Re: notes on Journal feedback (was Re: Bundle activity)

2008-10-07 Thread Erik Garrison
On Tue, Oct 07, 2008 at 12:14:13PM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
 On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 3:47 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 09:17:16AM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
  On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 10:40 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
   When I was in Uruguay more teachers asked me about issues with the
   Journal than anything else.  I keep poking on this issue to remind
   people that it's not going away in the field.
 
  Could you please tell us more about the issues reported?
 
  1) Data loss.  Teachers I met mentioned seeing bugs where the students
  Journal was wiped clean, or where things went missing.  Without live
  examples this is pretty hard to diagnose.  Perhaps an effect of running
  on such an old build.
 
 Yes, this improved in 0.82 and is a big goal for 0.84:
 
 http://sugarlabs.org/go/DevelopmentTeam/0.84/Reliability
 http://sugarlabs.org/go/DevelopmentTeam/DatastoreRewrite#Reliability
 

I think that (4) is actually mixed with (1) as well.  The problem is
that the activity API is auto-saving work sessions.  If left unchecked
by the user they'll end up with a Journal full of lots of entries they
didn't intentionally create.  The system doesn't require the
intentionality of its user to save, yet the result of saving and
auto-saving are identical.  It's hard to find the important things among
the pile of unimportant things which result from everyday use of the
interface.  From a user's perspective, or the perspective of their
teacher, this is equivalent to data loss.  

  2) Journal startup failures borking the whole system / Journal never
  completing startup but Sugar starting.  Possibly because of NAND-full.
  If so we have fixed it.  Interestingly, I heard about kids resolving
  this issue manually from the command-line (although their teacher didn't
  know exactly what they did!  I'm guessing they removed their data
  directory.).
 
 Yes, IMO, this is the same issue as 1)
 

Additionally, users could be deleting their Journals from the command
line simply because they can't find anything they need and they don't
care about saving their data.

We have a data manager which doesn't acknowledge files, purportedly for
the benefit of its very young, and technically uninitiated users.  Then,
when it's not working they drop into the command line and delete its
configuration and data caches manually using rm -rf !  (This knowledge
is becoming quite common in at least one of our deployments.  Just
yesterday a kid from Uruguay came into #olpc-ayuda to ask exactly how to
do this.  And this morning a user spontaneously wrote rm
.sugar/default/confis into the channel...)

  3) How do I share files to/from an XO?  I just did this work but now
  where is the resultant file?  Interface with the outside world.
 
 How could we better define the outside world? Do you think we could
 get a list of the main use cases when taking data out of XO systems?
 

Anything that can use a file would be a good description of all the
main use cases.  How do we get lumps of bits from here to there without
acknowledging the utility of the file abstraction?


  4) General usability concerns; questions about why the design was
  chosen.  Difficulty finding things in the produced action history.
 
 How could we get to know which are those concerns? Perhaps we could
 try to get the people who can give this feedback on the olpc-sur
 mailing list, have some discussion there in spanish and then summarize
 in the global lists and wiki? And if you could by a chance remember
 any concrete usability concern, please post it here.
 
 I think we all agree that the journal sucks in a lot of senses. We are
 trying to improve it by implementing the biggest missing pieces and
 patching the biggest wholes, but if it was at all possible to choose
 the priorities based on real feedback from the field, I'm pretty sure
 the result will be much better. Do you think we can get feedback on a
 form we can actually use?

I think we should ask around on olpc-sur!  I also recommend coming to
#olpc-ayuda and talking with the kids who are trying to 'fix' issues
with their Journal via the command line.

Erik
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Re: notes on Journal feedback (was Re: Bundle activity)

2008-10-07 Thread Gary Oberbrunner
Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
 On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 3:47 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 09:17:16AM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
 On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 10:40 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
...
 3) How do I share files to/from an XO?  I just did this work but now
 where is the resultant file?  Interface with the outside world.
 
 How could we better define the outside world? Do you think we could
 get a list of the main use cases when taking data out of XO systems?

My $0.02 (aka. wild guess) is that the following three use cases cover
90+% of all of them:

1. files to and from a FAT-formatted USB stick
2. files to and from a wifi SMB share
3. email attachments in and out

-- 
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Re: notes on Journal feedback (was Re: Bundle activity)

2008-10-07 Thread Tomeu Vizoso
On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 3:47 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 09:17:16AM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
 On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 10:40 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  When I was in Uruguay more teachers asked me about issues with the
  Journal than anything else.  I keep poking on this issue to remind
  people that it's not going away in the field.

 Could you please tell us more about the issues reported?

 1) Data loss.  Teachers I met mentioned seeing bugs where the students
 Journal was wiped clean, or where things went missing.  Without live
 examples this is pretty hard to diagnose.  Perhaps an effect of running
 on such an old build.

Yes, this improved in 0.82 and is a big goal for 0.84:

http://sugarlabs.org/go/DevelopmentTeam/0.84/Reliability
http://sugarlabs.org/go/DevelopmentTeam/DatastoreRewrite#Reliability

 2) Journal startup failures borking the whole system / Journal never
 completing startup but Sugar starting.  Possibly because of NAND-full.
 If so we have fixed it.  Interestingly, I heard about kids resolving
 this issue manually from the command-line (although their teacher didn't
 know exactly what they did!  I'm guessing they removed their data
 directory.).

Yes, IMO, this is the same issue as 1)

 3) How do I share files to/from an XO?  I just did this work but now
 where is the resultant file?  Interface with the outside world.

How could we better define the outside world? Do you think we could
get a list of the main use cases when taking data out of XO systems?

 4) General usability concerns; questions about why the design was
 chosen.  Difficulty finding things in the produced action history.

How could we get to know which are those concerns? Perhaps we could
try to get the people who can give this feedback on the olpc-sur
mailing list, have some discussion there in spanish and then summarize
in the global lists and wiki? And if you could by a chance remember
any concrete usability concern, please post it here.

I think we all agree that the journal sucks in a lot of senses. We are
trying to improve it by implementing the biggest missing pieces and
patching the biggest wholes, but if it was at all possible to choose
the priorities based on real feedback from the field, I'm pretty sure
the result will be much better. Do you think we can get feedback on a
form we can actually use?

Thanks,

Tomeu
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notes on Journal feedback (was Re: Bundle activity)

2008-10-07 Thread Carlo Falciola
Let's add Upload/Download from a website, too.

Carlo 



Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
 On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 3:47 PM, Erik Garrison erik at laptop.org wrote:
 On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 09:17:16AM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
 On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 10:40 PM, Erik Garrison erik at laptop.org wrote:
...
 3) How do I share files to/from an XO?  I just did this work but now
 where is the resultant file?  Interface with the outside world.

 How could we better define the outside world? Do you think we could
 get a list of the main use cases when taking data out of XO systems?

My $0.02 (aka. wild guess) is that the following three use cases cover
90+% of all of them:

1. files to and from a FAT-formatted USB stick
2. files to and from a wifi SMB share
3. email attachments in and out

-- 
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Re: notes on Journal feedback (was Re: Bundle activity)

2008-10-07 Thread Erik Garrison
On Tue, Oct 07, 2008 at 10:20:48AM -0400, Gary Oberbrunner wrote:
 Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
  On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 3:47 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 09:17:16AM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
  On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 10:40 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 ...
  3) How do I share files to/from an XO?  I just did this work but now
  where is the resultant file?  Interface with the outside world.
  
  How could we better define the outside world? Do you think we could
  get a list of the main use cases when taking data out of XO systems?
 
 My $0.02 (aka. wild guess) is that the following three use cases cover
 90+% of all of them:
 
 1. files to and from a FAT-formatted USB stick
 2. files to and from a wifi SMB share
 3. email attachments in and out

4. non-sugar desktop systems and programs on the same physical system

Erik
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Re: notes on Journal feedback (was Re: Bundle activity)

2008-10-07 Thread Walter Bender
and maybe a fourth: uploading/downloading files from the web.

-walter

On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 10:20 AM, Gary Oberbrunner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
 On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 3:47 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 09:17:16AM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
 On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 10:40 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 ...
 3) How do I share files to/from an XO?  I just did this work but now
 where is the resultant file?  Interface with the outside world.

 How could we better define the outside world? Do you think we could
 get a list of the main use cases when taking data out of XO systems?

 My $0.02 (aka. wild guess) is that the following three use cases cover
 90+% of all of them:

 1. files to and from a FAT-formatted USB stick
 2. files to and from a wifi SMB share
 3. email attachments in and out

 --
 Gary Oberbrunner
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-- 
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Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org
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I: notes on Journal feedback (was Re: Bundle activity)

2008-10-07 Thread Carlo Falciola


 Hi  Eben, 
 I had in mind the first case, in the sense that's definitely an entry/exit 
point 
 of contents into/from the Sugar ecosystem.
 
 Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I start to see those in/out interaction 
 mainly at a formal transformation between two different spaces: the Journal  
 hierarchical FS Spaces,  during which, hopefully, the least information should 
 be loosen. 
 
 ciao carlo
 
 
 
 - Messaggio originale -
  Da: Eben Eliason 
  A: Carlo Falciola 
  Inviato: Martedì 7 ottobre 2008, 17:06:31
  Oggetto: Re: notes on Journal feedback (was Re: Bundle activity)
  
  On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 10:33 AM, Carlo Falciola wrote:
   Let's add Upload/Download from a website, too.
  
  Let's hash that point out a bit further, because I can see it in two
  ways.  The primary discriminator is whether by a website you mean
  any website or a particular website.
  
  In the former case, I think the task is really suited to Browse (or
  your browser of choice), as it's usually necessary to upload via a
  form specific to the site.  We should do a little more work to make
  uploading a file easy, and to make the download process more
  streamlined, requiring fewer steps to ultimately view a downloaded
  file.  I believe there are some ideas on how to do this floating
  around, ideally eliminating the need to dive into the Journal first to
  open the newly downloaded object.
  
  In the latter case, you might be referring to something which will,
  hopefully, become a part of the backup system.  The backup system will
  naturally push things from the Journal to the server.  In the future,
  we certainly could expand this idea with the addition of, for lack of
  a better term right now, share me flag.  Any document with a share
  me flag, once backed up, could be served up locally on the school
  server to provide an ever growing repository of content and
  information, for sharing and remixing.
  
  Which of of these, or what other undiscussed notion of
  upload/download, did you have in mind?  Thanks!
  
  - Eben
  
  
   Carlo
  
  
  
   Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
   On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 3:47 PM, Erik Garrison wrote:
   On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 09:17:16AM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
   On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 10:40 PM, Erik Garrison wrote:
   ...
   3) How do I share files to/from an XO?  I just did this work but now
   where is the resultant file?  Interface with the outside world.
  
   How could we better define the outside world? Do you think we could
   get a list of the main use cases when taking data out of XO systems?
  
   My $0.02 (aka. wild guess) is that the following three use cases cover
   90+% of all of them:
  
   1. files to and from a FAT-formatted USB stick
   2. files to and from a wifi SMB share
   3. email attachments in and out
  
   --
   Gary Oberbrunner
  
  
  
Scopri il blog di Yahoo! Mail:
   Trucchi, novità e scrivi la tua opinione.
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   Scopri il blog di Yahoo! Mail:
 Trucchi, novità e scrivi la tua opinione.
 http://www.ymailblogit.com/blog



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Re: notes on Journal feedback (was Re: Bundle activity)

2008-10-07 Thread [EMAIL PROTECTED]

On Oct 7, 2008, at 7:20 AM, Gary Oberbrunner wrote:

 Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
 On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 3:47 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
 wrote:
 On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 09:17:16AM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
 On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 10:40 PM, Erik Garrison  
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 ...
 3) How do I share files to/from an XO?  I just did this work  
 but now
 where is the resultant file?  Interface with the outside world.

 How could we better define the outside world? Do you think we could
 get a list of the main use cases when taking data out of XO systems?

 My $0.02 (aka. wild guess) is that the following three use cases  
 cover
 90+% of all of them:

 1. files to and from a FAT-formatted USB stick
 2. files to and from a wifi SMB share
 3. email attachments in and out

Another use case I have seen is:
4. files to and from a host system using a ssh connection and  scp.  
(could this be put in an activity wrapper?)
Also some G1G1 users, use scripts to extract data from the data store.

 -- 
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Re: notes on Journal feedback (was Re: Bundle activity)

2008-10-07 Thread Tomeu Vizoso
On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 3:22 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 On Tue, Oct 07, 2008 at 12:14:13PM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
 On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 3:47 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 09:17:16AM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
  On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 10:40 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
   When I was in Uruguay more teachers asked me about issues with the
   Journal than anything else.  I keep poking on this issue to remind
   people that it's not going away in the field.
 
  Could you please tell us more about the issues reported?
 
  1) Data loss.  Teachers I met mentioned seeing bugs where the students
  Journal was wiped clean, or where things went missing.  Without live
  examples this is pretty hard to diagnose.  Perhaps an effect of running
  on such an old build.

