Re: [sugar] Write needs your help (was Re: Programming environments on the XO)
On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 12:11 AM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 4:51 PM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yes, I agree that this is a goal that makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, my experience says that the approach you are suggesting won't be less work than what we are doing right now, because the software components you mentioned aren't so easily malleable as you seem to think. Your argument might be correct for Abiword (I haven't look at the code) but are completely off-base for Firefox, which is based on a very sophisticated XUL/Javascript/XML based extensibility framework, with far better developer support than we currently have for Python. Well, with our current model, you can develop extensions in C++, JS and python in the same way you would do it for firefox or any other xulrunner-based app. And you can use those extensions as well in any of those apps if it makes any sense. So I think in this regard we are doing things as you are asking. About using XUL instead of the usual pygtk-based activity stuff, I really cannot see how it would help us. I don't see any advantage but see lots of code that would need to be rewritten. Can you enumerate the advantages you see by moving to use the XUL stuff? I guess you are suggesting to do something similar to Songbird. Thanks, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Write needs your help (was Re: Programming environments on the XO)
For Firefox, that means (for example) that we can use upstreams Awesome Bar instead of reimplementing our own url completion. For abiword, it means acknowledging that a lot of our initial Tubes port was/is simply unnecessary now that we have a stream-based collaboration mechanism, and we can/should be able to strip down Write as a consequence. Iirc, the collaboration code in Write itself is already tiny these days. Or did I miss something spectacular that changes the way collaboration on the XO works? Marc ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Write needs your help (was Re: Programming environments on the XO)
On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 10:16:07AM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote: If we cannot bring all the abiword potential to Sugar's Write, we risk someone will start asking for running unsugarized OpenOffice or Abiword on the XO, just as happened with Browse :/ Given the quantity of free software available for Linux distributions relative to the quantity of available sugarized applications, I believe that repeats of this pattern will be inevitable. As I understand, there are a variety of problems with the use of unsugarized applications: - UI issues because of high screen dpi and small size. - Journal integration. - Resource utilization. - Bitfröst and security concerns. - Collaboration. I expect there are others and would be happy to know them so that I better understand this problem. --- By simplifying Journal integration and collaboration, the following steps might improve our ability to support unsugarized apps without sacrificing much in the way of user experience. To simplify Journal/datastore integration: *) Remove the Bitfröst application isolation scheme or modify it such that Activities could write to arbitrary locations in which the olpc user has write permissions. This would allow unsugarized activities to write to places they (as Linux apps) expect to be able to write, such as /home/olpc/ (e.g. for configuration settings and saving user files). *) Make the Journal a watcher and indexer instead of a gatekeeper to the user's data so that applications no longer need to be ported to write data and metadata via the datastore API. We could use inotify(7) to add a watch to the user's home directory. The watching application (Journal) could hold a table of typically used files - Activities / applications. We would still require work to establish which frequently changed files (configuration files, caches) we should be ignoring, and to set default save directories. If a kid writes a file to a very strange place, inotify handlers will allow the journal to keep track of it. Existing code (used for similar indexing applications on Linux desktop systems) could be used to glean file metadata. After modified files are located and metadata gleaned, the Journal would be free to play the same role as it currently does. To provide a fallback, base-level collaboration system: *) Offer a collaboration directory in the user's /home/olpc/, such that simple filesharing can take place. This directory could be managed similarly (reactively to user-driven events) using inotify and a collaboration daemon which manages the broadcast and sharing of files. I'm imagining a network-shared directory such as those found in systems such as NFS, sshfs, samba, etc. --- These are just shiny ideas. I thought I would posit them publicly for eventual comment. Erik ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Write needs your help (was Re: Programming environments on the XO)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Erik Garrison wrote: | On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 10:16:07AM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote: | Given the quantity of free software available for Linux distributions | relative to the quantity of available sugarized applications, I believe | that repeats of this pattern will be inevitable. I am not so sure. Given the tremendous amount of crappy duplicate software, I suspect that we only need to execute a handful of ports to achieve complete functionality. Conversely, there is no good Free video editor for Linux, easy 3D modeler, numerical analysis environment so in many cases, there's simply nothing to port. | As I understand, there are a variety of problems with the use of | unsugarized applications: | | - UI issues because of high screen dpi and small size. | - Journal integration. | - Resource utilization. | - Bitfröst and security concerns. | - Collaboration. | | I expect there are others and would be happy to know them so that I | better understand this problem. The biggest one, much higher on my list than any of the above, is incompatibility with the Activity launching mechanism and window manager. ~ Because of this issue, standard X/Linux applications that have been correctly