On 27 May 2009, at 15:35, Sean DALY wrote: > Scenario 1: > > Let's say I'm a teacher reading about Sugar in a magazine. I consider > myself comfortable with computers, visit the web every day, but have > never used the command line. I've succeeded in downloading SoaS, > loading it onto a stick with the Fedora LiveUSB Creator and booting my > PC with it. I've tried a few Activities and am wondering what other > Activities are available. Later, back in Windows, I've visited > www.sugarlabs.org and found the Activities section. Browsing by > section, I find a couple of Activities that seem interesting. I've > clicked the pancake buttons and downloaded two .xo files and put them > on my hard disk where I usually store the attachments friends and > colleagues send me. > > > Scenario 2: > > A colleague has mentioned Sugar to me, talking about the OLPC project. > I have a Mac for ease of use and I never see a text screen. I visit > www.sugarlabs.org and after reading the "teachers" section with > interest, I return to the homepage and click on "Try Sugar with a > child today", arriving on the page that advises how to install for > each system; I click on the Apple icon. The boot helper instructions > seem complicated, but I find the VirtualBox OSX installation > instructions and get Sugar running. I'm intrigued by the Activities > and want to know if there are more, so I switch to my browser in the > other window, return to the Sugar Labs site and find a very > interesting-looking Activity in the website's Activities section. I > click the pancake button and download the .xo file to the Mac's > desktop. > > > ****************************** > Questions: > > 1) what are the teachers' next step? Would the procedures be different > for these two scenarii? > * No instructions I could locate on activities.sugarlabs.org :-( > * In the wiki section, I eventually located Activity Library and found > a page called End Users, but two of the three pages are blank and the > other one talks about a sandbox... > * The search engine doesn't help either, there are lots of documents > found but none give advice about how to add an Activity or update to a > more recent one. > > 2) I think we are assuming Activity installation from within Browse > under Sugar, but that method may be too much to assume for a newbie or > for someone with no net connectivity with Sugar... "automatic" if > connected though I don't remember if a new Activity arrives in the > list view or is a favorite... we need to communicate what to expect in > that case
Currently, installation of new Activities (via a GUI) is only via Browse on the system in question. > 3) Someone told me how to add an Activity by placing the .xo bundle in > a directory... but I can't find the mail :-( and CLI manipulations > daunting for many ordinary users If you are at the Sugar Terminal and have a .xo bundle accessible some place (perhaps you used the Terminal to scp/curl/wget/ftp the file from somewhere, or you are running Sugar in a Virtual Machine and are sharing some disk space with the host operating system where you've already downloaded an .xo bundle), the command you are after is: sugar-install-bundle <the_activity.xo> This will install and place the Activity icon in the home favourite view (though unlike downloading via Browse, there will be no record of this new bundle in your Journal). > 4) If I remember correctly, a collaborative Activity set to public > sharing is pushed out over the network to other Sugar machines. Are > those machines permanently updated with more recent versions, or > installed if new versions, or merely "borrowed" during the session? No unfortunately not. I had high hopes of this when I first read of the idea in the early Sugar days, a great way to virally spread/ distribute an Activity organically via peer to peer collaboration. But the feature has never been implemented (only sane to do in a world with Rainbow or some similar security blanket). It's worth noting that currently you only see shared Activities in the neighbourhood for Activities you already have installed. > 5) if there is a problem, is it possible to roll back to the previous > version of an Activity? If you have the previous Activity version as a bundle in your Journal still, I think so... (but will need to retest as it's been a while since I last tried this and things may have changed). Regards, --Gary > ****************************** > > any info appreciated. > > The Marketing Team can help write installation tips copy if necessary. > > thanks > > Sean > _______________________________________________ > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) > IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep