Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming

2008-04-08 Thread Kent Loobey
Here is my two cents on this subject.

start-of-rant

I worked for over ten years on a project that shipped software to states for 
localization and redistribution to their schools every fall.

The following was true all of those years.

The people that did the redistribution wanted a predictable schedule of when 
the software would arrive so that they could plan their work accordingly.

The states did localization and training on each release so they needed to 
know what was going to change ahead of time.

Bug fixes that fixed show stopping bugs were welcome at any time.

They REALLY REALLY did not want to get releases at arbitrary times.

They were much more interested in things working than in getting the lastest 
wiz-bang feature.

end-of-rant

It seems to me that having two releases each year would allow a region to 
select the ONE that ties into their new school year the best.  To avoid use 
of any one calendar the ship dates could be on the solstices. 
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Stop Motion Animation?

2008-04-02 Thread Kent Loobey
From: Re: [PyCON-Organizers] 2009 volunteers, etc.
Teleconferencing using the XO's built-in camera is doable in Record at
a reasonable frame rate, except that it isn't currently set up for
continuous transmission. I'm pretty sure that Mary Lou Jepsen can come
up with a clip-on wide-angle lens for under two dollars for group
sessions. We can have the video and audio on one XO, and shared
programming on some number of others. Or whatever.

Please include in this request that Mary Lou Jepsen also consider a 
fiber-optic cable extension for the video lens so that the XO could 
conveniently be used for stop motion animation.  It might also make it 
possible to use the extension as a microscope.

Thanks.
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Re: Teachers and researchers (miniconference?)

2008-03-30 Thread Kent Loobey
Relax teachers!  No laptop will ever replace the good a good teacher can do 
for a student.

What a laptop / activity / software / internet can do is make available to a 
student information / resources / experience that any particular teacher does 
not have / know / have-access.

What I have been told by good-intentioned / over-worked / bigoted / dumb / 
ignorant teachers is don't-think-about-it / no-one-knows-about-it / 
we-don't-do-that / learning-about-it-is-dangerous / etc. / etc. / etc.

What I believe a laptop / activity / software / internet can do is facilitate 
empowerment.

empowerment. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 
Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 30 Mar. 2008. Dictionary.com 
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/empowerment.

To equip or supply with an ability; enable: Computers ... empower students 
to become intellectual explorers (Edward B. Fiske)., 
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Howto access an activity sub-directory?

2008-03-28 Thread Kent Loobey
I am trying to get at a resource in my activities fonts sub-directory.  My 
activity finds it just fine when running under Sugar but can't find it with 
the same code when running in a shell.

self.fontPath = os.path.join( 'fonts', 'DesiredResouce.ttf' )
self.desiredFont = pygame.font.Font( self.fontPath, 96 )

Any suggestions?
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Sugar emulation on Ubuntu!

2008-03-18 Thread Kent Loobey
Jani Monoses is THE MAN!!!

His Ubuntu package for the Sugar emulator is fantastic!

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar_on_Ubuntu_Linux#Option_3_-_Deb_Packages_for_Gutsy

Thank you!  Thank you!  Thank you!
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How to change the font size within a root console?

2008-02-12 Thread Kent Loobey
I have a hard time reading anything within the root console.  How can I 
increase its font size?

Thanks.
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Activity conventions?

2008-02-05 Thread Kent Loobey
Can someone point me to a list of the OLPC Activity conventions.

I just got my XO an hour or so ago and I have already noticed some 
inconsistencies in the way activities close/exit.

I want to make sure that the activities I write are consistent with the OLPC 
conventions.

I am writing in Python but I would think that the conventions would be 
universal but then ya never know.

Thanks. 
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I have an OLPCGames SVG problem

2008-02-02 Thread Kent Loobey
I am new to both Python and SVG.  I have taken some sample code from OLPCGames 
and made a test program.  I have created an svg file using Inkscape.  if I 
use the sample activity.svg file it displays okay but if I use the file I 
made it does not.

What Linux software can create SVG files that olpcgames svgsprite can process?
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Re: I have an OLPCGames SVG problem

2008-02-02 Thread Kent Loobey
On Saturday 02 February 2008 06:51:39 Mike C. Fletcher wrote:
 Kent Loobey wrote:
  I am new to both Python and SVG.  I have taken some sample code from
  OLPCGames and made a test program.  I have created an svg file using
  Inkscape.  if I use the sample activity.svg file it displays okay but
  if I use the file I made it does not.
 
  What Linux software can create SVG files that olpcgames svgsprite can
  process?

 I use Inkscape for producing svg files.  Can you tell *how* it is
 failing?  

I stopped using my code and just made a copy of svgspritetest.activity.  I am 
using it instead and just trying different SVG files that I am making.

At this point my problem seems to be one of color.  I have since learned that 
the colors of my original images were not distinguishable.  I seem to 
remember somewhere that you all are using a 16 bit palette.  It could be that 
I am making images that are 32 bit and when it maps them to 16 bit they 
change.  I say this because I made some new images with more colors in them 
and they now display with distorted color in svgspritetest.activity.

The colors are just wrong, i.e., Red shows up as blue for example.  This leads 
me to believe that all my images have been displayed but that I can't see 
some of them because they have been mapped to the same color as the 
background.

