Re: [Sugar-devel] Karma IRC meeting - August 11

[Christoph Derndorfer]

2009/8/10 NoiseEHC 

> Having said that I certainly believe that such a feature would be overkill
>> at this point, there's a bunch of much higher priority tasks that we need to
>> tackle before and it's important not to lose focus of our main goals.
>
>
Sorry, I somehow missed your e-mail yesterday...


> Now that is what I agree with 100%. However at least planning for the
>> future cannot be a waste of time (unless it takes more time than can be
>> saved later). So probably the following two things would be enough
>> preparation:
>
> 1. Do not use fancy lesson plans (like pdf or formatting) so creating some
> some wiki -> karma converter will be possible. Then you will be able to
> crowd source.


The current plan is to use simple .html for the teacher's note, lesson plan
and help text.

As far as using a Wiki is concerned we're simply not at a stage where we can
spend too much time working on these sets of issues. But it's definitely
something to keep in mind for the future.

2. Do not wire questions/examples into the karma lesson. (It is mostly done
> because of internationalization issues.) It is only relevant for text only
> or mostly text only lessons because Karma is for programmers and the
> potential contributors will be teachers and nonprogrammer people cannot
> modify the code via a wiki I think that is obvious. They also will not be
> able to draw via a wiki.
> I think that you should consider at least the 1. point since it is
> basically "do not do anything"... :)
>

I don't understand the reasoning behind "don't wire questions/examples" into
a Karma lesson... Of course a Karma lesson can, will and (IMHO) should come
with interactive exercises and/or games!
Please also understand that within Karma a "lesson" is really a unit of
knowledge or content. Some of them will only be that, content being
presented in an interesting way, but hopefully people also add interesting
exercises and games to these lessons so the children
have different means of engaging with the content.

Christoph

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Re: [Sugar-devel] ESSIDs and BSSIDs, NM and Sugar

[James Cameron]

Attached please find a program that can be run from the Terminal
activity or the text console to display signal level, noise level and
link quality at ten updates per second.

It is useful for performing simple measurements of RF coverage on an XO
associated with an access point.

The levels are expressed as circles of varying radii.  Press q to quit.

Tested on OLPC build 802 and debxo.

-- 
James Cameron
http://quozl.linux.org.au/
#!/usr/bin/python
"""
Signal Strength Meter
Copyright (C) 2009  James Cameron (qu...@laptop.org)

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA

"""
import sys, pygame

license = [
"Signal Strength Meter",
"Copyright (C) 2009 James Cameron ",
" ",
"This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY;",
"for details see source.",
" ",
"This is free software, and you are welcome to ",
"redistribute it under certain conditions; see ",
"source for details.",
" "
]

pause = 100 # milliseconds between screen updates
license_show_time = 10  # number of seconds to show license for
thickness = 4   # thickness of circles in pixels

fonts = ('DejaVuSansMono.ttf', 'DejaVuLGCSansMono.ttf')
fontpaths = ('/usr/share/fonts/dejavu/', '/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/')

# colours
c_license = (0, 0, 0)
c_link = (0, 0, 192)
c_signal = (0, 192, 0)
c_noise = (192, 0, 0)

def get_rf():
""" obtain wireless status from first network interface """
fp = open('/proc/net/wireless', 'r')
head = fp.readline()
head = fp.readline()
line = fp.readline()
fp.close()
(x, x, link, signal, noise, x, x, x, x, x, x) = line.split()
return (int(link.replace('.', ' ')),
int(signal.replace('.', ' ')),
int(noise.replace('.', ' ')))

# what to do when user wants to leave
def op_quit():
sys.exit()

# control keyboard table, relates keys to functions
kb_table_control = {
pygame.K_d: op_quit,
}

# normal keyboard table, relates keys to functions
kb_table_normal = {
pygame.K_q: op_quit,
}

def kb(event):
""" handle keyboard events from user """

# ignore the shift and control keys
if event.key == pygame.K_LSHIFT or event.key == pygame.K_RSHIFT: return
if event.key == pygame.K_LCTRL or event.key == pygame.K_RCTRL: return

# check for control key sequences pressed
if (event.mod == pygame.KMOD_CTRL or
event.mod == pygame.KMOD_LCTRL or
event.mod == pygame.KMOD_RCTRL):
if kb_table_control.has_key(event.key):
handler = kb_table_control[event.key]
handler()
return

# check for normal keys pressed
if kb_table_normal.has_key(event.key):
handler = kb_table_normal[event.key]
handler()
return

class FontCache:
def __init__(self):
self.cache = {}

def read(self, names, size):
if names == None:
return pygame.font.Font(None, size)

for name in names:
for path in fontpaths:
try:
return pygame.font.Font(path + name, size)
except:
continue
return pygame.font.Font(None, size)

def get(self, names, size):
key = (names, size)
if key not in self.cache:
self.cache[key] = self.read(names, size)
return self.cache[key]

def draw_license():
fn = fc.get(fonts, 35)
x = 50
y = 394
for line in license:
ts = fn.render(line, 1, c_license, bg)
tr = ts.get_rect(left=x, top=y)
y = tr.bottom
dirty.append(screen.blit(ts, tr))

def draw_labels():
fn = fc.get(fonts, 35)
ts = fn.render('LINK QUALITY', 1, c_link, bg)
tr = ts.get_rect(centerx=width/2, top=0)
dirty.append(screen.blit(ts, tr))
ts = fn.render('SIGNAL LEVEL', 1, c_signal, bg)
tr = ts.get_rect(left=0, bottom=height)
dirty.append(screen.blit(ts, tr))
ts = fn.render('NOISE LEVEL', 1, c_noise, bg)
tr = ts.get_rect(right=width, bottom=height)
dirty.append(screen.blit(ts, tr))

def draw_item(show, colour, x, y, radius, v):
if not show:
colour = bg
if radius < 0:
radius = 0
p = pygame.draw.circle(screen, colour, (x, y), radius+thickness, thickness)
fn = fc.get(fonts, 50)
ts = fn.render(v, 1, colour, bg)
tr = ts.get_rect(centerx=x, centery=y)

Re: [Sugar-devel] New activity: Arithmetic.

[Christoph Derndorfer]

On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 11:23 AM, Christoph Derndorfer <
christoph.derndor...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 10:16 AM, Christoph Derndorfer <
> christoph.derndor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> * there should be some sort of start button to get the quiz started, I
>> felt quite an adrenaline rush when I started the activity and saw the clock
>> ticking away immediatedly
>>  * there seems to be quite an issue with syncing collaboration because
>> initially the activities on both virtual machines were off by maybe half a
>> second or so but after leaving them running for 10 minutes the difference
>> had increased to more than 6 seconds.
>>
>
> * one funky bug that I discovered by chance is that Arithmetic doesn't seem
> to know how to deal with two players with the same name. Both my virtual
> machines happened to be called "Christoph" and while collaboration works
> just fine there's only one player being listed who gets all the points
> regardless of which of the two VMs I use to solve the questions. (Anybody
> know how other activities deal with this issue?)
> * another interesting observation I made is that when user B connects to a
> shared session by user A the player list on user B's screen initially only
> lists himself whereas user A's list is quickly updated to list both players.
> It is only after user A answers a question correctly (a wrong answer won't
> do that) that his player information shows up on user B's list. That however
> only seems to happen with the first two players because if a user C then
> joins the session the player list on his screen accurately contains the
> information about the other players.
> * another issue is that the player list isn't updated to reflect that a
> player has left a session. So if user A initially plays with user B but user
> B later leaves the session the player list doesn't remove user B's
> information. When user C subsequently joins the shared session though he
> only see's user A as being an active player.
> * one seriously awesome bug is
> that one can repeatedly hit ENTER on a correctly solved problem during the
> remaining time until the next question is posted to quickly increase one's
> score;-)
>

Okay, one last message and then I really need to get back to work...

* There seems to be an issue when a user B who had previously joined a
shared session by user A ends that session and then later tries to rejoin
that session. Arithmetic then gets stuck at the "Joining shared activity"
screen and while the network view indicates that user B has indeed joined
the activity it never moves to a state where it can actually be used.

Christoph

-- 
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url: www.olpcnews.com
e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com
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[Sugar-devel] [Content] Adding pdf documents to the image

[Andrés Arrieta Perréard]

Hi,
I tried adding our own pdfs to the soas image like this
# pull sample content for the journal
curl -O http://www.website.com/Documents/document1.pdf

(I checked and the link of the pdf still works)
All I did was to change the link from soas maps to the document I want. But
some how I can't see them nor on journal nor on the usb stick. When I try to
open the memory stick on journal it shows the loading bar and then just
freezes and stays there. Should I be adding something else to soas-sugar.ks
?
Thx,


-- 
- Andrés Arrieta Perréard (XE1YAA)
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Re: [Sugar-devel] New activity: Arithmetic.