 Yes, this improved in 0.82 and is a big goal for 0.84:

 http://sugarlabs.org/go/DevelopmentTeam/0.84/Reliability
 http://sugarlabs.org/go/DevelopmentTeam/DatastoreRewrite#Reliability


 I think that (4) is actually mixed with (1) as well.  The problem is
 that the activity API is auto-saving work sessions.  If left unchecked
 by the user they'll end up with a Journal full of lots of entries they
 didn't intentionally create.  The system doesn't require the
 intentionality of its user to save, yet the result of saving and
 auto-saving are identical.  It's hard to find the important things among
 the pile of unimportant things which result from everyday use of the
 interface.  From a user's perspective, or the perspective of their
 teacher, this is equivalent to data loss.

Ok, so 1) was really about journal full issues?

  2) Journal startup failures borking the whole system / Journal never
  completing startup but Sugar starting.  Possibly because of NAND-full.
  If so we have fixed it.  Interestingly, I heard about kids resolving
  this issue manually from the command-line (although their teacher didn't
  know exactly what they did!  I'm guessing they removed their data
  directory.).

 Yes, IMO, this is the same issue as 1)


 Additionally, users could be deleting their Journals from the command
 line simply because they can't find anything they need and they don't
 care about saving their data.

 We have a data manager which doesn't acknowledge files, purportedly for

doesn't aknowledge files? Can you explain what do you mean by this?

 the benefit of its very young, and technically uninitiated users.

Don't know where you have read that. The Journal is intended to give a
better way to deal with the results of the interaction with the
machine than a folders-based system inspired on office workers.

  Then,
 when it's not working they drop into the command line and delete its
 configuration and data caches manually using rm -rf !  (This knowledge
 is becoming quite common in at least one of our deployments.  Just
 yesterday a kid from Uruguay came into #olpc-ayuda to ask exactly how to
 do this.  And this morning a user spontaneously wrote rm
 .sugar/default/confis into the channel...)

Can you explain what this has to do with what you originally wrote in 2)?

  3) How do I share files to/from an XO?  I just did this work but now
  where is the resultant file?  Interface with the outside world.

 How could we better define the outside world? Do you think we could
 get a list of the main use cases when taking data out of XO systems?


 Anything that can use a file would be a good description of all the
 main use cases.  How do we get lumps of bits from here to there without
 acknowledging the utility of the file abstraction?

I think it's too abstract to be useful. We need actual use cases that
make sense to our users.

  4) General usability concerns; questions about why the design was
  chosen.  Difficulty finding things in the produced action history.

 How could we get to know which are those concerns? Perhaps we could
 try to get the people who can give this feedback on the olpc-sur
 mailing list, have some discussion there in spanish and then summarize
 in the global lists and wiki? And if you could by a chance remember
 any concrete usability concern, please post it here.

 I think we all agree that the journal sucks in a lot of senses. We are
 trying to improve it by implementing the biggest missing pieces and
 patching the biggest wholes, but if it was at all possible to choose
 the priorities based on real feedback from the field, I'm pretty sure
 the result will be much better. Do you think we can get feedback on a
 form we can actually use?

 I think we should ask around on olpc-sur!  I also recommend coming to
 #olpc-ayuda and talking with the kids who are trying to 'fix' issues
 with their Journal via the command line.

You have been in Uruguay and have talked to teachers, also have shown
a great interest in improving the journal, by your frequent emails
about it. Can you take the initiative of putting all that feedback in
an usable form?

I'd recommend that we 

Re: notes on Journal feedback (was Re: Bundle activity)

2008-10-07 Thread John Gilmore
 Don't know where you have read that. The Journal is intended to give a
 better way to deal with the results of the interaction with the
 machine than a folders-based system inspired on office workers.

Please quit making the kids the guinea-pig for somebody's untested pet
theories about how to improve on filesystems.  We had flat filesystems
on DOS 2.0 floppies and on original Macintoshes.  They sucked.  At
least files had *names* there; the journal makes that optional!

   Then,
  when it's not working they drop into the command line and delete its
  configuration and data caches manually using rm -rf !

My experience may be indicative.

Whenever I try a new release, I always do a full reflash.  There has
never, ever been anything in my Journal that I wanted to save.  This
would not be true if I'd been able to use my laptop like a real computer.
My real computers get backed-up and lovingly upgraded.  If only the
kids had real computers they could turn to!

