Re: [Shr-Devel] FSO application management

2010-10-18 Thread Arigead
Simon Busch wrote:
 Heyho,
 
 as we talked already with some people about application management in
 FSO we should now start discussing this in the public and define some
 spec with all features we want in the end.
 
 I will start here with explaining my ideas. First of all we need a
 daemon doing all the application management. I think we should call it
 simply fsoappd. The daemon manages all things we have in mind with
 applications (btw. we should define what an application exactly is!).
 There is the lifecycle management of applications. An application has
 always a state which identifies the application as running, inactive or
 whatever. To come from one state into another one there are possible
 events (pause, hide, destroy, ...) which let the application change its
 state (for example, the wm choose another app to become visible, so the
 current app will get paused). We should define some rules an common
 agreements all application should share so we can keep our application
 management simple.
 
 Furthermore we need a way applications can communicate between each
 other. My idea here is to define common interfaces an application can
 implement. For example the org.freesmartphone.Dialer interface. The
 interface describes which DBus methods/signals should be implemented by
 the app. If one app needs the dialer, it requests the dialer via the
 fsoappd by a method called Request(org.freesmartphone.Dialer). Each
 application has a file appinfo.config file where it defines which
 interfaces it implements. The fsoappd now searches through all
 appinfo.config files (they should be stored by each application in one
 common place) and tries to get one which implements the requested
 interface. If there is more than one fsoappd looks in a priority list
 which defines priorities for each interfaces (e.g. there are two
 dialers, one provided by SHR and one by a independent developer. The
 priority file now defines that the SHR dialer should be choose with
 higher priority than the other one ...). Finaly fsoappd starts the app
 for the requested interface in a not visible state. The app which
 requested the other app to start can now chose what it wants to do with
 the recent started app. Maybe it calles org.freesmartphone.Dialer.Show()
 to show the dialer application so the user can enter a number and call
 somebody.
 The application interface should be defined as xml spec somewhere. If an
 app does not implement any interface it should define at lest its name
 in the format like org.mycompany.mygreatapplicationname. The
 Request(...) method now looks even for an app called like the interface
 name is set.
 
 As the application interface implementation is available as xml we
 should even provide a lib called libfso-app which implements all the
 interface in vala or your favourite language so you can easily use it.
 
 So far from my side. I have some more ideas, but will need some time to
 write them down.
 
 regards,
 morphis
 
 Btw. there is already a brainstorming page in the FSO wiki about
 application lifecycle management:
 http://wiki.freesmartphone.org/index.php/Brainstorm/LifeCycle and
 http://wiki.freesmartphone.org/index.php/Brainstorm/Launcher

Seems to me that some of the functionality you mention of searching for
apps which implement a certain interface is already built into DBus
itself. All that remains is to define the minimum interfaces that a
certain application type must implement. An app is free to augment that
list if if requires but there is a minimum set that a Dialer app must
implement.


I'll try to go through those links but I would also say that the android
method of displaying information on the screen is a very good idea. At
present my shr-u phone just displays the apps I have installed, by
default. I don't really consider that to be useful information. HTC's
overlay stuff for android which lets an app display facebook updates or
weather updates or share price updates is a good mechanism of displaying
actual info. Maybe that's already in the links like I say I'll have a
look at them later today.

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Re: [Shr-Devel] FSO application management

2010-10-18 Thread Arigead
Al Johnson wrote:
 On Monday 18 October 2010, Arigead wrote:
 Simon Busch wrote:
 Heyho,

 as we talked already with some people about application management in
 FSO we should now start discussing this in the public and define some
 spec with all features we want in the end.

 I will start here with explaining my ideas. First of all we need a
 daemon doing all the application management. I think we should call it
 simply fsoappd. The daemon manages all things we have in mind with
 applications (btw. we should define what an application exactly is!).
 There is the lifecycle management of applications. An application has
 always a state which identifies the application as running, inactive or
 whatever. To come from one state into another one there are possible
 events (pause, hide, destroy, ...) which let the application change its
 state (for example, the wm choose another app to become visible, so the
 current app will get paused). We should define some rules an common
 agreements all application should share so we can keep our application
 management simple.