[Christoph Derndorfer]

On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 10:16 AM, Christoph Derndorfer <
christoph.derndor...@gmail.com> wrote:

> * there should be some sort of start button to get the quiz started, I felt
> quite an adrenaline rush when I started the activity and saw the clock
> ticking away immediatedly
>  * there seems to be quite an issue with syncing collaboration because
> initially the activities on both virtual machines were off by maybe half a
> second or so but after leaving them running for 10 minutes the difference
> had increased to more than 6 seconds.
>

* one funky bug that I discovered by chance is that Arithmetic doesn't seem
to know how to deal with two players with the same name. Both my virtual
machines happened to be called "Christoph" and while collaboration works
just fine there's only one player being listed who gets all the points
regardless of which of the two VMs I use to solve the questions. (Anybody
know how other activities deal with this issue?)
* another interesting observation I made is that when user B connects to a
shared session by user A the player list on user B's screen initially only
lists himself whereas user A's list is quickly updated to list both players.
It is only after user A answers a question correctly (a wrong answer won't
do that) that his player information shows up on user B's list. That however
only seems to happen with the first two players because if a user C then
joins the session the player list on his screen accurately contains the
information about the other players.
* another issue is that the player list isn't updated to reflect that a
player has left a session. So if user A initially plays with user B but user
B later leaves the session the player list doesn't remove user B's
information. When user C subsequently joins the shared session though he
only see's user A as being an active player.
* one seriously awesome bug is
that one can repeatedly hit ENTER on a correctly solved problem during the
remaining time until the next question is posted to quickly increase one's
score;-)

Anyway, hope that feedback is useful.

BTW, if anyone feels up to challenging me then look me up on
jabber.sugarlabs.org, I'll try and keep a shared Arithmetic session open
while I'm in the office today:-)

Cheers,
Christoph


-- 
Christoph Derndorfer
co-editor, olpcnews
url: www.olpcnews.com
e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com
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Re: [Sugar-devel] SoaS-for-XO-1 image

[Joshua N Pritikin]

FYI, there is a substantial difference in performance with and without 
compmgr when asking Read Etexts to speak and highlight a text. compmgr 
slows things down a lot.

-- 
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[Sugar-devel] How to not make a window?

[Benjamin M. Schwartz]

I am trying to create a sugar activity that wraps a simple X application.
 Specifically, my activity is a standard python activity, inheriting from
the sugar.activity.activity.Activity, but it has no GUI.  set_canvas is
never called, and nor is self.show_all().  Instead, I use
subprocess.Popen() to start another process that opens a window.

Unfortunately, it seems that even if I don't call set_canvas or show_all,
the python code still produces an empty gray window.  This window becomes
the official window of the Activity, and so the actual window gets the
dreaded meaningless circle in the top bar.

How can I prevent my activity from opening a window at all, so that the
subprocess's window becomes the activity's main window?

Perhaps using
http://www.pygtk.org/docs/pygtk/class-gdkwindow.html#function-gdk--window-foreign-new
?

--Ben



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Re: [Sugar-devel] New activity: Arithmetic.

[Christoph Derndorfer]

On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 10:21 AM, Benjamin M. Schwartz <
bmsch...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:

> Christoph Derndorfer wrote:
> > * there seems to be quite an issue with syncing collaboration because
> > initially the activities on both virtual machines were off by maybe half
> a
> > second or so but after leaving them running for 10 minutes the difference
> > had increased to more than 6 seconds.
>
> Hmm...
>
> Virtual machines have notoriously unstable system clocks, which is
> probably why you observed this.  I'll have to think about what to do about
> it.


I'm also seeing this issue when collaborating between a VirtualBox instance
(with SoaS Strawberry) and an XO (running 802). Though do note that both on
this and the VM & VM setup I was connected via jabber.sugarlabs.org so this
might introduce some latency as well (thanks to Daniel for pointing this out
to me).

Now with two XOs, one of them running Nepal's custom NEXO build, the other
one on 802, connected via the Mesh the difference between the two machines
seems to be ~1 second. I'll leave them running for a bit to see whether it
stays that way or increases.

Christoph

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Re: [Sugar-devel] New activity: Arithmetic.

[Chris Ball]

Hi Christoph,

   > * there should be some sort of start button to get the quiz
   >   started, I felt quite an adrenaline rush when I started the
   >   activity and saw the clock ticking away immediatedly

Makes sense.  I think this comes under an artwork improvement; there
could be some kind of "start shared game" screen (when the first
person chooses to share the activity) where you wait for everyone
to join up and then hit the first countdown together.

   > * there seems to be quite an issue with syncing collaboration
   > because initially the activities on both virtual machines were
   > off by maybe half a second or so but after leaving them running
   > for 10 minutes the difference had increased to more than 6
   > seconds.

Oh, that's very interesting.  I don't think I have an explanation, but
maybe Ben does.  I was thinking that it might be the cumulative delay
of our gobject timer firing, but we're starting a new question based
on *absolute* time passed, not relative, so that doesn't fit after
all.  I'd be interested to know whether there's been six seconds of
clock drift (as measured by "date") between the two machines!

   > Bryan also asked me to show the activity to the folks here at the
   > OLE Nepal offices so if I get any feedback from them I'll forward
   > it to you.

Great, thanks very much,

- Chris.
-- 
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Re: [Sugar-devel] New activity: Arithmetic.

[Benjamin M. Schwartz]

Christoph Derndorfer wrote:
> * there seems to be quite an issue with syncing collaboration because
> initially the activities on both virtual machines were off by maybe half a
> second or so but after leaving them running for 10 minutes the difference
> had increased to more than 6 seconds.

Hmm...

Virtual machines have notoriously unstable system clocks, which is
probably why you observed this.  I'll have to think about what to do about it.

--Ben



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Re: [Sugar-devel] New activity: Arithmetic.

[Christoph Derndorfer]

On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 6:42 AM, Chris Ball  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Over the last few Sunday afternoons, Ben Schwartz, Michael Stone and I
> have been hacking on a new activity.  It's a collaborative arithmetic
> quiz, and extensively uses Ben's "groupthink" collaboration module.
> Here's a link to a bundle:
>
> http://activities.sugarlabs.org/downloads/latest/4204/addon-4204-latest.xo
> http://activities.sugarlabs.org/addon/4204
>
> The game tries to show all the participants the same questions at the
> same time, gives an ongoing scoreboard of how many questions each
> participant has answered correctly, and measures the amount of time it
> takes everyone to answer each question.  It also lets the group choose
> which of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division their game
> should use, and how hard the questions should be.
>
> We think it's pretty fun already, but it still needs plenty of work,
> and we'd love to have help with it.  Some obvious next steps are:
>
> * Artwork!  We haven't spent any time making it pretty.  If someone
>  wants to go ahead and rip everything apart and put it back together
>  in a way that actually looks attractive, that would be awesome.
> * Looks like I messed up the logo in Inkscape, and it doesn't have
>  the correct stroke_color references.
> * It crashes when resumed, as opposed to launched with "Start".
>  Haven't looked into that yet.
> * Gettextification and translations.
> * An algorithm for scoring that depends on how quickly an answer is
>  given.  (One idea could be that you get 9 points if you answer with
>  9 seconds left, down to 1 point for answering with 1 second left.)
> * A natural end to each "round", perhaps involving giving out "medals"
>  (just as Typing Turtle does) for achievement to the participants.
> * There may still be cases where it shows entirely different questions
>  to the participants, instead of everyone seeing the same ones, and
>  we'd like to know about that so we can fix it.
>
> If anyone's in a position to get feedback from kids on whether playing
> this collaboratively is fun, and what might make it more fun, that'd
> be really good to hear.  We'd welcome everyone's changes to the
> activity; we can always back out a change if it needs to be discussed
> more, so don't be shy about pushing changes to a branch or asking for
> direct commit access.  (If there's some way to allow anyone with an SL
> gitorious account to commit directly, that would be an ideal setup.)
>
> The GIT tree contains groupthink referenced as a submodule, so to
> check it out:
>
> git clone git://git.sugarlabs.org/arithmetic/mainline.gitArithmetic.activity
> cd Arithmetic.activity
> git submodule init
> git submodule update
>
> Thanks!
>
> - Chris.


Very cool activity indeed, thanks for the great work! :-)

I've just spent some minutes toying around with it in two VirtualBox
machines, one of them running SoaS strawberry with the other one using
Sebastian's 0.85.1 SoaS snapshot from last week.

The two main things I noticed are:

* there should be some sort of start button to get the quiz started, I felt
quite an adrenaline rush when I started the activity and saw the clock
ticking away immediatedly
* there seems to be quite an issue with syncing collaboration because
initially the activities on both virtual machines were off by maybe half a
second or so but after leaving them running for 10 minutes the difference
had increased to more than 6 seconds.

Bryan also asked me to show the activity to the folks here at the OLE Nepal
offices so if I get any feedback from them I'll forward it to you.

Cheers,
Christoph

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url: www.olpcnews.com
e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Candidate "paper cut" bugs for a new 8.2.x release?

[Daniel Drake]

2009/8/11 Martin Langhoff :
> In the _completely hypothetical_ case that I had some time and chance
> to spin a 8.2.x release aimed at fixing the "paper cuts"[1] and
> low-risk bugs that hinder XO-1 deployability _today_ in the field -
> have *you* got any candidates? Tell me about them :-)

I think doing a release is more work than you would think... but nice idea!

Here's a list of things deployed in Nepal, Paraguay, both, or soon :)
Some of these are hacks, lower quality than you'd want to see in an
official build, but very valuable at the same time.

http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/9246
http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/9289
http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/9248
http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/362
http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/9250
http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/9259
http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/9288
http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/8104
http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1151
http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1152
http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7531 (fixed in new bootanim)

first boot "upgrade your activities" notice is v confusing for first time users
sed -i -e 's/\.sugar-update/\.sugar-update-hackedout/g'
${pristine}/etc/init.d/olpc-configure

upgrade to abiword-2.6.5-2.olpc3 (built ages ago but never shipped by
OLPC) to fix problems with scripts such as nepali and arabic
(there are still a couple of nepali bugs so watch out for a -3 release
in the next week or so)


That's all I can think of for now
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Karma IRC meeting - August 11

[roshan karki]

ack that.

On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 7:31 AM, Christoph Derndorfer <
christoph.derndor...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 2:10 PM, Christoph Derndorfer <
> christoph.derndor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> here's a preliminary agenda for tomorrow's IRC meeting on #sugar-meeting:
>> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Karma:Meeting_11_Aug_2009
>>
>
> @Roxan: The meeting has been postponed to tomorrow (Wednesday). And the
> channel is #sugar, not #sugar-meeting as I had erroneously written above.
>
> Christoph
>
> --
> Christoph Derndorfer
> co-editor, olpcnews
> url: www.olpcnews.com
> e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Karma IRC meeting - August 11

[Christoph Derndorfer]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 2:10 PM, Christoph Derndorfer <
christoph.derndor...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> here's a preliminary agenda for tomorrow's IRC meeting on #sugar-meeting:
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Karma:Meeting_11_Aug_2009
>

@Roxan: The meeting has been postponed to tomorrow (Wednesday). And the
channel is #sugar, not #sugar-meeting as I had erroneously written above.

Christoph

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Deployment feedback braindump

[Sameer Verma]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 5:27 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz <
bmsch...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:

> Daniel Drake wrote:
> > What you are saying makes sense -- it is indeed a nice idea to keep
> > SugarLabs as more of a loose structure, as a place for collaboration
> > on anything that might further the general mission.
> >
> > It is a sensible idea to keep SugarLabs away from doing too much work
> > on the OS building and deployment implementing side of things, because
> > as you point out, even when you exclude those broad topics there is
> > still a lack of resources on the bits that remain.
> > That said, in a way, the "gap" that we're discussing is in some ways
> > more important than any of the Sugar features currently being worked
> > on, because the large majority of sugar users are currently a long way
> > away from even having access to the features that were finished 6
> > months ago. Difficult.
> >
> > I disagree about local labs being key to filling the gap. While a nice
> > idea, I think it is necessary for there to be a central and
> > location-independent deployment-focused upstream, otherwise there will
> > be a lack of coordination accompanied by lots of duplication of work.
>
> I agree... and I think the only way this will happen is for someone to
> start a company.  You would be an ideal person to do such a thing.
>
> Consider the Gnome Foundation.  The organization is composed principally
> of software engineers, working on a technical problems.  They do not
> attempt to manage deployments or provide end-user support.  They do not
> produce operating systems, apart from a few Live CDs for testing and
> validation purposes.  They employed no one for many years, and now employ
> only one person, purely for administrative duties.
>
> Gnome is widely deployed, and supported, but this is done by organizations
> like Debian, Canonical, Slackware, and Red Hat.  These deployers have both
> the incentive and the ability to respond quickly to user demands, by
> customizing their Gnome installation.  They also communicate with Gnome
> upstream, getting their modifications into mainline and pushing for
> development that addresses their users' needs.  In fact, most of the Gnome
> developers are actually employed by deployers, like Novell, and the Gnome
> Foundation is merely the place where all the deployers' engineers come to
> work together.
>
> Sugar Labs is explicitly modeled on the Gnome Foundation.  I agree that
> there is a gap between Sugar Labs and deployment, but this is best
> addressed by a similar two-layer model.  OLPC is part of that second
> layer, and so is Solution Grove, but we certainly need more.
>
> As for "local labs"... the term seems to have been used for many things.
> Some non-profit deployment organizations might request recognition as a
> "local lab" if they think it helps their marketing, and Sugar labs would
> likely be happy to confer the title upon them.
>
>
> ___
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> i...@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>

This comparison of roles between Sugarlabs and GNOME Foundation is helpful.
It allows me to think about how efforts have been successful (and have
failed) when it comes to distros like Ubuntu and companies that support the
process (Canonical in this case). The Ubuntu side of things doesn't get to
see much of say, what conspires between Canonical and Dell.

This is a much needed discussion.

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Re: [Sugar-devel] multiple activity versions installed simultaneously (was Re: [Bugs] #1042 UNSP: cannot install new activity version)

[Gary C Martin]

On 10 Aug 2009, at 17:24, Daniel Drake wrote:

> 2009/8/10 Martin Dengler :
>> Learner-generated activity patches, perhaps?  Like, we're under a  
>> tree
>> and here's my patched Terminal/Pippy/Speak that you may want to try
>> but not commit to blowing-away your "official" version...
>
> Do we have the relevant tools/interfaces/activities to make this
> possible and realistic?

It's not so far off...

> What are the user interfaces like when dealing with multiple
> activities?

Well, we have this already, it's called the Journal. Just download  
Activity bundles and they all live there (and have done as far back as  
I can recall)...

> If I click on a new version of an activity in browse, does
> it upgrade the one I have or install it in parallel?

It downloads the bundle to Journal and auto unpacks/installs, though  
this may have been modified by a very recent patch I haven't poked at  
yet:

http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1042

> How do I erase old versions?

Delete the bundle form the Journal

> When I click the activity from the home screen, which version gets  
> launched?

The last one that you installed (via either downloading in Browse or  
clicking a bundle in Journal).

> Having user-modifiable activities like this is a nice idea, and laying
> the groundwork to make it possible could also be sensible, but right
> now it seems like we aren't ready and the reason for the introduction
> of this code is/was for unrelated reasons.

We would need a button to create an Activity bundle and pop it into  
the Journal). So work flow could be:

1) download some activity via Browse
2) Start it up
3) Click on "Edit Source"  – would be new feature, currently we just  
have "View Source", but there is a patch for the view that could be  
close if desired, from Lucian 
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Development_Team/Almanac#How_do_I_create_a_text_box_for_code_editing.3F
4) Quit, Start, test, goto 3 and repeat
5) Click on "Keep Activity bundle to Journal" – would be new feature  
in "Edit Source" toolbar
6) Use "Send to " to share bundle with others

As long as you kept the original bundle in your Journal, you can click  
it to restore the original code, and click a bundle you or a friend  
made to hop back in to an edit workflow cycle.

Plenty to polish and smooth workflow, but an editable source view and  
a 'make bundle' button don't seem to horrendous to consider if this is  
seen as a desired feature to push on.

> I also feel that this
> functionality would rarely be used in the field.


Agreed, but our minority percentage of 'to be geek' learners (we only  
need ~0.01% of users to be geeky enough to get us ~1000 new activity  
Authors) would be the ones in field to benifit, though clearly it  
would allow many more just to tinker with python. I can imagine  
starting with a template activity (could be helloworld, could be a  
Physics template, Simple game template etc) where folks then modify  
and add to it to create their own activity, game, et al, and learn how  
to build new activities. Work flow would be basically hack on live  
installed version for a while it for a while, bundle it when you want  
to keep a snapshot to Journal (version), repeat, rinse, share bundle  
once you're happy with it.

Disclaimer, there are likely better ways of doing this but at great  
development cost, this is my view of the likely shortest path to  
feature.

Regards,
--Gary

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [Moodle]About the has_capability() function

[Martin Langhoff]

On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 1:33 AM, Vamsi Krishna
Davuluri wrote:
> Hi Martin,
> I am sold with the blocks concept ;)

Hey! That's excelletn news! Sorry about the long latency.

> Though:
>
> I have finally wrapped things with the XML-RPC stuff for assignment-clone
> (which is print) module

Good.

> My idea was "do anything new only after having a backup". But there's still
> the authentication stuff

Um. That's not going to be very satisfactory for end users. They don't
know if it's backedup, they don't have direct control over the backup,
and it happens only once a day.

> that's at question. How do i tell moodle this is from an user X and how do I

You can include -- in the POST data -- the SN and UUID of the machine.
See how Browse.xo is doing, and perhaps the recent changes by Hamilton
Chua about ds-backup

> tell moodle that this will
> go into a particular course module ( I see no way to beat this without
> having  a selection UI in the
> client).

Forget about it being in a course because Sugar has no such concept.
It belongs to no course. The Moodle side should make it always about
the 'sitecourse'.

hth



m
-- 
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 mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
 - ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
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[Sugar-devel] New activity: Arithmetic.

[Chris Ball]

Hi,

Over the last few Sunday afternoons, Ben Schwartz, Michael Stone and I
have been hacking on a new activity.  It's a collaborative arithmetic
quiz, and extensively uses Ben's "groupthink" collaboration module.
Here's a link to a bundle:

http://activities.sugarlabs.org/downloads/latest/4204/addon-4204-latest.xo
http://activities.sugarlabs.org/addon/4204

The game tries to show all the participants the same questions at the
same time, gives an ongoing scoreboard of how many questions each
participant has answered correctly, and measures the amount of time it
takes everyone to answer each question.  It also lets the group choose
which of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division their game
should use, and how hard the questions should be.

We think it's pretty fun already, but it still needs plenty of work,
and we'd love to have help with it.  Some obvious next steps are:

* Artwork!  We haven't spent any time making it pretty.  If someone
  wants to go ahead and rip everything apart and put it back together
  in a way that actually looks attractive, that would be awesome.
* Looks like I messed up the logo in Inkscape, and it doesn't have
  the correct stroke_color references.
* It crashes when resumed, as opposed to launched with "Start".
  Haven't looked into that yet.
* Gettextification and translations.
* An algorithm for scoring that depends on how quickly an answer is
  given.  (One idea could be that you get 9 points if you answer with
  9 seconds left, down to 1 point for answering with 1 second left.)
* A natural end to each "round", perhaps involving giving out "medals"
  (just as Typing Turtle does) for achievement to the participants.
* There may still be cases where it shows entirely different questions
  to the participants, instead of everyone seeing the same ones, and
  we'd like to know about that so we can fix it.