  (This knowledge
  is becoming quite common in at least one of our deployments.  Just
  yesterday a kid from Uruguay came into #olpc-ayuda to ask exactly how to
  do this.  And this morning a user spontaneously wrote rm
  .sugar/default/confis into the channel...)

This is lovely!  Despite the rigorous insistence that kids be unable
to see the hierarchical filesystem that underlies all the code and
data in their laptops, they are figuring it out anyway.

How long before we admit that it's OK for them to know about it?
How long before we admit that it's OK for the interface to SHOW it?
How long before we require them to learn it, e.g. so they can navigate
our source code, or their own saved data?

How long before we stop reinventing the wheel (and the file browser,
and the file-open-dialogue, and the battery icon, and the menu of
programs, and the task bar, and the network configurator, and the
window manager), and focus our efforts on putting that already-written
stuff into a small, low power, high performance machine?

No, let's teach them that your data is saved in files with obscure
garbage names, all mixed in with stuff you could care less about.

John

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Re: notes on Journal feedback (was Re: Bundle activity)

2008-10-07 Thread Erik Garrison
On Tue, Oct 07, 2008 at 12:59:23PM -0700, John Gilmore wrote:
   (This knowledge
   is becoming quite common in at least one of our deployments.  Just
   yesterday a kid from Uruguay came into #olpc-ayuda to ask exactly how to
   do this.  And this morning a user spontaneously wrote rm
   .sugar/default/confis into the channel...)
 
 This is lovely!  Despite the rigorous insistence that kids be unable
 to see the hierarchical filesystem that underlies all the code and
 data in their laptops, they are figuring it out anyway.
 

Please excuse my poor writing and note that these were two separate
incidents.  The first student had left long before the second arrived.
The second incident seems like someone trying to write in a terminal but
accidentally typing the command into XoIrc.

Erik
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notes on Journal feedback (was Re: Bundle activity)

2008-09-23 Thread Erik Garrison
On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 09:17:16AM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
 On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 10:40 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  When I was in Uruguay more teachers asked me about issues with the
  Journal than anything else.  I keep poking on this issue to remind
  people that it's not going away in the field.
 
 Could you please tell us more about the issues reported?

1) Data loss.  Teachers I met mentioned seeing bugs where the students
Journal was wiped clean, or where things went missing.  Without live
examples this is pretty hard to diagnose.  Perhaps an effect of running
on such an old build.

2) Journal startup failures borking the whole system / Journal never
completing startup but Sugar starting.  Possibly because of NAND-full.
If so we have fixed it.  Interestingly, I heard about kids resolving
this issue manually from the command-line (although their teacher didn't
know exactly what they did!  I'm guessing they removed their data
directory.).

3) How do I share files to/from an XO?  I just did this work but now
where is the resultant file?  Interface with the outside world.

4) General usability concerns; questions about why the design was
chosen.  Difficulty finding things in the produced action history.

I will try to think of more on my ride to work.

Erik
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Re: Bundle activity

2008-09-12 Thread Tomeu Vizoso
On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 10:40 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Firstly, insofar as the hierarchical filesystem is a worldwide standard
 for human-computer interface, it is something which is useful to teach
 students.  So it seems like a very useful activity.

AFAIK, kids have been able for a long time to learn about organizing
information hierarchically without access to hierarchical file
systems. But most of the ones who actually use such a system, even
when they grow up, end up using the files-in-folders system in a very
inefficient way (from personal, direct observation of people who are
not IT professionals).

 Secondly, from a utility perspective... Have you ever tried to move a
 file out of the Journal and onto a USB flash drive?  Then change the
 name...  Or maybe put such a file into a specific directory on the flash
 drive?

This is scheduled to be fixed on the next Sugar release.

 If we don't want the journal to behave this way then perhaps the best
 place to put the functionality is in another activity.  Bundle seems to
 have sensible overlap with this problem space.

May be something sensible to do while we really fix the underlying problem.

 When I was in Uruguay more teachers asked me about issues with the
 Journal than anything else.  I keep poking on this issue to remind
 people that it's not going away in the field.

Could you please tell us more about the issues reported?

Thank a lot,

Tomeu
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Re: Bundle activity

2008-09-11 Thread Erik Garrison
Matt,

Would this activity be modified easily to take files from within the
Journal and move them back into the user's /home/, either compressed or
uncompressed?  Call it the File activity.

