Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
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. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Stop Motion Animation?
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. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Teachers and researchers (miniconference?)
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)., ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Howto access an activity sub-directory?
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? ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Sugar emulation on Ubuntu!
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! ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
How to change the font size within a root console?
I have a hard time reading anything within the root console. How can I increase its font size? Thanks. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Activity conventions?
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. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
I have an OLPCGames SVG problem
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? ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: I have an OLPCGames SVG problem
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 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Animation/Python/PyGames vs battery charge
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. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Animation/Python/PyGames vs battery charge
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? ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
pyGame fonts
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 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
XO emulation?
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. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: A jabber hosting offer...
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. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Localization (translation) questions?
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. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Printing et al.
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. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Printing and the XO
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. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