 Furthermore we need a way applications can communicate between each
 other. My idea here is to define common interfaces an application can
 implement. For example the org.freesmartphone.Dialer interface. The
 interface describes which DBus methods/signals should be implemented by
 the app. If one app needs the dialer, it requests the dialer via the
 fsoappd by a method called Request(org.freesmartphone.Dialer). Each
 application has a file appinfo.config file where it defines which
 interfaces it implements. The fsoappd now searches through all
 appinfo.config files (they should be stored by each application in one
 common place) and tries to get one which implements the requested
 interface. If there is more than one fsoappd looks in a priority list
 which defines priorities for each interfaces (e.g. there are two
 dialers, one provided by SHR and one by a independent developer. The
 priority file now defines that the SHR dialer should be choose with
 higher priority than the other one ...). Finaly fsoappd starts the app
 for the requested interface in a not visible state. The app which
 requested the other app to start can now chose what it wants to do with
 the recent started app. Maybe it calles org.freesmartphone.Dialer.Show()
 to show the dialer application so the user can enter a number and call
 somebody.
 The application interface should be defined as xml spec somewhere. If an
 app does not implement any interface it should define at lest its name
 in the format like org.mycompany.mygreatapplicationname. The
 Request(...) method now looks even for an app called like the interface
 name is set.

 As the application interface implementation is available as xml we
 should even provide a lib called libfso-app which implements all the
 interface in vala or your favourite language so you can easily use it.

 So far from my side. I have some more ideas, but will need some time to
 write them down.

 regards,
 morphis

 Btw. there is already a brainstorming page in the FSO wiki about
 application lifecycle management:
 http://wiki.freesmartphone.org/index.php/Brainstorm/LifeCycle and
 http://wiki.freesmartphone.org/index.php/Brainstorm/Launcher
 Seems to me that some of the functionality you mention of searching for
 apps which implement a certain interface is already built into DBus
 itself.
 
 That's what I was thinking, though IIRC tiy have to walk the tree looking for 
 the method rather than simply asking what implements X?
 
 All that remains is to define the minimum interfaces that a
 certain application type must implement. An app is free to augment that
 list if if requires but there is a minimum set that a Dialer app must
 implement.
 
 There is also the matter of preference when multiple apps implement the 
 method/profile.

On my desktop Ubuntu, and when I had a HTC Hero Android phone, that was
dealt with by asking the user which of the options should be used to
complete the action, and giving a toggle button to make the chosen
option the default. You'll then need a gui to edit the defaults, of course.

Just out of interest how many apps are we talking about? There is a core
of framework DBus interfaces already spec'd more or less. I say more or
less as I'm sure that they will be changing. (I'd have thought that
maybe opimd would be augmented with calendar entries, but I maybe wrong)

This core framework interface definitions need to be added to with a
number of *Interesting apps* and then there are a million apps which
we're probably not interested in at all. I'm thinking about games and
the like. Maybe when the framework receives a call a game could handle
the DBus signal and pause the game but that's down to the app handling a
broadcast signal.

Apps we're interest in I would think are the:
Calendar app
email client
music player

Having said that if I received an SMS with an email address in it I'd
like to be able to click

Re: [Shr-Devel] FSO application management

2010-10-18 Thread Arigead
Al Johnson wrote:
 On Monday 18 October 2010, Arigead wrote:
 Simon Busch wrote:
 Heyho,

 as we talked already with some people about application management in
 FSO we should now start discussing this in the public and define some
 spec with all features we want in the end.

 I will start here with explaining my ideas. First of all we need a
 daemon doing all the application management. I think we should call it
 simply fsoappd. The daemon manages all things we have in mind with
 applications (btw. we should define what an application exactly is!).
 There is the lifecycle management of applications. An application has
 always a state which identifies the application as running, inactive or
 whatever. To come from one state into another one there are possible
 events (pause, hide, destroy, ...) which let the application change its
 state (for example, the wm choose another app to become visible, so the
 current app will get paused). We should define some rules an common
 agreements all application should share so we can keep our application
 management simple.

