[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Examples objects support for activities.

[Gonzalo Odiard]

Hello Tincho! Nice to read you here again :)

I agree this can be a very good addition, and I see think we need
solve two different parts:

1) Access the examples in the activities: using a widget similar to
the object chooser,
but showing files in a directory. I think Silbe said, the actual
Object Chooser can't do it,
due to limitations in the actual Journal implementation. (Sascha, can
you confirm?)
Probably we can create a a similar widget if is not possible use the
original ObjectChooser,
and should be great can show a preview if available.

2) Distribution of examples: This can be more controversial, but is
related and should be good
address in a related proposal. Today, there are activities as Turtle
Confusion or Amazonas Tortugas,
based on TurtleArt and may be can be data files added to TurtleArt.
Also, if we provide a way to distribute
examples, the deployments could generate them based in local needs.
Other activities can be enhanced
using examples, and if they have text should be difficult support i18n
in the data files.
May be we can create a variation of the infamous XOL files, with the
information about what activity
should manage them, and improve the installation to install them in a
different place than Library
(or the activities can look at the Library for examples)

Gonzalo

On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 2:40 PM, Martin Abente
<martin.abente.lahaye at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Everyone:
>
> In a recent conversation with Walter, he mentioned that it would be very
> useful if activities could include examples objects. From my experience in
> the field, I can tell this feature can be a really useful indeed. Therefore
> I would like to bring this idea to the general discussion and see what
> others think.
>
> The idea is  simple: Activities include examples objects that can be bundled
> with and accessed from the activity.
>
> For the ones that also think this could be useful: I am sure you must have
> your own vision of how this feature should work and look like, so please
> share it here.
>
> In general terms and from my POV it should be something:
>
> (a) simple to access.
> (b) with a familiar interface to the users.
> (c) low-cost for activities developers to include.
> (d) Safe.
>
> One of the ideas, that meets these requirements, is to include a standard
> "Examples" folder in the activities root directory that would be accessible
> through a regular ObjetChooser. The ObjectChooser is already capable of
> presenting any folder's contents, thanks to recent years improvement in the
> journal to present external-media and documents-folder contents.
>
> Accessing to these objects would be as easy as just opening a ObjectChooser
> instance, many activities already do this (but limited to journal content).
> As I just said, the ObjectChooser interface is widely used, therefore users
> are already familiar with it. To ease the costs for activities developers I
> think that having this standard folder approach is crucial. One open
> question I still have is how this ObjectChooser should  be opened from the
> activities in a standard way (suggestions?). By "safe" I mean that it should
> guarantee that it only presents this standard folder objects in read-only
> mode (at least from the GUI POV).
>
> I will stop here and I would like to hear what you guys think regarding the
> general idea first.
>
> Saludos.
> tincho.
>
>
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