repackaged as .xo bundles won't even start. It appears that switching to the Freedesktop.org startup notification system and a modified metacity window manager may be able to resolve this. | To simplify Journal/datastore integration: | | *) Remove the Bitfröst application isolation scheme or modify it such | that Activities could write to arbitrary locations in which the olpc | user has write permissions. It is already the case that every activity can write to $HOME, which is currently set equal to $SUGAR_ACTIVITY_ROOT/instance/ . This was not always the case, but in any recent build this is not a problem. | *) Make the Journal a watcher and indexer instead of a gatekeeper to | the user's data so that applications no longer need to be ported to | write data and metadata via the datastore API. In my view, the principal reason that this has not been done is that the Journal does not support multiple-file entries. We could tar up all files created into a .tar file, but what is its mime type, and how do you access its contents? Once the datastore supports multi-file entries, it will be trivial to save all created files after each session. | To provide a fallback, base-level collaboration system: | | *) Offer a collaboration directory in the user's /home/olpc/, such that | simple filesharing can take place. I am not sure what you envision here, but I would caution that the difficulty in sharing files is in the low-level network and high-level GUI design. TCP on the mesh has been problematic (#6463), and users cannot be expected to make use of a sharing mechanism that operates only at the command line. - --Ben -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkh/g/QACgkQUJT6e6HFtqTKVgCgka7WH2Q0AdmOFX4QMCC4eBXT 5pEAoJ3kh0eH8Y0IP6Zul8GYxqsaqFIn =WGf+ -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Write needs your help (was Re: Programming environments on the XO)
On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 7:02 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 10:16:07AM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote: If we cannot bring all the abiword potential to Sugar's Write, we risk someone will start asking for running unsugarized OpenOffice or Abiword on the XO, just as happened with Browse :/ Given the quantity of free software available for Linux distributions relative to the quantity of available sugarized applications, I believe that repeats of this pattern will be inevitable. Sorry, I wasn't clear above. I wasn't meaning that running unsugarized apps wasn't a desirable thing, just that I believe that activities like Write and Browse bring important value to our mission and would be a pity if these efforts get lost. As I understand, there are a variety of problems with the use of unsugarized applications: - UI issues because of high screen dpi and small size. - Journal integration. - Resource utilization. - Bitfröst and security concerns. - Collaboration. I expect there are others and would be happy to know them so that I better understand this problem. The one I mentioned above, that we can offer a better experience to our users than the one currently offered by existing desktops and apps. By simplifying Journal integration and collaboration, the following steps might improve our ability to support unsugarized apps without sacrificing much in the way of user experience. To simplify Journal/datastore integration: *) Remove the Bitfröst application isolation scheme or modify it such that Activities could write to arbitrary locations in which the olpc user has write permissions. This would allow unsugarized activities to write to places they (as Linux apps) expect to be able to write, such as /home/olpc/ (e.g. for configuration settings and saving user files). You mean abandoning any of the security goals? *) Make the Journal a watcher and indexer instead of a gatekeeper to the user's data so that applications no longer need to be ported to write data and metadata via the datastore API. We could use inotify(7) to add a watch to the user's home directory. The watching application (Journal) could hold a table of typically used files - Activities / applications. We would still require work to establish which frequently changed files (configuration files, caches) we should be ignoring, and to set default save directories. If a kid writes a file to a very strange place, inotify handlers will allow the journal to keep track of it. Existing code (used for similar indexing applications on Linux desktop systems) could be used to glean file metadata. After modified files are located and metadata gleaned, the Journal would be free to play the same role as it currently does. I would love to move to such an scheme, these are the unsolved (for me) issues: - versioning (solved if we use olpcfs?) - consistency inside entries: most probably we'll need several files to represent a single journal entry. The journal thus would need to know when an entry has been fully written so it can be properly presented in the UI. Not too much ;) To provide a fallback, base-level collaboration system: *) Offer a collaboration directory in the user's /home/olpc/, such that simple filesharing can take place. This directory could be managed similarly (reactively to user-driven events) using inotify and a collaboration daemon which manages the broadcast and sharing of files. I'm imagining a network-shared directory such as those found in systems such as NFS, sshfs, samba, etc. Well, once we can share any entry or object from the journal, would we need something like that? Thanks for bringing this issues again, we surely need to keep banging on them. Regards, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Write needs your help (was Re: Programming environments on the XO)