 Furthermore we need a way applications can communicate between each
 other. My idea here is to define common interfaces an application can
 implement. For example the org.freesmartphone.Dialer interface. The
 interface describes which DBus methods/signals should be implemented by
 the app. If one app needs the dialer, it requests the dialer via the
 fsoappd by a method called Request(org.freesmartphone.Dialer). Each
 application has a file appinfo.config file where it defines which
 interfaces it implements. The fsoappd now searches through all
 appinfo.config files (they should be stored by each application in one
 common place) and tries to get one which implements the requested
 interface. If there is more than one fsoappd looks in a priority list
 which defines priorities for each interfaces (e.g. there are two
 dialers, one provided by SHR and one by a independent developer. The
 priority file now defines that the SHR dialer should be choose with
 higher priority than the other one ...). Finaly fsoappd starts the app
 for the requested interface in a not visible state. The app which
 requested the other app to start can now chose what it wants to do with
 the recent started app. Maybe it calles org.freesmartphone.Dialer.Show()
 to show the dialer application so the user can enter a number and call
 somebody.
 The application interface should be defined as xml spec somewhere. If an
 app does not implement any interface it should define at lest its name
 in the format like org.mycompany.mygreatapplicationname. The
 Request(...) method now looks even for an app called like the interface
 name is set.

 As the application interface implementation is available as xml we
 should even provide a lib called libfso-app which implements all the
 interface in vala or your favourite language so you can easily use it.

 So far from my side. I have some more ideas, but will need some time to
 write them down.

 regards,
 morphis

 Btw. there is already a brainstorming page in the FSO wiki about
 application lifecycle management:
 http://wiki.freesmartphone.org/index.php/Brainstorm/LifeCycle and
 http://wiki.freesmartphone.org/index.php/Brainstorm/Launcher
 Seems to me that some of the functionality you mention of searching for
 apps which implement a certain interface is already built into DBus
 itself.
 
 That's what I was thinking, though IIRC tiy have to walk the tree looking for 
 the method rather than simply asking what implements X?
 
 All that remains is to define the minimum interfaces that a
 certain application type must implement. An app is free to augment that
 list if if requires but there is a minimum set that a Dialer app must
 implement.
 
 There is also the matter of preference when multiple apps implement the 
 method/profile.
 
 I'll try to go through those links but I would also say that the android
 method of displaying information on the screen is a very good idea. At
 present my shr-u phone just displays the apps I have installed, by
 default. I don't really consider that to be useful information. HTC's
 overlay stuff for android which lets an app display facebook updates or
 weather updates or share price updates is a good mechanism of displaying
 actual info. Maybe that's already in the links like I say I'll have a
 look at them later today.
 

Just looking through the links provided in the original email and not
sure I like or agree with the use case on the bottom of the lifecycle page:

Trucker Joe is on the road and gets a phone call, but he's lost in
$(TOWN) without navit, and navit supports answering calls. instead of
bringing navit to background, it show OSD buttons to answer the call.


That's expecting navit to start implementing functionality which it
really should have no interest in. Navit should do what it does well and
leave phone calls to apps that do that well. Given that there is a
window manager in the phone could

Get Contact details?

2009-10-23 Thread Arigead
Sorry it's a newbie question I'm afraid.

I've been looking at org.freesmartphone.PIM.Contact with a view to
getting contact details for a phone number. I'm really trying to get my
hands on the contact's name given a number so that went a call or sms or
something arrives you can quickly query opimd for a name, if it's got one.

The GetContent() method takes no parameters so I'm not sure I understand
it's intended use, obviously I'm missing the point. Anyhow if somebody
could advise me I'd be very grateful. Pulling back all the contacts and
searching through don't seem the ideal way of doing this.

Thanks for any help and sorry if this is a bit on the basic side

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Running the Framework on Ubuntu laptop?

2009-09-25 Thread Arigead
Hello all,
Hope this question ain't too stupid. I'd like to try and run the FSO
Framework on my ubuntu laptop. More specifically I'd like to play with
the PIM part of the framework. I'm hoping to play with it and write code
to interface with the PIM Engine with DBus calls.