If anyone's in a position to get feedback from kids on whether playing
this collaboratively is fun, and what might make it more fun, that'd
be really good to hear.  We'd welcome everyone's changes to the
activity; we can always back out a change if it needs to be discussed
more, so don't be shy about pushing changes to a branch or asking for
direct commit access.  (If there's some way to allow anyone with an SL
gitorious account to commit directly, that would be an ideal setup.)

The GIT tree contains groupthink referenced as a submodule, so to
check it out:

git clone git://git.sugarlabs.org/arithmetic/mainline.git Arithmetic.activity
cd Arithmetic.activity
git submodule init
git submodule update

Thanks!

- Chris.
-- 
Chris Ball   
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Re: [Sugar-devel] ESSIDs and BSSIDs, NM and Sugar

[James Cameron]

The instantaneous signal strengths change very quickly, as a result of
micromovements of metallic objects, and the movement of people within
the signal area.

The firmware in the wireless components of the XO can and will make
decisions about which AP to use at a rate which is dependent on the
changing conditions.  The rate at which you can obtain and perceive the
signal strength value is much lower.

If one were to place objects in the near field of one AP's antennas,
reducing the signal strength, then it would be expected and beneficial
for all XOs to swap to the other AP.  Surely this is what you want.

Also, it isn't just signal strength, but also noise level that matters.
The noise level changes dynamically with activity.

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 12:40:15PM -0300, Andr?s Nacelle wrote:
> I wasn?t able to find data witch allow me to say if the throughput was
> affected because of this behavior (I suspect that would be some
> decrease on congested nets), but I don?t like to have in a school half
> of the XO moving from an AP to another all the time. This kind of
> behavior I think would produce dynamical congestion in the net,
> basically because when many XO jumps to the same AP this is not going
> to be able to manage all that much connections and throughput, then
> the XO are going to keep trying and suddenly they will start
> connecting to the other. What I?m afraid of is a mass effect, in witch
> big blocks of XO go from one to another AP sub-employing one of the AP
> and overcharging the other.

These are rational fears, but you need to validate your theory, by
measuring the congestion and load on each AP.

How are you measuring signal strength in your test area?  Is it a
once-off reading using "iwconfig eth0", or do you average several
samples and capture a standard deviation?

-- 
James Cameron
http://quozl.linux.org.au/
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[Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Release Arithmetic-1

[Sugar Labs Activities]

Activity Homepage:
http://activities.sugarlabs.org/addon/4204

Sugar Platform:
from 0.82 to 0.86

Download Now:
http://activities.sugarlabs.org/downloads/version/29208

Release notes:
First release.

Reviewer comments:
This request has been approved. 

Sugar Labs Activities
http://activities.sugarlabs.org

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[Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Release Pippy-35

[Sugar Labs Activities]

Activity Homepage:
http://activities.sugarlabs.org/addon/4041

Sugar Platform:
from 0.82 to 0.86

Download Now:
http://activities.sugarlabs.org/downloads/version/29207

Release notes:
Version 35 adds Groupthink collaboration for sharing code instances. (Thanks 
Ben Schwartz!)

Reviewer comments:
This request has been approved. 

Sugar Labs Activities
http://activities.sugarlabs.org

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Re: [Sugar-devel] Design help needed for web applications within Sugar

[Lucian Branescu]

Sorry, I should have pointed that out more clearly. In this image
(http://files.getdropbox.com/u/317039/userscript%20hello%20world.png),
the button in the top right, next to the bookmark button, is the
button used for creating SSBs.

Here (http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/317039/create%20ssb.png) is an even
better screenshot.

2009/8/10 Benjamin M. Schwartz :
> Lucian Branescu wrote:
>> How should these features be presented to the user? The screenshots on
>> my blog show the current situation.
>
> They do?  I don't see anything there that shows the current SSB creation
> or site-zip-saving UI.
>
> --Ben
>
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Deployment feedback braindump

[David Farning]

FWIW,  It sounds like you both are pretty much in sync and are
providing two much needed voices.  The challenge that you both are
clearly articulating is that of seemingly unlimited needs and limited
resources.

The only thing I would like to add is, "Please note the tone of this
discussion with compared to similar discussion a year ago."   This
discussion we can build on!

I would encourage Tomeu not to take it personally.  _Everybody_ all
ways wants more from their engineer's.  I would encourage Daniel to
start breaking down the deployment needs in to items which we can
prioritize and implement.

david

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:53 AM, Daniel Drake wrote:
> Hi Tomeu,
>
> 2009/8/10 Tomeu Vizoso :
>> Hi,
>>
>> some thoughts follow. Please keep in mind that these are just my
>> personal opinions and that not everybody at Sugar Labs share the same
>> idea of what SLs is or should be.
>
> Thanks for the response.
>
>
> What you are saying makes sense -- it is indeed a nice idea to keep
> SugarLabs as more of a loose structure, as a place for collaboration
> on anything that might further the general mission.
>
> It is a sensible idea to keep SugarLabs away from doing too much work
> on the OS building and deployment implementing side of things, because
> as you point out, even when you exclude those broad topics there is
> still a lack of resources on the bits that remain.
> That said, in a way, the "gap" that we're discussing is in some ways
> more important than any of the Sugar features currently being worked
> on, because the large majority of sugar users are currently a long way
> away from even having access to the features that were finished 6
> months ago. Difficult.
>
> I disagree about local labs being key to filling the gap. While a nice
> idea, I think it is necessary for there to be a central and
> location-independent deployment-focused upstream, otherwise there will
> be a lack of coordination accompanied by lots of duplication of work.
> Local labs need to feed into something bigger, which doesn't currently
> exist, although it could probably sit under the realm of sugarlabs if
> the right people were to step up.
>
> Also, when talking of scale, I am a little wary of local community
> efforts because they have previously proven disruptive to deployments.
> The sad reality is that you absolutely require more of a NGO or
> business setup to be working with the relevant authorities. And when
> this happens, the community efforts automatically become a bit
> distanced. For example in many of these places, the "official"
> organisation receives permission from the government for their staff
> to enter government schools - but only their staff (not community
> volunteers).
>
> You mention lack of involvement and feedback from deployments -- why
> do you think this is?
> Here are some of my thoughts:
> - The majority people we're working with are alien to the idea that
> they might be able to talk to the people who are writing the software
> that they are using. Since when has anyone been able to do that? Us
> open source people are still the oddities in the world.
> - People are afraid or mythed by the idea of this stuff being public
> and global ("why would I want my feedback to be public?"), and are
> confused/challenged by mailing lists.
> - The people most able to give the kind of feedback you are looking
> for are the teachers, who are probably even more distanced from these
> ideas. Many will lack connectivity and english language skills.
> - Many people who support the project with technical skills (e.g.
> Linux) come from purely academic backgrounds which means they
> understand the technical stuff well, but have little interest,
> experience (and sometimes ability) to become good community members.
>
> To put it plainly: in my opinion, wishing for substantially more
> involvement from deployments is not realistic. SugarLabs would benefit
> from being proactive here, especially by using the telephone rather
> than email to contact deployments, but this is of course subject to
> the "where are the resources?" question. Hopefully over time a
> proactive approach from our side would likewise encourage a proactive
> approach to communication from the deployments, but I suspect we'll
> have to be patient. and yes, this makes your job pretty difficult.
>
>> On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 19:41, Daniel Drake wrote:
>>> At least from what I have seen, this kind of clarity seems to be
>>> missing from discussions that define the Sugar platform nowadays, as
>>> well as in the code that is flowing through the system. Does SugarLabs
>>> still have a high degree of interest in bigger-than-you-can-believe
>>> deployments in remote and really difficult parts of the world on
>>> low-spec hardware, or are we moving towards looking at occasional
>>> 30-student deployments on powerful computers in schools along the
>>> Charles? Or are we trying to do both?
>>> Are we still focusing on 6-12 year olds or has that chang

[Sugar-devel] Design help needed for web applications within Sugar

[Lucian Branescu]

This a bit long-winded, but please bear with me. If you know my
project, skip to the end.

I've been working on Browse in the context of GSoC.
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Webified
Here's my blog http://honeyweb.wordpress.com and you can get the code
from here http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/browse/repos/webified. I
can prepare an .xo bundle if needed. I've implemented Site Specific
Browser creation and 'save complete page' functionality for Browse. An
example of SSB is Mozilla Prism; Firefox has the option to save a
page, complete with resources.


Site Specific Browsers in Sugar are instances of Browse with a static
home-page and a few extra capabilities, like bookmarklets, userscripts
and userstyles 
(http://honeyweb.wordpress.com/2009/07/06/bookmarklets-userstyles-userscriptssort-of/).
The web site loaded inside an SSB works just like it would normally,
but it happens to be the default and it can be (easily) customised.
This works very well for GMail, for example. In fact, I use GMail
inside an SSB all the time (http://fluidapp.com). With Gears, you can
even work with GMail offline.

Saving a complete web page is useful for keeping a web page for
offline viewing, of course. But for web apps with behaviour that does
not depend on a having a network, they are similar in a way to SSBs.
This would work very well for things like Karma lessons (see Felipe
and Bryan's project http://karmaproject.wordpress.com/) and Paint Web
http://code.google.com/p/paintweb/.



Both ways produce a Journal object that can be run and opens a Browse
instance with the desired web page, but they are very different
technically. Both would be very useful and for different purposes, but
they have some overlapping usage.

How should these features be presented to the user? The screenshots on
my blog show the current situation.
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[Sugar-devel] Candidate "paper cut" bugs for a new 8.2.x release?

