[Sugar-devel] Who wants to adopt the Clock activity?

[Gary C Martin]

Hi Pierre,

On 26 May 2009, at 02:24, Pierre Métras wrote:

> Hi Gary,
>
> I've read in a recent post in the Sugar IAEP list where you  
> explained how to
> make an activity adopted by the Activity Team. Are you part of this  
> team or
> how can I contact them without having to create a new account to be  
> able to
> post once on the IAEP list?
>
> Last year, I've developed the Clock Activity:
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Clock_activity
>
> It's a simple clock activity, with various displays: digital,  
> analog, simple
> or complex. There is an option to enable the talking clock mode to  
> help the
> child learn how to read the time, in French, English and Spanish.
> This activity has been deployed in Peru in a previous version.
>
> I've no more the time to maintain it and to move it to SugarLabs. I  
> would like
> to find another maintainer or maintainers to complete the move to  
> SugarLabs
> and eventually update the code.

Thanks for your email! Please consider Clock now adopted by the  
Activity team :-) I'll migrate it over to the Sugar Labs  
infrastructure in the next few days and make sure it gets into pootle.

> I had planned a few changes:
>
> - Put the PO files into Pootle to support more languages. The  
> talking feature
> is based on "time grammar" rules defined in the PO files. A small  
> inference
> engine is able to use these rules to write the time in full letters.  
> This
> allows to support new languages, written and spoken, without  
> touching the
> code. But it put the burden of creating the "time grammar" rules to  
> the
> translator. Since I didn't complete the Pootel integration, I don't  
> know if
> this design choice was valid...
>
> - The talking feature spawn a espeak process to read the time aloud.  
> I've seen
> that Sugar now integrates the espeak library and I think that  
> calling these
> methods would be a lighter solution for the XO constrained system.

Understood, seems like a nice feature, I can't initially offer more  
than basic migration and maintenance, but depending on time (no pun  
intended) I'll try to take a look at this and/or try and encourage  
other community members to help out (perhaps someone working in espeak  
looking to leverage/test their work).

> - There are a few tickets opened for the activity:
> http://bugs.laptop.org/ticket/9216
> http://bugs.laptop.org/ticket/9215

OK, will migrate these to dev.sugarlabs.org once the a Clock component  
is added.

> - Last, the activity has to be tested against the 8.2.1 code base.  
> Future
> plans were to see if the Clock could be integrated into the Sugar  
> border...

Thanks, will also test in current Sugar builds and various  
environments before releasing a bundle on activities.sugarlabs.org.  
Think we have the frame based clock covered now, here are a some  
working screen shots from Martin Dengler's frame device:

http://www.martindengler.com/tmp/screenshot_clock_device_frame-06_a6_a689bf1e-3f34-4da3-afed-aa910ab4f677.png
http://www.martindengler.com/tmp/screenshot_clock_device_frame-07_84_841da15d-9bd7-4fe4-aada-8e8ab723f806.png
http://www.martindengler.com/tmp/screenshot_clock_device_frame-08_4b_4ba1059e-4db9-4f22-8661-7916f6a167f8.png

And some recent mockups from Eben:

https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1085311/clock_digital_basic.jpg
https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1085311/clock_digital_settings.jpg
https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1085311/clock_digital_calendar.jpg
https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1085311/clock_analog.jpg

> I'm ready to assist and help the future maintainer, but no more time  
> to
> develop by myself. Of course, he can decide what the future of this  
> activity
> will be!

Once the source is in Gitorious it's very easy to clone the  
repository, hack about on some ideas, and then if they works out  
request a merge. So if you have the occasional slice of free time in  
the future it would be easy (and you'd be most welcome) to dip back in  
again with minimal commitment.

> Can you tell me who to contact to have this activity adopted?

Congratulations, you got lucky with your first email ;-)

Kind Regards,
--Gary

> Regards
> Pierre Métras