I've done the basic sudo python setup.py install which seems to have
run fine but executing frameworkd tells me that there is no
frameworkd.conf Could somebody point me in the right direction here. Can
I simply copy the conf file from a freerunner across to the ubuntu
laptop. That sounds a bit too simple.

Any help or advice would be gratefully appreciated.

John

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Re: Running the Framework on Ubuntu laptop?

2009-09-25 Thread Arigead
Sebastian Reichel wrote:
 On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 09:05:53AM +0100, Arigead wrote:
 Hello all,
 Hope this question ain't too stupid. I'd like to try and run the FSO
 Framework on my ubuntu laptop. More specifically I'd like to play with
 the PIM part of the framework. I'm hoping to play with it and write code
 to interface with the PIM Engine with DBus calls.

 I've done the basic sudo python setup.py install which seems to have
 run fine but executing frameworkd tells me that there is no
 frameworkd.conf Could somebody point me in the right direction here. Can
 I simply copy the conf file from a freerunner across to the ubuntu
 laptop. That sounds a bit too simple.

 Any help or advice would be gratefully appreciated.

 John
 
 Hi,
 
 Just copy the default frameworkd.conf to /etc/frameworkd.conf and
 disable all subsystems except of opimd. Btw. you may want to install
 the Debian packages in Ubuntu instead of installing FSO without any
 packaging control system. If so you can find the package here:
 
 http://pkg-fso.nomeata.de/sid/fso-frameworkd
 
 You will also need some dependencies, which are linked on the page.
 Dependencies, which are not linked can be found in the Debian
 repository and most likley in the Ubuntu repository, too.
 
 -- Sebastian


Thanks a million for that response Sebastian. It makes sense to install
everything from deb packages so I started that but unfortunatley
encountered an error with an install of python-phoneutils it's
complaining that /usr/share/python-support/python-phoneutils.public is
not a directory which is fair comment as it's not a directory.

I'm a bit suspicious of a package that's installing python-phoneutils
having a problem with python-phoneutils ;-)

John

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Re: Building FSO

2009-02-08 Thread Arigead
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Rod Whitby wrote:
 Arigead wrote:
 To quote the Building FSO wiki page again:

 - Once you've finished setting up the build environment,
 - you can build the FSO image with the command:
 -
 - cd /stuff/build  bitbake fso-image

 I have set up the build environment as per the instructions and have
 used openembedded before for building for gumstix boards but the
 instructions bitbake fso-image do not work. I have used my openembedded
 environment to build some individual packages which does work.
 
 Don't forget to source the setup-env file first.  If the wiki page
 doesn't say that, please add it.
 
 -- Rod
 

There is not mention of  setup-env either in the openembedded web page
or the Building FSO web page. In addition there is no setup-env file
anywhere in the directory structure I have set up. I have set my BBPATH
and PATH variables to point at the correct locations but if there are
additional settings in setup-env I don't know what they are.

I'll just use the makefile it'll obviously be the simpler option, but
perhaps somebody in the know should look at the manual build
instructions, and perhaps remove them from the wiki page as they do not
appear to work.


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Re: Building FSO

2009-02-07 Thread Arigead
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Hash: SHA1

Rod Whitby wrote:
 Thanks a million for getting back to me Alastair but from what you're saying 
 openembedded is not what I should be building with, or the
 upstream is  not maintained as such. I'm a bit confused by all this
 perhaps the wiki page should be changed a little to remove the building FSO 
 Manually section
 
 I have no idea on what basis you are making statements like the one above.
 
 The FSO Makefile is simply a thin wrapper around OpenEmbedded, which sets up 
 the environment in a sane manner and calls bitbake with the right arguments.
 
 I'll try with the make file :-(
 
 That's the way the official FSO package feeds are built, so you can be pretty 
 sure it's going to work ...
 