[Martin Langhoff]

In the _completely hypothetical_ case that I had some time and chance
to spin a 8.2.x release aimed at fixing the "paper cuts"[1] and
low-risk bugs that hinder XO-1 deployability _today_ in the field -
have *you* got any candidates? Tell me about them :-)

I am specially hoping to round up bugs that have patches that have
been tested in the field. So low low risk stuff that makes life easier
and better for those that really matter: kids and teachers in the
field.

No promises for now, but I sure want to find a way to do this.
Daniel's piled up a few good patches I am aware of, but I am sure
there are more (from him and others).

cheers,



martin
1 - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PaperCut
-- 
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 - ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Backup and Restore for Sugar on a Stick

[Martin Langhoff]

On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 3:29 PM, Caroline
Meeks wrote:
> This email is especially for Miguel Salazar and the Chiapas deployment.
> The code for backup and restore of Sugar Sticks using the XS is awaiting
> code review, if you can please test it.
> http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/916
> http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1124

Right - reviewed, sorry about the latency. In general, the patches are
good. There is a little list of minor things. None major but I think
they're worth addressing.

cheers,



m
-- 
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 - ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
 - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Deployment feedback braindump

[Martin Langhoff]

Hi Daniel.,

excellent post - skipping to the "let's make it deployable" part, I
have to say I agree with all you say. - Some comments below

On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 1:41 PM, Daniel Drake wrote:
> Secondly, this just won't work for deployments in general. Deployments
> are really difficult. You don't have enough people, so everyone is

Yes. I am looking now at all the barriers to a deployment team, and to
teachers in a crowded classroom. My mantra going forward is going to
be:

 - am I knocking down a barrier to deploymeny?
 - am I simplifying teacher's life in the classroom?
 - am I giving an average 6~8 year-old a better learning opportunity?
 - am I significantly cutting the learning curve?

If it's not in very concrete terms on that list, then skip to the next task :-)

> In many of these places it is really difficult to find
> people with the required computing skillsets, and even if they exist
> they aren't likely to accept the piddly salary offered by your
> cash-strapped NGO or govt organisation.

Yes.

> *really* challenging them (and sometimes, excluding them).

Most of thetime - excluding them.

...
> Now moving onto some things more directly related to deployment
> experience. As I stated in my questions above, I'm not sure, but I'm
> really hoping that sugar is just as dedicated as it always was to
> provide a really really simple UI for 6 year old children. Everything
> is so much harder in a classroom, and every small problem encountered
> causes significant disruption.

Yes. Even if 1 XO doesn't work or one child gets "lost" in a process,
it distracts ~4 users, because humans are social, and the chatter of
"won't work for me" stops progress. It only takes around 5% of users
having minor trouble to get 50% of the class distracted.

And at that point you have to give up on the XOs and turn to the blackboard.

Every little obstacle counts.

> How about the first boot experience - typing in your name and choosing
> colours? (...)

Sugar 0.84 makes that into every activity... it won't save unless you
give it a name for the document. Can we disable that? Maybe not in the
official SoaS but can there be a knob somewhere to revert it?

> We've all heard the problems of children deleting activities by now.
> I've also seen kids click the "disable wireless" box and then wonder
> why they can't get online. I think that this highlights 2 things --

That's been added for G1G1 and power user / developer userbase -

> Simplifying the user experience is *key* -- sugar has already taken
> many leaps in this area, let's keep this as a high priority, and make
> sure that this is communicated.

Can I propose Daniel for president?

...

> Sugar is obviously geared to constructionist learning which is
> generally carried out differently from normal learning using books,

Actually, having books is crucial for social constructionism too --
read it as much as your curioisity drives you to, revisit it as often
as you like. And then do the social things you'll naturally do with
what you discovered...

In short, listen to the man.




m
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Re: [Sugar-devel] SoaS-for-XO-1 image

[Jim Simmons]

Joshua,

I'll address these in 16.  As for the second problem, someone found a
similar issue in Get Internet Archive Books.  I'll be addressing that
one too.  What I'll probably do is after I show the message box I'll
enable the results table.  A retry button would not work in this case,
because some of the books in the results table have invalid addresses,
for reasons that I have no good way to deal with.

James Simmons


On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 9:39 AM, Joshua N Pritikin wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 09:15:08AM -0500, Jim Simmons wrote:
>> Read Etexts only does text to speech for books, not for that bit of
>> Help text that starts with the Groucho Marx quote.  It never occurred
>> to me that anyone would want to have text to speech with highlighting
>> for the Help.  I could add that in a future release if others are
>> confused by that.
>
> Do something. Either the button should be insensitive or it should work.
>
> I found a bug in version 15. If you try to download a book and the
> network connection times out then the list of books becomes insensitive.
> Even after clicking the X and searching again, the results list remains
> insensitive. It would be good to add a "Retry" button too.
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Deployment feedback braindump

[Benjamin M. Schwartz]

Daniel Drake wrote:
> What you are saying makes sense -- it is indeed a nice idea to keep
> SugarLabs as more of a loose structure, as a place for collaboration
> on anything that might further the general mission.
> 
> It is a sensible idea to keep SugarLabs away from doing too much work
> on the OS building and deployment implementing side of things, because
> as you point out, even when you exclude those broad topics there is
> still a lack of resources on the bits that remain.
> That said, in a way, the "gap" that we're discussing is in some ways
> more important than any of the Sugar features currently being worked
> on, because the large majority of sugar users are currently a long way
> away from even having access to the features that were finished 6
> months ago. Difficult.
> 
> I disagree about local labs being key to filling the gap. While a nice
> idea, I think it is necessary for there to be a central and
> location-independent deployment-focused upstream, otherwise there will
> be a lack of coordination accompanied by lots of duplication of work.

I agree... and I think the only way this will happen is for someone to
start a company.  You would be an ideal person to do such a thing.

Consider the Gnome Foundation.  The organization is composed principally
of software engineers, working on a technical problems.  They do not
attempt to manage deployments or provide end-user support.  They do not
produce operating systems, apart from a few Live CDs for testing and
validation purposes.  They employed no one for many years, and now employ
only one person, purely for administrative duties.

Gnome is widely deployed, and supported, but this is done by organizations
like Debian, Canonical, Slackware, and Red Hat.  These deployers have both
the incentive and the ability to respond quickly to user demands, by
customizing their Gnome installation.  They also communicate with Gnome
upstream, getting their modifications into mainline and pushing for
development that addresses their users' needs.  In fact, most of the Gnome
developers are actually employed by deployers, like Novell, and the Gnome
Foundation is merely the place where all the deployers' engineers come to
work together.

Sugar Labs is explicitly modeled on the Gnome Foundation.  I agree that
there is a gap between Sugar Labs and deployment, but this is best
addressed by a similar two-layer model.  OLPC is part of that second
layer, and so is Solution Grove, but we certainly need more.

As for "local labs"... the term seems to have been used for many things.
Some non-profit deployment organizations might request recognition as a
"local lab" if they think it helps their marketing, and Sugar labs would
likely be happy to confer the title upon them.



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Re: [Sugar-devel] Collaboration with Jabber on Sugar

[Dave Bauer]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:46 AM, Russell
Brown wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm a total newb to this but I am keen to try and figure out what is
> happening with Jabber/Sugar collaboration. Is this list best to post
> or the XS server list?
>
> Specifically what I am seeing is general unreliability. Sometimes when
> I launch a bunch of Sugar VMs and some physical machines I get nice,
> seamless collaboration. But often I have to restart some sugar
> instances at least once, sometimes many times, for them to register on
> the Jabber server.
>
> Next, when they are all registered, some Sugar instances show the
> other Sugars in the network very rapidly. Some NEVER seem to see the
> new members. The same goes for leaving members. Is it something to do
> with the order they joined, maybe?
>
> Is it possible to watch the XMPP messages (is there some debug setting
> for the Jabber client in Sugar?)

You can use the Analyze activity
http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4200

After installing Analyze, start it up. Click on the Interfaces tab
then the XO icon. There are resizable horizontal panes with various
useful information. It should give you some data to debug some of
these issues.

Others have also experienced these intermittent problems with
collaboration. We need some comprehensive testing with data to track
down the problems.

Dave

>
> Is there some introductory documentation to the Jabber client in Sugar
> so that I can start poking around for myself?
>
> Sorry for the massive barrage of questions, I guess answering the last
> one will get me started on answering the rest for myself.
>
> May thanks in advance
>
> Russell
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Re: [Sugar-devel] multiple activity versions installed simultaneously (was Re: [Bugs] #1042 UNSP: cannot install new activity version)

[Gabriel Eirea]

> I think I agree with both Ben and Tomeu, here. Supporting multiple
> activity versions is crucial to allowing kids to modify activities, or
> create their own. At the same time, I also believe that a new owner
> (as in the example of modifying the Speak activity under a tree)
> should result in a new activity "thread". That is, the resulting
> activity would actually be version one of (potentially) many. For this
> reason, encouraging a name change when ownership changes might be
> apropos.

We have encountered this need in the past (change the name of an
activity to introduce a specific feature for example). The process was
documented by Pablo Flores here (in Spanish but I believe it's easy to
follow):

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Ceibal_Jam/Modificar_Actividad

It's not very difficult but it would be nice to have an easier way
integrated in the Sugar UI. For example, a "clone" entry in the
activities view palette? Or include this feature with the "develop"
activity which should have special permissions?

Regards,

Gabriel
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Re: [Sugar-devel] multiple activity versions installed simultaneously (was Re: [Bugs] #1042 UNSP: cannot install new activity version)

[Daniel Drake]

2009/8/10 Martin Dengler :
> Do you propose SL explictly not support this (closing the bug as
> WONTFIX or something, presumably) and - separately - let it be a
> goal/feature request once there are sponsors?  That seems sensible to
> me.

