[somos-azucar] [HARMONIC] Harmonic Distribution 0.2 development release

[Aleksey Lim]

Hi all!


== Preamble ==

This is the second development release of projects that form
Harmonic Distribution[1] effort. The Harmonic Distribution, in short[7],
is a software stack, services and procedures that are intended to support
Sugar Learning Platform for individual usage and/or deployments.

The Harmonic Distribution consists of two major parts:

(1) Sweets Distribution[4]
    native packages with base software

(2) Sugar Network[5]
    content delivering and social collaboration distributed platform

The downstream distribution, Hexoquinasa, 0.2 announcement notes
(in Spanish) that make more clear deployment part:

    http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/somosazucar/2012-May/001082.html

This project was started during the Sugar Camp in Lima in 2011-11-18 and
being in development stage starting from that time. The development work
is full time by 1-3 developers. The work is sponsored by developers
themselves and donations from community members. The plan[3] is creating
full cycle deployment platform during the 2012 year.

== Offtopic ==

The important thing that needs to be mentioned, is that this project
(alongside with other, not-only-software, projects like setting up Sugar
community in Peru or creating deployment oriented distribution,
Hexoquinasa[2], Harmonic Distribution based project) was initiated and
being proceeded as a community project:

* people were gathering to [start] solve particular problems
  (Sugar Camp in Lima) with lack on translation Sugar GUI to local
  languages;
* the obvious continuation of this work was decision to set up, also as
  a [Peruvian] community driven process, Sugar deployment, e.g.,
  Puno Escuelab official entity was created to proceed educational
  deployment in region of Puno;
* the work is being supported in crowdfunding manner by donations from
  community members.

Having these kinds of support from the community (not only Peruvian),
will make it possible to complete the Harmonic Distribution 1.0[3] plan
to have a proven solution to setup Sugar based educational deployment,
so any other communities might reuse this experience to setup new Sugar
deployment in their regions.

By the way, the crowdfunding way with targeted donations (to particular
projects, like it is happening in Peru) might be really useful to reproduce
on global Sugar Labs level. For example, people will know what kinds of
projects are in process/planing right now, and will have a chance to
speed up some of them.

== New in this release ==

(1) Sugar Network client application improvements
    * current GUI is localized to Spanish
      (see 0.3 TODO, the translation process should be setup on
      translation.sugarlabs.org site)
    * it is possible to create ideas, problems associated with Contexts
      (right now only Sugar Activities), browse them
    * usability and performance improvements

(2) Since this software is being planed to use in the field, the
    reliable work of collaboration code (that had some regressions from
    0.88) is needed; some part of this code was improved; the good way
    in testing how it is stable is comparing it with Sugar 0.88

(3) The Home view shows ~/Activities activities. The underlying code is
    integrated with the Sugar Network, e.g., if Sugar Network client
    will make some activity offline accessible (i.e., copy it to
    ~/Activities directory), it will appear in the Home view. Current
    implementation is in initial stage and will be improved in next
    releases

(4) Repositories with packages are available on recently released
    Ubuntu-12.04 (right now only Factory repository, the stable Sweets
    Distribution 0.94 depository will be available soon).

== How to get the release ==

Follow regular Sweets Distribution instructions to setup Factory
repository and start using it on supported platforms[6]:

    http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sweets_Distribution#Installation
    http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sweets_Distribution#Usage

Right after installation, Sugar Network integration will be disabled, to
enable it:

    http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Sweets_Distribution/Factory/Features#Sugar_Network_integration

Within the Hexoquinasa project, there will be available XO images
for students and teacher (teachers servers) soon.

Note that activities that are being provided via the Sugar Network right
now, are for testing purposes and not intended to work properly. The XO
server images will contain limited number of activities that should
work. In any case, the QA related work is being planed to implemented on
Sugar Network level itself and initial implementation is targeted to
Harmonic Distribution 0.3 that should be released at the end of this
month.

== Credits ==

* Peruvian community that supports this work. Especially by exposing the real need
  in such kind projects and help with making deployment (of Harmonic Distribution
  based project[2]) possible.
* World wide community members who donated funds to make full time
  working possible.
* People from mailing lists and IRC channels who are helping in
  development process.


[1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Harmonic_Distribution
[2] http://pe.sugarlabs.org/go/Proyecto_Piloto_Hexoquinasa
[3] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Harmonic_Distribution/1.0/Roadmap
[4] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sweets_Distribution
[5] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Network
[6] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Harmonic_Distribution/Supported_platforms#Map
[7] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Glossary#Platform_Team

-- 
Aleksey