I am not sure what to do about this.

 Is there an exception showing up in the log viewer?  

No.

 Or is it just silently showing nothing?

My initial images did not show anything.

 Is your size such that the image would show up on-screen?

My initial images were 48x48 pixels.  The activity.svg image included with 
svgspritetest.activity is 45x45.

 SVGSprite will try to guess a size based on the 
 embedded declared size of the image, so it's possible your image is
 actually showing up, but you're just seeing the (blank) corner of it.

 Under the covers we're just using rsvg to do the rendering, so it should
 be able to handle most SVG files.

 Good luck,
 Mike


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Re: Animation/Python/PyGames vs battery charge

2008-01-30 Thread Kent Loobey
The stuff I am writing is interactive animation.  That is to say the activity 
responses are animated.  There may be intentional delays while the child is 
given time to consider a response.  If the delay is long the activity may 
give additional information or encouragement to facilitate the child's 
response.  I was looking for a way to minimize energy consumption while 
waiting for the child to respond.

On Wednesday 30 January 2008 00:04:27 Rózsás Gödény wrote:
 Hi

  I suspect that the best thing you can do to reduce power is to make
  sure that your game doesn't do anything when it isn't the frontmost
  thing on the screen.  I.e. if the window that you're drawing in is
  totally obscured, then don't run ANYTHING -- no game animations, but
  also no background world-simulating stuff, and little or no network
  activity.  Resume activity once the user brings your game to the front
  again.  Don't wake up periodically and do anything; be sure to do
  NOTHING.
 
  Ensuring this background-idle behavior will not only allow the
  activity that's frontmost to get 100% of the CPU cycles.  It will also
  allow the XO to suspend and power down if that frontmost activity goes
  idle.  (If you're chewing up CPU in the background, the system won't
  auto-suspend.)

 Maybe sugar could suspend those activities which are in the background
 so the activities don't have to worry about it. Also it would be fool
 proof.


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Animation/Python/PyGames vs battery charge

2008-01-28 Thread Kent Loobey
I have set up some test animation code.

Normally games try to take all the cycles they can get.

I am trying to preserve as much battery energy as I can.

So I am setting a specific frame rate and sleeping beyond what it takes to 
maintain that frame rate.

Do you think this will actually reduce the drain on the XO battery?

In other words What does the XO do when apps sleep?
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pyGame fonts

2008-01-16 Thread Kent Loobey
Hi All,

I have programmed for years but am new to Python and localization.

I am clueless at this point on how to get/use fonts within Python.  I am also 
clueless as to what process to use to make sure that the fonts can be 
localized.

Is there some sample code around that demonstrates how this is done within the 
OLPC Universe?

Thanks.

Kent


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XO emulation?

2008-01-09 Thread Kent Loobey
My XO is on order and I don't know when it will arrive.

I have filled my main system up with crap trying to get an XO emulator to 
work.

I now have a system just for XO emulation.

So which OS/QEMU/VM works best.

I am really tired of working on this problem.  I want to get on with XO 
development.  Any suggestions will be appreciated.
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Re: A jabber hosting offer...

2008-01-06 Thread Kent Loobey
On Sunday 06 January 2008 12:46:42 Edward Cherlin wrote:
 On Jan 5, 2008 9:01 PM, drew einhorn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 In fact, I think we need a Social Networking Web site specifically for
 the children, protected from adults who might want to interfere or
 exploit children. And a site for teachers, parents, and other
 interested parties. Would anybody here like to help create such sites?

I think we (I) need a network of teachers that can respond to software 
developer questions.
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Localization (translation) questions?

2008-01-05 Thread Kent Loobey
Where is the best place to ask localization questions?

I am creating an activity for pre-literate children.  Two questions come to 
mind.

1. I will have sound entries that will need to be translated.  How do the 
translators want this to be laid out for them.
2. Since some images may not be meaningful/appropriate universally, How do 
locallators want this to be laid out for them.

Maybe this is all described somewhere.  If so could someone point me in the 
right direction.

Thanks.
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Re: Printing et al.

2008-01-04 Thread Kent Loobey
This is such a hard issue to generalize about.

Back before, I worked for a company that developed software for the education 
market.  When we asked the administrators that bought our products if they 
wanted printing ability they said no but if we asked the teachers in the 
class room they said yes.  We never included printing as a feature in our 
software because the teachers didn't make the buying decision.

My daughter has spent several years in Africa.  It is hard for us to 
appreciate how hard it will be for some areas to get anything extra.  Paper, 
printers, tonor cartrdges, and usb drives are as out of reach to them as are 
computers at this moment.

I could be wrong of course.  Back before was ten years ago and the situation 
may have changed and I have never been to Africa.
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Re: Printing and the XO

2008-01-03 Thread Kent Loobey
  Which teachers or schools have been asking for printing support?

A few years ago I went to a tech for education conference in Portland Oregon.

The teachers at that conference only wanted programs that had the ability to 
print out student work.

Printing is necessary for the public display of student work.

This is necessary when you want a record of what the student has done as well 
as when you want to show others what the student has done.

At that time students worked on lab computers so a method of taking examples 
of student work home was needed.

Also it was a way of building a portfolio to justify the use of computers in 
the classroom.
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