 -- Rod (FSO Makefile maintainer)
 
 
 

Hello Rod,
thanks for taking the time to reply and I'm sorry to say I have no
basis at all for what I'm saying but I'm just trying to figure it out. I
was looking at the Building FSO Wiki page [1] and read that:

- - While convenient, building with FsoMakefile does not
- - tell you much about what is going on under the hood.
- - FsoMakefile automatically downloads an OpenEmbedded
- - build tree, configures it to build FSO and then builds
- - the image.

I'd like to get a better idea of what's going on under the hood and to
be able to build my own packages and add them to the image as
OpenEmbedded allows. Sort of like outlined in [2]. That way I could take
the MS5 bitbake recipe and overload it and add say OpenMooCow to my
image with an OpenMooCow.bb file. Include the latest and greatest kernel
from Andy Tracking. That way when MS6 comes out I can change one line in
my image file and do my build of MS6 with OpenMooCow and anything else
to my taste.

To quote the Building FSO wiki page again:

- - Once you've finished setting up the build environment,
- - you can build the FSO image with the command:
- -
- - cd /stuff/build  bitbake fso-image

I have set up the build environment as per the instructions and have
used openembedded before for building for gumstix boards but the
instructions bitbake fso-image do not work. I have used my openembedded
environment to build some individual packages which does work.

Don't panic about this it might just be my machine. Trying my first full
build on an eee PC might not have been the wisest idea I've ever had.
I'll maybe set this up on a Desktop but in the mean time I'll use the
make file.

Thanks for all your work, much appreciated. Love the FreeRunner and hope
to be able to contribute some time soon. ;-)


[1] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Building_FSO
[2]
http://bec-systems.com/site/177/the-correct-way-to-add-packages-to-an-openembedded-image
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Building FSO

2009-02-06 Thread Arigead
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Hello all,
I was just trying to build the FSO from openembedded as per the
instructions on the wiki. If you're trying to do that on an eeePC it
tends to take some time! I only have to build it all once and then all I
have to build changes. Anyhow the build has failed at connman, a few
days in ;-)

I can't see what depends on connman and why I'm even building it.

I'm not entirely confident here that what I'm building in openembedded
will match the MS5 build that I have in my phone at present. As far as I
know the official FSO is built from openembedded upstream but I don't
think that this can be the case.

I've said before that the openmoko should have there own small
repository for bitbake recipes that can overload the official upstream
openembedded recipes. Those should be kept in a directory at the same
level as openembedded and BBPATH used to set priority. Then
om_openembedded can overload any upstream recipes as it sees fit and
produce recipes that build the latest kernel etc. I imagine my build of
fso-image would not have had the andy tracking kernel but an old one.

I'm thinking of a structure like the gumstix structure [1]

Anyhow those are just suggestions, in the mean time can anybody tell me
how I can build fso-image as per the wiki instructions?

Thanks for any help

[1]
http://www.gumstix.net/Software/view/Build-system-overview/Directory-layout/111.html
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Re: Building FSO

2009-02-06 Thread Arigead
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Alastair Johnson wrote:
 Arigead wrote:
 
 Hello all,
 I was just trying to build the FSO from openembedded as per the
 instructions on the wiki. If you're trying to do that on an eeePC it
 tends to take some time! I only have to build it all once and then all I
 have to build changes. Anyhow the build has failed at connman, a few
 days in ;-)
 
 I can't see what depends on connman and why I'm even building it.
 
 connman is (meant to be) a lightweight equivalent to NetworkManager, and
 is going to be used to handle networking.
 
 I'm not entirely confident here that what I'm building in openembedded
 will match the MS5 build that I have in my phone at present. As far as I
 know the official FSO is built from openembedded upstream but I don't
 think that this can be the case.
 
 I've said before that the openmoko should have there own small
 repository for bitbake recipes that can overload the official upstream
 openembedded recipes. Those should be kept in a directory at the same
 level as openembedded and BBPATH used to set priority. Then
 om_openembedded can overload any upstream recipes as it sees fit and
 produce recipes that build the latest kernel etc. I imagine my build of
 fso-image would not have had the andy tracking kernel but an old one.
 