I'm a bit confused as to the current situation. The bug seems to
suggest that we have some half-baked code already in sugar for
supporting activity versions. I think that was added recently, but
with a design focusing on fixing something other than supporting kids
modifying activities under a tree.

So I think the first thing to do is to clarify why having multiple
versions is interesting and evaluate the reasoning and design of that.

I don't think we yet have a design for the kids modifying activities
thing, so I agree that should be left til later.

Daniel
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Deployment feedback braindump

[Daniel Drake]

Hi Tomeu,

2009/8/10 Tomeu Vizoso :
> Hi,
>
> some thoughts follow. Please keep in mind that these are just my
> personal opinions and that not everybody at Sugar Labs share the same
> idea of what SLs is or should be.

Thanks for the response.


What you are saying makes sense -- it is indeed a nice idea to keep
SugarLabs as more of a loose structure, as a place for collaboration
on anything that might further the general mission.

It is a sensible idea to keep SugarLabs away from doing too much work
on the OS building and deployment implementing side of things, because
as you point out, even when you exclude those broad topics there is
still a lack of resources on the bits that remain.
That said, in a way, the "gap" that we're discussing is in some ways
more important than any of the Sugar features currently being worked
on, because the large majority of sugar users are currently a long way
away from even having access to the features that were finished 6
months ago. Difficult.

I disagree about local labs being key to filling the gap. While a nice
idea, I think it is necessary for there to be a central and
location-independent deployment-focused upstream, otherwise there will
be a lack of coordination accompanied by lots of duplication of work.
Local labs need to feed into something bigger, which doesn't currently
exist, although it could probably sit under the realm of sugarlabs if
the right people were to step up.

Also, when talking of scale, I am a little wary of local community
efforts because they have previously proven disruptive to deployments.
The sad reality is that you absolutely require more of a NGO or
business setup to be working with the relevant authorities. And when
this happens, the community efforts automatically become a bit
distanced. For example in many of these places, the "official"
organisation receives permission from the government for their staff
to enter government schools - but only their staff (not community
volunteers).

You mention lack of involvement and feedback from deployments -- why
do you think this is?
Here are some of my thoughts:
- The majority people we're working with are alien to the idea that
they might be able to talk to the people who are writing the software
that they are using. Since when has anyone been able to do that? Us
open source people are still the oddities in the world.
- People are afraid or mythed by the idea of this stuff being public
and global ("why would I want my feedback to be public?"), and are
confused/challenged by mailing lists.
- The people most able to give the kind of feedback you are looking
for are the teachers, who are probably even more distanced from these
ideas. Many will lack connectivity and english language skills.
- Many people who support the project with technical skills (e.g.
Linux) come from purely academic backgrounds which means they
understand the technical stuff well, but have little interest,
experience (and sometimes ability) to become good community members.

To put it plainly: in my opinion, wishing for substantially more
involvement from deployments is not realistic. SugarLabs would benefit
from being proactive here, especially by using the telephone rather
than email to contact deployments, but this is of course subject to
the "where are the resources?" question. Hopefully over time a
proactive approach from our side would likewise encourage a proactive
approach to communication from the deployments, but I suspect we'll
have to be patient. and yes, this makes your job pretty difficult.

> On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 19:41, Daniel Drake wrote:
>> At least from what I have seen, this kind of clarity seems to be
>> missing from discussions that define the Sugar platform nowadays, as
>> well as in the code that is flowing through the system. Does SugarLabs
>> still have a high degree of interest in bigger-than-you-can-believe
>> deployments in remote and really difficult parts of the world on
>> low-spec hardware, or are we moving towards looking at occasional
>> 30-student deployments on powerful computers in schools along the
>> Charles? Or are we trying to do both?
>> Are we still focusing on 6-12 year olds or has that changed?
>
> How do you expect that the SLs volunteers know what OLPC deployments
> need if they don't voice their needs? If you look at the Sugar commit
> logs, you will see that almost all commits are from someone sitting in
> a room somewhere in Europe, working on their free time. By which kind
> of epiphany do you expect them to know what's best for OLPC
> deployments?

I think you misunderstood my position here. I am personally having
trouble trying to formulate this kind of feedback because I no longer
know what is important to Sugar. Maybe it is a personal
misunderstanding, but after seeing some recent discussions and
features I feel that some of the core goals that formed the project in
its earlier stages have been lost. I am glad to see your response
which suggests that these things are st

Re: [Sugar-devel] multiple activity versions installed simultaneously (was Re: [Bugs] #1042 UNSP: cannot install new activity version)

[Martin Dengler]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 10:09:06PM +0545, Daniel Drake wrote:
> 2009/8/10 Martin Dengler :
> > Learner-generated activity patches, perhaps?  Like, we're under a tree
> > and here's my patched Terminal/Pippy/Speak that you may want to try
> > but not commit to blowing-away your "official" version...
> 
> Do we have the relevant tools/interfaces/activities to make this
> possible and realistic?

No, but I assume that was a rhetorical question, as you're in the
field and know better than I.  But we were talking about why one might
need more than one version at once, not whether it's possible now.

I understand this thread to date as demonstrating:

1) one doesn't need more than one version right now (since it's
impossible)

2) numbers of people think this is a valid use case, but lots of work
remains to be done to make it viable.

So...

> Having user-modifiable activities like this is a nice idea, and laying
> the groundwork to make it possible could also be sensible, but right
> now it seems like we aren't ready and the reason for the introduction
> of this code is/was for unrelated reasons.

Do you propose SL explictly not support this (closing the bug as
WONTFIX or something, presumably) and - separately - let it be a
goal/feature request once there are sponsors?  That seems sensible to
me.

> I also feel that this functionality would rarely be used in the
> field.

This can go two ways - I think a  "target audience" principle / goal
(that you asked after / proposed in another thread) would imply how
used / valuable we thought this feature was: the younger the target
audience, the less important the feature would seem to be.

> Daniel

Martin


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Re: [Sugar-devel] multiple activity versions installed simultaneously (was Re: [Bugs] #1042 UNSP: cannot install new activity version)

[Daniel Drake]

2009/8/10 Martin Dengler :
> Learner-generated activity patches, perhaps?  Like, we're under a tree
> and here's my patched Terminal/Pippy/Speak that you may want to try
> but not commit to blowing-away your "official" version...

Do we have the relevant tools/interfaces/activities to make this
possible and realistic?

What are the user interfaces like when dealing with multiple
activities? If I click on a new version of an activity in browse, does
it upgrade the one I have or install it in parallel?

How do I erase old versions?

When I click the activity from the home screen, which version gets launched?


Having user-modifiable activities like this is a nice idea, and laying
the groundwork to make it possible could also be sensible, but right
now it seems like we aren't ready and the reason for the introduction
of this code is/was for unrelated reasons.  I also feel that this
functionality would rarely be used in the field.

Daniel
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Re: [Sugar-devel] multiple activity versions installed simultaneously (was Re: [Bugs] #1042 UNSP: cannot install new activity version)

[Eben Eliason]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:52 AM, Benjamin M.
Schwartz wrote:
> Martin Dengler wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 09:26:58PM +0545, Daniel Drake wrote:
>>> 2009/8/10 Tomeu Vizoso :
 Hi,

 any opinions on this?
>>> I dislike the idea of having multiple versions installed at
>>> once. The argument I saw for this case was that different versions
>>> might have incompatibilities in their collaboration protocols.
>>>
>>> Are there other reasons?
>>
>> Learner-generated activity patches, perhaps?  Like, we're under a tree
>> and here's my patched Terminal/Pippy/Speak that you may want to try
>> but not commit to blowing-away your "official" version...
>
> I agree... and this is why we need to have real activity versioning
> support.  The plan has always been to piggyback activity multiversion
> support on top of the datastore's versioning capabilities, and until that
> has landed, in my view, there's not much we can do.

I think I agree with both Ben and Tomeu, here. Supporting multiple
activity versions is crucial to allowing kids to modify activities, or
create their own. At the same time, I also believe that a new owner
(as in the example of modifying the Speak activity under a tree)
should result in a new activity "thread". That is, the resulting
activity would actually be version one of (potentially) many. For this
reason, encouraging a name change when ownership changes might be
apropos.

Eben
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Re: [Sugar-devel] SD boot sugar

[Walter Bender]

2009/8/5 Hernan Pachas :
> Hola Walter.
>
> Nosotros tenemos unas XO con sectores de la NAND dañadas físicamente y en
> muchos casos, esto impide el booteo de las XO con sugar.
>
> Estaba pensando, y corrígeme si me equivoco, puedo tener un SD con sugar
> (parecido al SoaS) colocarlo en el slot SD y bootear desde el SD Sugar? en
> lugar de boot desde la NAND?
>
> Esta solución puede servir para futuras  NAND con fallas físicas.
>
> --hernan
>
>

Yes. You should be able to replace the NAND with a SoaS SD image.
There has been a lot of back and forth on the list of late about
optimizing such an image for the XO. I am not current, but it I
believe it is all working quite well.

One catch: the version of Sugar will be more recent than the one that
it is replacing. I don't think a backport is feasible.