Erik

On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 12:49:03AM -0400, Matt Der wrote:
 Hello all,
 
 I am one of the students who will be working on the Bundle activity
 suggested by Eben Eliason.  I understand that the activity should be
 designed to manage a variety of archive formats (zip, tar, gz, etc.), and it
 should support both the extraction of files from an archive into the Journal
 as well as linking a set of entries from the Journal into a bundle.  Also, I
 see a few additional details are provided in its wiki [
 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Bundle_(activity)].
 
 Is this an active project right now?  If not, our team would like to start
 working on it soon, but first we are looking for feedback on functionality,
 how it should integrate with the Journal, UI particulars, etc.
 
 If this project is not currently active, we are eager to hear any helpful
 input you might have.
 
 Thanks,
 Matt

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Re: Bundle activity

2008-09-11 Thread Eben Eliason
That's not within the scope of this activity, no.  This activity is
strictly about viewing and creating bundles.

- Eben


On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 3:01 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Matt,

 Would this activity be modified easily to take files from within the
 Journal and move them back into the user's /home/, either compressed or
 uncompressed?  Call it the File activity.

 Erik

 On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 12:49:03AM -0400, Matt Der wrote:
 Hello all,

 I am one of the students who will be working on the Bundle activity
 suggested by Eben Eliason.  I understand that the activity should be
 designed to manage a variety of archive formats (zip, tar, gz, etc.), and it
 should support both the extraction of files from an archive into the Journal
 as well as linking a set of entries from the Journal into a bundle.  Also, I
 see a few additional details are provided in its wiki [
 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Bundle_(activity)].

 Is this an active project right now?  If not, our team would like to start
 working on it soon, but first we are looking for feedback on functionality,
 how it should integrate with the Journal, UI particulars, etc.

 If this project is not currently active, we are eager to hear any helpful
 input you might have.

 Thanks,
 Matt

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 Devel@lists.laptop.org
 http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

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Re: Bundle activity

2008-09-11 Thread Erik Garrison
Bundles are files.  In this case they are compressed files.  I'm just
pointing out that if we're going to work with files of this kind we
should think about working with files of the non-compressed kind.

The overlap between the Bundle tool and a tool to allow the same
operations on uncompressed files is pretty large.  Note that bundle
management is usually dealt with in other desktop environments through
the file browser.

Erik

On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 03:57:12PM -0400, Eben Eliason wrote:
 That's not within the scope of this activity, no.  This activity is
 strictly about viewing and creating bundles.
 
 - Eben
 
 
 On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 3:01 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  Matt,
 
  Would this activity be modified easily to take files from within the
  Journal and move them back into the user's /home/, either compressed or
  uncompressed?  Call it the File activity.
 
  Erik
 
  On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 12:49:03AM -0400, Matt Der wrote:
  Hello all,
 
  I am one of the students who will be working on the Bundle activity
  suggested by Eben Eliason.  I understand that the activity should be
  designed to manage a variety of archive formats (zip, tar, gz, etc.), and 
  it
  should support both the extraction of files from an archive into the 
  Journal
  as well as linking a set of entries from the Journal into a bundle.  Also, 
  I
  see a few additional details are provided in its wiki [
  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Bundle_(activity)].
 
  Is this an active project right now?  If not, our team would like to start
  working on it soon, but first we are looking for feedback on functionality,
  how it should integrate with the Journal, UI particulars, etc.
 
  If this project is not currently active, we are eager to hear any helpful
  input you might have.
 
  Thanks,
  Matt
 
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Re: Bundle activity

2008-09-11 Thread Bert Freudenberg
IIUC the activity would not deal with files but with journal entries.  
So you can copy several journal entries into a zipped entry, and you  
can unzip entries from a zipped one. This has nothing to do with files  
in the home directory (besides, a regular activity cannot write to  
home, and read only some of it).

- Bert -

Am 11.09.2008 um 22:12 schrieb Erik Garrison:

 Bundles are files.  In this case they are compressed files.  I'm  
 just
 pointing out that if we're going to work with files of this kind we
 should think about working with files of the non-compressed kind.

 The overlap between the Bundle tool and a tool to allow the same
 operations on uncompressed files is pretty large.  Note that bundle
 management is usually dealt with in other desktop environments through
 the file browser.

 Erik

 On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 03:57:12PM -0400, Eben Eliason wrote:
 That's not within the scope of this activity, no.  This activity is
 strictly about viewing and creating bundles.

