[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Background selection in Journal

[James Cameron]

G'day,

Thanks for asking.

In 0.106 we have a background control panel which offers images from
either the system or the documents path.

So for the learner to use a photograph in the journal as background
they must open the journal, locate the photograph, copy it to the
documents directory, then switch to home view, and open the control
panel, choose background, and then locate the photograph again, where
it appears twice instead of once.

I'd like to see "Use as background" in the journal, because it is a
learner-desired method of a journal object, and the journal lists the
objects.  It will lower the barrier for learning and save time.

At the moment, the journal object context menu has Resume, Resume
with, Copy to, Duplicate, Send to, View Details, and Erase.

I'd like to see "Use as background" in this menu, or in the "Copy to"
submenu as you suggest.

Also, after or in combination with the above, I'd like to see "Choose
from journal" feature in the background control panel.  It will be a
redundant feature, providing an extra path to the same function.  We
already have several instances of redundant usage paths, and they
serve a good purpose.

I'd like to see either a button to press which opens the object
picker, or the background control panel to show three groups of
images; journal, documents, system.

There is an opportunity to review common uses of the object picker to
ensure they are all included in the journal object context menu.

The other questions you ask are uninteresting implementation details
unrelated to design:

- whether it qualifies as a Feature in the release process, instead of
  a defect, (to my mind it is a defect, because you will have added
  nothing new to Sugar, only fixed a learner experience problem),

- moving code around,

- access to background model by activities,

- whether to keep a redundant copy of the background separate to where
  it was chosen from.

-- 
James Cameron
http://quozl.linux.org.au/