5 controls don't
have the Sugar Look&Feel. We want integrate the full Sugar UI into the Sugar
HTML5 framework. So we need CSS files and an API to match the Sugar controls
and features.

3.       It don't expose the Sugar feature into JavaScript. So each time the
HTML5 application want to call Sugar, it need to call Python code. The Sugar
HTML5 framework should expose natively main Sugar features: specifically
DataStore (read/write to Journal), telepathy (Collaboration).

4.       Finally, as you read in this thread, embedding a WebView is not
necessarily the best solution to write a Web activity. BTW as a first
approach to the problem, we could start with it.

 

Point 2 could be started very quickly. You just had to list all Sugar
Controls then think how they could be designed as HTML5 controls.

 

Lionel.

 

[1]
<http://olpc-france.org/blog/2013/02/decouvrez-sugar-depuis-votre-machine/>
http://olpc-france.org/blog/2013/02/decouvrez-sugar-depuis-votre-machine/

[2]  <http://www.flossmanuals.net/make-your-own-sugar-activities/>
http://www.flossmanuals.net/make-your-own-sugar-activities/

[3]  <http://activities.sugarlabs.org/fr/sugar/addon/4418>
http://activities.sugarlabs.org/fr/sugar/addon/4418

[4]
<http://en.flossmanuals.net/make-your-own-sugar-activities/developing-sugar-
activities-using-html5/>
http://en.flossmanuals.net/make-your-own-sugar-activities/developing-sugar-a
ctivities-using-html5/

[5]  <http://activities.sugarlabs.org/fr/sugar/addon/4647>
http://activities.sugarlabs.org/fr/sugar/addon/4647

 

 

 

De : suraj ks [mailto:suraj.gillespie at gmail.com] 
Envoyé : lundi 15 avril 2013 22:27
À : Daniel Narvaez; lionel at olpc-france.org
Cc : Sugar-dev Devel; Manuel Quiñones
Objet : Re: [Sugar-devel] Hacking on HTML activities UI (was Re: GSoC 13)

 

Ok,

 

In a nutshell,

These are the tasks for this project.

 

Going by the way Lionel suggested,

Create a sugar activity with full screen web view control.

Modify the current  js framework and make use of "native features" to be
able to write html activities in Sugar.

 

 

Lionel mentioned,

"The step 1 need only to map a set of JavaScript
functions to a set of Sugar functions. Once the list of Sugar functions is
write, it’s not very complex to do."
So find those functions and tweak them to support the same.



And of course, work on the UI part.

 

Please correct if I'm wrong.

 

Also, how are we going to get the JS and Sugar to communicate without the
console?

 

 

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