On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 11:10 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Erik Garrison wrote: | On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 10:16:07AM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote: | Given the quantity of free software available for Linux distributions | relative to the quantity of available sugarized applications, I believe | that repeats of this pattern will be inevitable. I am not so sure. Given the tremendous amount of crappy duplicate software, I suspect that we only need to execute a handful of ports to achieve complete functionality. Conversely, there is no good Free video editor for Linux, easy 3D modeler, numerical analysis environment so in many cases, there's simply nothing to port. | As I understand, there are a variety of problems with the use of | unsugarized applications: | | - UI issues because of high screen dpi and small size. | - Journal integration. | - Resource utilization. | - Bitfröst and security concerns. | - Collaboration. | | I expect there are others and would be happy to know them so that I | better understand this problem. The biggest one, much higher on my list than any of the above, is incompatibility with the Activity launching mechanism and window manager. ~ Because of this issue, standard X/Linux applications that have been correctly repackaged as .xo bundles won't even start. It appears that switching to the Freedesktop.org startup notification system and a modified metacity window manager may be able to resolve this. Could you point me towards such a .xo bundle ? I will love to test it out against a modified metacity based sugar environment. Thanks, Sayamindu -- Sayamindu Dasgupta [http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings] ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Write needs your help (was Re: Programming environments on the XO)
It might be a good longer-term focus to see if we could get some of the Bitfrost ideas pushed upstream rather than diluting them. It has applicability well beyond OLPC and Sugar. -walter On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 2:33 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: These are suggestions with a longterm focus. On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 01:02:04PM -0400, Erik Garrison wrote: On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 10:16:07AM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote: If we cannot bring all the abiword potential to Sugar's Write, we risk someone will start asking for running unsugarized OpenOffice or Abiword on the XO, just as happened with Browse :/ Given the quantity of free software available for Linux distributions relative to the quantity of available sugarized applications, I believe that repeats of this pattern will be inevitable. As I understand, there are a variety of problems with the use of unsugarized applications: - UI issues because of high screen dpi and small size. - Journal integration. - Resource utilization. - Bitfröst and security concerns. - Collaboration. I expect there are others and would be happy to know them so that I better understand this problem. --- By simplifying Journal integration and collaboration, the following steps might improve our ability to support unsugarized apps without sacrificing much in the way of user experience. To simplify Journal/datastore integration: *) Remove the Bitfröst application isolation scheme or modify it such that Activities could write to arbitrary locations in which the olpc user has write permissions. This would allow unsugarized activities to write to places they (as Linux apps) expect to be able to write, such as /home/olpc/ (e.g. for configuration settings and saving user files). *) Make the Journal a watcher and indexer instead of a gatekeeper to the user's data so that applications no longer need to be ported to write data and metadata via the datastore API. We could use inotify(7) to add a watch to the user's home directory. The watching application (Journal) could hold a table of typically used files - Activities / applications. We would still require work to establish which frequently changed files (configuration files, caches) we should be ignoring, and to set default save directories. If a kid writes a file to a very strange place, inotify handlers will allow the journal to keep track of it. Existing code (used for similar indexing applications on Linux desktop systems) could be used to glean file metadata. After modified files are located and metadata gleaned, the Journal would be free to play the same role as it currently does. To provide a fallback, base-level collaboration system: *) Offer a collaboration directory in the user's /home/olpc/, such that simple filesharing can take place. This directory could be managed similarly (reactively to user-driven events) using inotify and a collaboration daemon which manages the broadcast and sharing of files. I'm imagining a network-shared directory such as those found in systems such as NFS, sshfs, samba, etc. --- These are just shiny ideas. I thought I would posit them publicly for eventual comment. Erik ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Write needs your help (was Re: Programming environments on the XO)
Edward Cherlin wrote: On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 12:10 PM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 8:58 PM, Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 1:16 AM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The abi devs have also asked for help in testing Write with non-latin scripts, this is something of high importance for OLPC. I can do that. OK, Cyrillic works. I just entered every key on the layout, upper and lower case. I'll get you lots more writing systems later today. I am _not_ going to test every Chinese character %-[. Which version are you testing? I would say that downloading an Abiword binary 2.6.4 from abisource.com may be best, as that's the version that I hope we'll use in Write for 8.2.0. I'll see about that. Right now I am using Write 55-0ubuntu1, which doesn't say what version it is in those terms. http://abisource.com/wiki/Install_on_Ubuntu is out of date. It says 2.4.6 was in Gutsy, and that 2.6 should have been in Hardy, but what I see is Abiword 2.4.6-3ubuntu3. What actually happened? That's not out of date: Ubuntu ships horribly outdated versions of AbiWord. For a recent (2.6 series) build follow those instructions to add the PPA that we maintain. (Yes, if you don't add our repository, the most recent you can get is the same 2.4.6 that they've had for a long time.) -- Ryan Pavlik www.cleardefinition.com #282 + (442) - [X] A programmer started to cuss Because getting to sleep was a fuss As he lay there in bed Looping 'round in his head was: while(!asleep()) sheep++; ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Write needs your help (was Re: Programming environments on the XO)