-walter


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Re: [Sugar-devel] multiple activity versions installed simultaneously (was Re: [Bugs] #1042 UNSP: cannot install new activity version)

[Benjamin M. Schwartz]

Martin Dengler wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 09:26:58PM +0545, Daniel Drake wrote:
>> 2009/8/10 Tomeu Vizoso :
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> any opinions on this?
>> I dislike the idea of having multiple versions installed at
>> once. The argument I saw for this case was that different versions
>> might have incompatibilities in their collaboration protocols.
>>
>> Are there other reasons?
> 
> Learner-generated activity patches, perhaps?  Like, we're under a tree
> and here's my patched Terminal/Pippy/Speak that you may want to try
> but not commit to blowing-away your "official" version...

I agree... and this is why we need to have real activity versioning
support.  The plan has always been to piggyback activity multiversion
support on top of the datastore's versioning capabilities, and until that
has landed, in my view, there's not much we can do.

--Ben



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Re: [Sugar-devel] multiple activity versions installed simultaneously (was Re: [Bugs] #1042 UNSP: cannot install new activity version)

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 17:48, Martin Dengler wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 09:26:58PM +0545, Daniel Drake wrote:
>> 2009/8/10 Tomeu Vizoso :
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > any opinions on this?
>>
>> I dislike the idea of having multiple versions installed at
>> once. The argument I saw for this case was that different versions
>> might have incompatibilities in their collaboration protocols.
>>
>> Are there other reasons?
>
> Learner-generated activity patches, perhaps?  Like, we're under a tree
> and here's my patched Terminal/Pippy/Speak that you may want to try
> but not commit to blowing-away your "official" version...

Maybe we should encourage changing the name in these cases?

Regards,

Tomeu

>> Daniel
>
> Martin
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] multiple activity versions installed simultaneously (was Re: [Bugs] #1042 UNSP: cannot install new activity version)

[Martin Dengler]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 09:26:58PM +0545, Daniel Drake wrote:
> 2009/8/10 Tomeu Vizoso :
> > Hi,
> >
> > any opinions on this?
> 
> I dislike the idea of having multiple versions installed at
> once. The argument I saw for this case was that different versions
> might have incompatibilities in their collaboration protocols.
>
> Are there other reasons?

Learner-generated activity patches, perhaps?  Like, we're under a tree
and here's my patched Terminal/Pippy/Speak that you may want to try
but not commit to blowing-away your "official" version...

> Daniel

Martin


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[Sugar-devel] Collaboration with Jabber on Sugar

[Russell Brown]

Hi,
I'm a total newb to this but I am keen to try and figure out what is
happening with Jabber/Sugar collaboration. Is this list best to post
or the XS server list?

Specifically what I am seeing is general unreliability. Sometimes when
I launch a bunch of Sugar VMs and some physical machines I get nice,
seamless collaboration. But often I have to restart some sugar
instances at least once, sometimes many times, for them to register on
the Jabber server.

Next, when they are all registered, some Sugar instances show the
other Sugars in the network very rapidly. Some NEVER seem to see the
new members. The same goes for leaving members. Is it something to do
with the order they joined, maybe?

Is it possible to watch the XMPP messages (is there some debug setting
for the Jabber client in Sugar?)

Is there some introductory documentation to the Jabber client in Sugar
so that I can start poking around for myself?

Sorry for the massive barrage of questions, I guess answering the last
one will get me started on answering the rest for myself.

May thanks in advance

Russell
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Re: [Sugar-devel] multiple activity versions installed simultaneously (was Re: [Bugs] #1042 UNSP: cannot install new activity version)

[Daniel Drake]

2009/8/10 Tomeu Vizoso :
> Hi,
>
> any opinions on this?

I dislike the idea of having multiple versions installed at once. The
argument I saw for this case was that different versions might have
incompatibilities in their collaboration protocols, but I feel that we
should instead stick to standard software practices of not breaking
network-exposed  APIs during a stable cycle. If people choose to break
it, let them pick up the pieces.

Are there other reasons?

Daniel
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Re: [Sugar-devel] ESSIDs and BSSIDs, NM and Sugar

[Andrés Nacelle]

Hello there,
I´m writing you from Plan Ceibal - Uruguay. Here I´ve been doing some test
on this subject trying to see what was happening with this "jumping" of the
XO from one to another AP.

Basically what I did was configure two AP with identical SSID, so the XO
would see them both under the same balloon. The AP´s were distribute in the
testing room so that I would have basically 4 regions:

   1. one place were the signal strength seen by an XO from both AP was the
same (-40 dBm).
   2. the same as before but with lower str (-52dBm).
   3. one place with signal isolation of 14dBm (one signal at 42dBm and the
other one at 56dBm).
   4. one place with signal isolation of 40dBm (one signal at 18dBm and the
other one at 58dBm).

After having the scenario prepared I put 60 XO (with 801) making some
traffic to the server and start monitoring, on one XO in each region, the
MAC (from the AP) to witch they were associated.

Basically the results in this was that in regions 1, 2 and 3 the jumping was
about 50 % of the time, staying something between 30 seconds to 20 min in
the same AP. In region 4, 90% of the time the XO stayed on the same AP.

In other words I agree on you with the no smart dynamic selection on terms
of quality of signal by the XO. I really don´t know yet the reason but it
happens.

I didn´t check the blocks in the ~/,sugar/default/nm/networks.cfg, but as
soon as I can run some more tests on this I´ll keep an eye on this.

I wasn´t able to find data witch allow me to say if the throughput was
affected because of this behavior (I suspect that would be some decrease on
congested nets), but I don´t like to have in a school half of the XO moving
from an AP to another all the time. This kind of behavior I think would
produce dynamical congestion in the net, basically because when many XO
jumps to the same AP this is not going to be able to manage all that much
connections and throughput, then the XO are going to keep trying and
suddenly they will start connecting to the other. What I´m afraid of is a
mass effect, in witch big blocks of XO go from one to another AP
sub-employing one of the AP and overcharging the other.

We expect to have more chances to study this problems, but now we need to
move on, so meanwhile we are planing to use different SSID for different
channels and  keep a design in witch equal channels don´t step on each
other.

Hope this help the rest of you on your own tests

If there is any suggestion on how to fix this, I will gladly run the tests
and try it but wright now we are not sure were to search for this solution.

Keep up the spirit that a solution may appear for this.

Bye

Andres Nacelle
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[Sugar-devel] multiple activity versions installed simultaneously (was Re: [Bugs] #1042 UNSP: cannot install new activity version)

[Tomeu Vizoso]

Hi,

any opinions on this?

Thanks,

Tomeu

On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 18:44, SugarLabs
Bugs wrote:
> #1042: cannot install new activity version
> --+-
>    Reporter:  sascha_silbe               |          Owner:  tomeu
>        Type:  defect                     |         Status:  new
>    Priority:  Unspecified by Maintainer  |      Milestone:  0.86
>   Component:  sugar                      |        Version:  Git as of bugdate
>    Severity:  Major                      |     Resolution:
>    Keywords:  r?                         |   Distribution:  Unspecified
> Status_field:  New                        |
> --+-
> Changes (by tomeu):
>
>  * cc: eben, garycmartin (added)
>
>
> Comment:
>
>  I guess some stuff will break if we just let several versions of an
>  activity be installed at the same time. AFAIR the idea was to only let
>  users update to later versions until we have proper multiversion support.
>
>  Eben, Gary, thoughts on this?
>
> --
> Ticket URL: 
> Sugar Labs 
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Re: [Sugar-devel] SoaS-for-XO-1 image

[Martin Dengler]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 09:15:08AM -0500, Jim Simmons wrote:
> Joshua,
> 
> Before you upgrade an Activity you need to remove the existing one
> from the Journal.

I don't think this is correct.

>  There is no way to overlay an old Activity with a
> new one.

Activities can be upgraded, and two (and more than one) versions of an
activity can be accessible.

> James Simmons

Martin


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Re: [Sugar-devel] SoaS-for-XO-1 image

[Joshua N Pritikin]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 09:15:08AM -0500, Jim Simmons wrote:
> Read Etexts only does text to speech for books, not for that bit of
> Help text that starts with the Groucho Marx quote.  It never occurred
> to me that anyone would want to have text to speech with highlighting
> for the Help.  I could add that in a future release if others are
> confused by that.

Do something. Either the button should be insensitive or it should work.

I found a bug in version 15. If you try to download a book and the 
network connection times out then the list of books becomes insensitive. 
Even after clicking the X and searching again, the results list remains 
insensitive. It would be good to add a "Retry" button too.
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Re: [Sugar-devel] SoaS-for-XO-1 image

[Jim Simmons]

Joshua,

Before you upgrade an Activity you need to remove the existing one
from the Journal.  There is no way to overlay an old Activity with a
new one.  Activities are self contained, so this is not as traumatic
as it would be with other popular desktop environments.

Read Etexts only does text to speech for books, not for that bit of
Help text that starts with the Groucho Marx quote.  It never occurred
to me that anyone would want to have text to speech with highlighting
for the Help.  I could add that in a future release if others are
confused by that.