 - Eben


 On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 3:01 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
 wrote:
 Matt,

 Would this activity be modified easily to take files from within the
 Journal and move them back into the user's /home/, either  
 compressed or
 uncompressed?  Call it the File activity.

 Erik

 On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 12:49:03AM -0400, Matt Der wrote:
 Hello all,

 I am one of the students who will be working on the Bundle activity
 suggested by Eben Eliason.  I understand that the activity should  
 be
 designed to manage a variety of archive formats (zip, tar, gz,  
 etc.), and it
 should support both the extraction of files from an archive into  
 the Journal
 as well as linking a set of entries from the Journal into a  
 bundle.  Also, I
 see a few additional details are provided in its wiki [
 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Bundle_(activity)].

 Is this an active project right now?  If not, our team would like  
 to start
 working on it soon, but first we are looking for feedback on  
 functionality,
 how it should integrate with the Journal, UI particulars, etc.

 If this project is not currently active, we are eager to hear any  
 helpful
 input you might have.

 Thanks,
 Matt




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Re: Bundle activity

2008-09-11 Thread Erik Garrison
Firstly, insofar as the hierarchical filesystem is a worldwide standard
for human-computer interface, it is something which is useful to teach
students.  So it seems like a very useful activity.

Secondly, from a utility perspective... Have you ever tried to move a
file out of the Journal and onto a USB flash drive?  Then change the
name...  Or maybe put such a file into a specific directory on the flash
drive?

If we don't want the journal to behave this way then perhaps the best
place to put the functionality is in another activity.  Bundle seems to
have sensible overlap with this problem space.

When I was in Uruguay more teachers asked me about issues with the
Journal than anything else.  I keep poking on this issue to remind
people that it's not going away in the field.

Erik

On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 10:17:39PM +0200, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
 IIUC the activity would not deal with files but with journal entries.  
 So you can copy several journal entries into a zipped entry, and you  
 can unzip entries from a zipped one. This has nothing to do with files  
 in the home directory (besides, a regular activity cannot write to  
 home, and read only some of it).
 
 - Bert -
 
 Am 11.09.2008 um 22:12 schrieb Erik Garrison:
 
  Bundles are files.  In this case they are compressed files.  I'm  
  just
  pointing out that if we're going to work with files of this kind we
  should think about working with files of the non-compressed kind.
 
  The overlap between the Bundle tool and a tool to allow the same
  operations on uncompressed files is pretty large.  Note that bundle
  management is usually dealt with in other desktop environments through
  the file browser.
 
  Erik
 
  On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 03:57:12PM -0400, Eben Eliason wrote:
  That's not within the scope of this activity, no.  This activity is
  strictly about viewing and creating bundles.
 
  - Eben
 
 
  On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 3:01 PM, Erik Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
  wrote:
  Matt,
 
  Would this activity be modified easily to take files from within the
  Journal and move them back into the user's /home/, either  
  compressed or
  uncompressed?  Call it the File activity.
 
  Erik
 
  On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 12:49:03AM -0400, Matt Der wrote:
  Hello all,
 
  I am one of the students who will be working on the Bundle activity
  suggested by Eben Eliason.  I understand that the activity should  
  be
  designed to manage a variety of archive formats (zip, tar, gz,  
  etc.), and it
  should support both the extraction of files from an archive into  
  the Journal
  as well as linking a set of entries from the Journal into a  
  bundle.  Also, I
  see a few additional details are provided in its wiki [
  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Bundle_(activity)].
 
  Is this an active project right now?  If not, our team would like  
  to start
  working on it soon, but first we are looking for feedback on  
  functionality,
  how it should integrate with the Journal, UI particulars, etc.
 
  If this project is not currently active, we are eager to hear any  
  helpful
  input you might have.
 
  Thanks,
  Matt
 
 
 
 
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Bundle activity

2008-09-09 Thread Matt Der
Hello all,

I am one of the students who will be working on the Bundle activity
suggested by Eben Eliason.  I understand that the activity should be
designed to manage a variety of archive formats (zip, tar, gz, etc.), and it
should support both the extraction of files from an archive into the Journal
as well as linking a set of entries from the Journal into a bundle.  Also, I
see a few additional details are provided in its wiki [
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Bundle_(activity)].

Is this an active project right now?  If not, our team would like to start
working on it soon, but first we are looking for feedback on functionality,
how it should integrate with the Journal, UI particulars, etc.

If this project is not currently active, we are eager to hear any helpful
input you might have.

Thanks,
Matt
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