On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 9:37 PM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Lots of reasonable points made on this thread. The two cents I'd like to throw in are: $0.01: we shouldn't feel like shipping unsugarized apps is a failure: better an working app w/ crappy UI than no working app at all! $0.02: my suggestion to replace Browse wasn't to eliminate the sugar-specific UI work, simply to suggest that we could more profitably base it on Firefox than Gecko. Similarly, minimizing the differences between upstream Abiword and write is (IMO) a Good Thing. We should keep our forks as small as possible, so that we can most effectively use the work being done upstream. For Firefox, that means (for example) that we can use upstreams Awesome Bar instead of reimplementing our own url completion. For abiword, it means acknowledging that a lot of our initial Tubes port was/is simply unnecessary now that we have a stream-based collaboration mechanism, and we can/should be able to strip down Write as a consequence. It's possible that we can most fully utilize Abiword/GTK's theme mechanism to make Sugar UI upstreamable as well. Again, the point is to reduce our diffs with upstream. Yes, I agree that this is a goal that makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, my experience says that the approach you are suggesting won't be less work than what we are doing right now, because the software components you mentioned aren't so easily malleable as you seem to think. Check out the sources for abiword and gnumeric and grep for MAEMO, do you think those projects will let everyone add their ifdefs to suit their UI choices? Checkout microb-engine from maemo, they include their own patched mozilla. This approach might work well for Nokia and their dozens of engineers working on Maemo, but for the Sugar guys? At this time we would be even more insane than we are and we would have provided a much worst experience to kids. Seriously, embedding a gtk widget like the ones we have in Read, Write and Browse gives a pretty sweet spot in customizability. Adding some buttons and calling methods on that widget is not hard, we actually reuse all the hard work in the upstream project while choosing carefully the way in which we expose that functionality to users. If we count the amount of man-hours that went into those activities and told the nokia executives in charge of maemo, I think that they would be quite surprised... And then, having children and activity authors in general being able to read the code and embed those widgets in their python activities... that's invaluable, in my opinion. A maemo-tinkerer would need to set up a build box in order to add a button to the toolbar of one of those apps. Regards, Tomeu (sorry if I have offended anyone regarding Maemo. I know little about it, just have seen how they integrate with upstream projects and wanted to make the point that this wouldn't work for us) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Write needs your help (was Re: Programming environments on the XO)
On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 9:44 PM, Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 12:10 PM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 8:58 PM, Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 1:16 AM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The abi devs have also asked for help in testing Write with non-latin scripts, this is something of high importance for OLPC. I can do that. OK, Cyrillic works. I just entered every key on the layout, upper and lower case. I'll get you lots more writing systems later today. I am _not_ going to test every Chinese character %-[. Which version are you testing? I would say that downloading an Abiword binary 2.6.4 from abisource.com may be best, as that's the version that I hope we'll use in Write for 8.2.0. I'll see about that. Right now I am using Write 55-0ubuntu1, which doesn't say what version it is in those terms. http://abisource.com/wiki/Install_on_Ubuntu is out of date. It says 2.4.6 was in Gutsy, and that 2.6 should have been in Hardy, but what I see is Abiword 2.4.6-3ubuntu3. What actually happened? But is the question testing stock Abiword or Write? Or do you want me to do both? Sorry, what I meant is that, ideally, we would be testing Write in joyride with the 2.6.4 version. As we don't have that version in joyride yet, I think the closest we can do is testing Abiword 2.6.4. Regarding language support, I expect it to be the same as Write, but as always, it's better to test what is going to be delivered. Thanks, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Write needs your help (was Re: Programming environments on the XO)
On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 4:51 PM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yes, I agree that this is a goal that makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, my experience says that the approach you are suggesting won't be less work than what we are doing right now, because the software components you mentioned aren't so easily malleable as you seem to think. Your argument might be correct for Abiword (I haven't look at the code) but are completely off-base for Firefox, which is based on a very sophisticated XUL/Javascript/XML based extensibility framework, with far better developer support than we currently have for Python. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Write needs your help (was Re: Programming environments on the XO)
On 17 Jul 2008, at 20:37, C. Scott Ananian wrote: $0.01: we shouldn't feel like shipping unsugarized apps is a failure: better an working app w/ crappy UI than no working app at all! Sorry to disagree Scott. I'm not so sure... One 'crappy' UI or weak security riddled activity, leads to a dozen more, and then suddenly no one bothers and it's just a rush to slam in every random feature under the sun – I see a bunch of deviants creeping in and drifting from the Sugar spec already (won't mention names). I understand many hard core developers don't have much interest UI wise, that they think it just visual 'fluff' around their efficient set of classes (I blame badly taught CS classes and different personality types), but UI has a very large impact on user experience, and it is a good chunk of the reason that most *nix desktops have taken __SO__ damn long to get to mainstream (and perhaps why Apple are riding such a good wave just now). As they say, one rotten apple can put you off the rest of the basket. --Gary ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