 I'm thinking of a structure like the gumstix structure [1]
 
 Anyhow those are just suggestions, in the mean time can anybody tell me
 how I can build fso-image as per the wiki instructions?
 
 wget http://downloads.freesmartphone.org/Makefile
 make setup
 
 You could now enable parallel builds in common/conf/local.conf but this
 can cause problems with some packages, and probably isn't a good idea on
 the Eee anyway.
 
 make fso-gta02-milestone5-image
 
 I had to rerun this a couple of times as a couple of packages failed due
 to parallel build issues and lack of memory. When you rerun it only
 builds the bits that haven't successfully completed yet.
 

Thanks a million for getting back to me Alastair but from what you're
saying openembedded is not what I should be building with, or the
upstream is  not maintained as such. I'm a bit confused by all this
perhaps the wiki page should be changed a little to remove the building
FSO Manually section

I'll try with the make file :-(

JW
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Debugging PPP

2009-01-29 Thread Arigead
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Hello all,
I've been having a few issues with establishing GPRS data
connections to a service provider (Not all providers) and as a result
would like to look at debugging ppp, get more detail as to what the
provider is not happy with.

Can anybody give me some pointers on this. I have OE installed and have
a recipe for ppp in there. That recipe will download the code from the a
server and build it. I assume I'll have to copy that recipe and change
it so that I can have the code in a directory that I'm working on. I
know OE works in a tmp directory for downloading and building.

Any pointers or advice will be very gratefully received.
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Re: [Debian/FSO] openmoko-panel-plugin: inflexibility in events processing

2008-11-26 Thread Arigead
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

arne anka wrote:
 using ms4 and if I was a granny and hit a power button I'd think I just
 switched off the phone, not suspend. If I hit it again I'd think that
 I'd powered it on again, not resume.
 
 a grannie would be able to kill herself with a spoon ...
 everything above a kitchen knive requires understanding how the device
 works, which means reading soem kind of documentation before use -- if
 the device does not work as expected, it's usually a matter of pebkac.
 especially for a device with so limited a number of physical input
 elements it should be perfectly clear to any user that the two buttons
 have more than a simple on/off function but a broad number depending
 upon the situation.
 
 it might be an option (as usual) to make the behaviour of the pwr button
 configurable:
 a) do only on/off
 b) do suspend/resume and on/off
 c) expose a menu to select the desired action
 
 a) would be for what you call grannies
 b) for those preferring fast and minmal inavise action
 c) for the rest
 
 focusing solely on the (imho hardly likely) group of grannies would
 ostracize the number of users willing to use and looking for a more
 advanced device not tied up in the conventional paradigms of user
 interaction.
 building smartphones for grannies is a task a lot of companies aspire
 -- and i doupt openmoko would be able to survive!
 have a look at palm: they basically abandoned palmos in favour of wince
 -- and their phones a re to expansive and too bad to cope with stuff
 from htc or so, they left their niche and found no other ...
 

Cheers for that you made me laugh with the grannies with spoons comment ;-)

I sort of disagree with you. People do not read the manual when they get
a device. They try to use it and if they have to resort to the manual
the designer has failed. I can't remember the last time I read the
manual for a phone, camera, DVD player. Devices performing everyday
things like a mobile phone in the 21t century should be as close to
intuitive as makes no difference.

No offence to anybody on this list but like a lot of you I'm happy
enough with the command line for a lot of stuff and that's maybe why
we're not that good at usability. I'm not suggesting that we get tied
up the conventional paradigms of user interactions but just a bit of
usability. I think even a granny given an iPod for the first time would
have a fairly good stab at playing some music. Obviously getting music
into it would be a stretch.

I also don't think that OpenMoko should even attempt to give use smart
phones for grannies. They should give us a hardware platform and let us,
the community, do the rest. Look at the xBox media centre for the
original xBox built by a community, as far as I know, and a really good
usable piece of Software IMHO.

At the end of the day I'm still amazed that I've got an open platform.
When my capable laptop for programming arrives and I get some time I'm
going to have a menu on the power button ;-)

Thanks again for the laugh. Grannies with spoons
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