James Simmons


> Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:31:25 +0530
> From: Joshua N Pritikin 
> Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] SoaS-for-XO-1 image
> To: Martin Dengler 
> Cc: sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org
> Message-ID: <20090810100125.gc4...@localhost>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> I tried upgrading an activity (Read Etext from 14 to 15) using the
> Browser. Read Etext downloaded. A journal detail screen appeared, but I
> couldn't start the new activity. When I exited the journal detail view,
> I could not find the new download in the main journal listing. I checked
> ~olpc/Activities/ReadETexts.activity/activity/activity.info for the
> version (still 14). Version 15 seems to have disappeared.
>
> I upgraded Read Etexts using sugar-install-bundle from USB key. That
> worked (according to what is in my home dir). However, the home view
> still claims that I have version 14 installed. This was corrected by
> restarting sugar (Ctl-Alt-Del).
>
> Read Etexts shows the Speech tab, but I'm not sure how to get it to read
> what is on the screen. I didn't try to load a book. I just want to read
> the introductory text. Pressing the play button does nothing. I looked
> at the log file, but I didn't find anything suspicious.
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Re: [Sugar-devel] XO wireless interface problem when AP down

[Tomeu Vizoso]

Hi Andres,

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 15:50, Andrés
Nacelle wrote:
> Hello, I´ve been working recently with something like 70 XO and during the
> tests where I had 2 Access Point working, it happened that the electric
> supply from one of this failed without me realising. So I keep trying to
> associate to this AP with at least 30 XO and after 5 or 6 tries the wireless
> interface decided to turn down by it´s own. If i try to run a iwlist eth0 sc
> the message of interface unavailable or something like that came and
> checking with ifconfig I realise that the eth was really down. Using
> ifconfig eth0 up it came alive again but after trying to associate again it
> turn down.
>
> I don´t know if this is a buy or something done on purpose but it I would ad
> this to my personal list of bad working stuff of the wireless area (wireless
> board and network manager). Just think about it, you try to connect with an
> AP a couple of times and when you realise it´s not answering and try to
> connect with some other you can´t do it because your network interface is
> down.

Agreed.

> Any comment or idea of how to stop this from happening would be really
> welcome

First thing I would do is to see if the bug/misfeature is in
NetworkManager or in a lower level. For that, we could try to
reproduce it and when the interface gets down, see if there's any
useful info in /var/log/messages.

Also will be very useful if we find a way to reproduce it reliably.
Also, if you can manage to reproduce it in a non-XO machine with plain
Fedora 9, then it's most probably NetworkManager.

I'm adding de...@lists.laptop.org to CC because this is most probably
not related to Sugar.

Thanks for the heads up,

Tomeu

> Thanks in advance for any help you can give me
>
> Andres Nacelle
>
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[Sugar-devel] XO wireless interface problem when AP down

[Andrés Nacelle]

Hello, I´ve been working recently with something like 70 XO and during the
tests where I had 2 Access Point working, it happened that the electric
supply from one of this failed without me realising. So I keep trying to
associate to this AP with at least 30 XO and after 5 or 6 tries the wireless
interface decided to turn down by it´s own. If i try to run a iwlist eth0 sc
the message of interface unavailable or something like that came and
checking with ifconfig I realise that the eth was really down. Using
ifconfig eth0 up it came alive again but after trying to associate again it
turn down.

I don´t know if this is a buy or something done on purpose but it I would ad
this to my personal list of bad working stuff of the wireless area (wireless
board and network manager). Just think about it, you try to connect with an
AP a couple of times and when you realise it´s not answering and try to
connect with some other you can´t do it because your network interface is
down.

Any comment or idea of how to stop this from happening would be really
welcome

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me

Andres Nacelle
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Karma IRC meeting - August 11

[NoiseEHC]

> Mmm, I'm not sure how realistic it is for people to be interested in 
> providing that kind of data... But I could be wrong.
>

When I was visiting my elementary school there was a biology teacher who 
took teaching biology very seriously. Computer technology was in its 
infancy at that time so he used an overhead projector and has drawn a 
lot of slides (plastic foils) with colored markers. It could have taken 
a LOT of time to draw all those materials and because copying plastic 
slides was (and probably is) very expensive he could not even share it 
with other teachers. What is clear to me that at least in his mind the 
materials were much higher quality than the books we used in class 
otherwise he would not have been working with them so much.
Now my feeling is that approximately 1% of the teachers can be like my 
biology teacher. Also approximately 5-10% of the teachers would spend 
5-10 minutes per day to fix learning materials (like fixing spelling, 
fixing examples kids did not understood in that day, etc). Even in small 
countries like Nepal this 1% can be more manpower you have in OLPC 
Nepal. Not using their helping potential is not too wise, I think that 
if you make contributing easy then people will start doing it.
Of course this is just my speculation.

> Having said that I certainly believe that such a feature would be 
> overkill at this point, there's a bunch of much higher priority tasks 
> that we need to tackle before and it's important not to lose focus of 
> our main goals.

Now that is what I agree with 100%. However at least planning for the 
future cannot be a waste of time (unless it takes more time than can be 
saved later). So probably the following two things would be enough 
preparation:
1. Do not use fancy lesson plans (like pdf or formatting) so creating 
some some wiki -> karma converter will be possible. Then you will be 
able to crowd source.
2. Do not wire questions/examples into the karma lesson. (It is mostly 
done because of internationalization issues.) It is only relevant for 
text only or mostly text only lessons because Karma is for programmers 
and the potential contributors will be teachers and nonprogrammer people 
cannot modify the code via a wiki I think that is obvious. They also 
will not be able to draw via a wiki.
I think that you should consider at least the 1. point since it is 
basically "do not do anything"... :)

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Re: [Sugar-devel] [Physics] egg libraries sorted -- Journal JSON saving addition, then release?

[Gary C Martin]

Hi Brian,

On 10 Aug 2009, at 04:31, Brian Jordan wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I manually included pkg_resources.py from setuptools so that pythons <
> 2.6.x would still be supported using the .egg libraries.  Then
> released and included new Elements (0.13) which is Asaf's JSON
> changes.

Fab thanks :-)

> Gary or others -- can you test that the .egg-fest I committed works on
> SoaS (python 2.6?) and/or on XO (python 2.5)?

Yep, will do!

> Asaf -- anything left for the physics activity portion of JSON saving?

Asaf, FWIW for v3, I'll also be adding single click default sized  
objects for the shape tools as per (hopefully start working on that  
later tonight):

http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1048

...And we (I) should add a MIME type for the Physics Journal entries,  
that way we can use the Journal "Send to: " (currently the  
friend gets a 'text' file that they can poke about with in Write but  
can't get Physics to resume). Will add a ticket for that later.

> Still need to do some testing/playing, but the roll tool seems  
> great! :)

Yes, need to do more testing/playing here also :-)

Regards,
--Gary

P.S. Certainly not for this cycle, but just wanted to plant this  
potential future feature... For the motor/force type tools, what if we  
could allow attaching a keyboard shortcut (key down = on, key up =  
off) in a future secondary tool palette... This way you could actually  
build interactive actions into Physics models (e.g pinball, trajectory/ 
catapult set-ups, cranes with grabbers, robots etc).

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Re: [Sugar-devel] Deployment feedback braindump

[Tomeu Vizoso]

Hi,

some thoughts follow. Please keep in mind that these are just my
personal opinions and that not everybody at Sugar Labs share the same
idea of what SLs is or should be.

On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 19:41, Daniel Drake wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In response to the thread I started recently about feedback from
> deployments, I've been thinking a lot about specific changes/features
> that would be a big help for deployments.
>
> And even though it only takes 10 minutes in a classroom to see some
> real potential areas for improvement, actually I am finding the task
> of selecting a few important features/bugs/changes very difficult, and
> I keep coming back to various broad questions and loose ideas about
> Sugar's direction, goals, and SugarLabs' roles.

It's great that you are sharing your thoughts on this, hope others
will do the same. I'm cc'ing IAEP because this isn't really technical.

> So I'm afraid that I'm creating another vague, broad and fluffy
> discussion without any real immediate technically actionable items,
> but I'm going to try and put my thoughts into writing anyway.
> Suggestions on how to make some of these ideas actionable would be
> appreciated. I fully understand that nobody can really define Sugar's
> direction at the moment since it's all volunteer time, but hopefully
> we can at least get some objective things written down which will
> possibly feed the motivation of our valued hackers.

And not only hackers, but most of Sugar Labs. Those already working on
a deployment have probably little energy left to consider other
deployments' needs, but all the rest of the community will be sensible
to the needs of the deployments that care to communicate their needs.

> I'll start with roles. Sugar was born inside the belly of OLPC, and
> SugarLabs was born out of OLPC, effectively taking some roles of OLPC
> and further opening them to a community. So, in terms of roles, you
> might look at this as OLPC being top of the food chain (I'm referring
> to the times when OLPC had a substantially larger technical team),
> with SugarLabs below doing some specific subset of OLPC's earlier work
> (i.e. developing the UI), and finally deployments below being the
> consumers.

I'm not sure I agree with that. I see Sugar Labs as a _place_ where
everybody interested in improving learning with Sugar can meet,
communicate and work together. As far as I know OLPC has never aimed
to be a place, but rather an agent. Who may be taking responsibilities
from OLPC are other agents such as OLE Nepal and individual
volunteers, who happen to use Sugar Labs to work together.

> But actually I think it makes sense for this model to be considered
> differently, as follows: SugarLabs is the top of the chain, it is the
> upstream that generates the core user experience.  One step down, OLPC
> as an implementation specialist (again referring to the time when the
> development team was more substantial) takes Sugar from upstream,
> makes some small customizations to fit the OLPC mission, and fills in
> some big gaps of OS development and support, deployability and
> scalability, distribution, hardware work and software to support such
> hardware, user support, etc. Then the deployments feed directly from
> OLPC, not sugarlabs. In this model, OLPC performs a huge chunk of
> support for sugar's users.

This makes sense, we are also seeing several other organizations
playing that role, but it's also true as you point below that some SLs
members prefer to carry these activities as part of Sugar Labs rather
than on their own organizations. I hope that this is temporary and
that as their deployment activities scale up we'll see new
organizations getting formed and their relationship with Sugar Labs
formalized as local labs.

> I think this model was working reasonably well (and was improving over
> time) but the middle layer (OLPC) has now changed to the point where
> it is not performing many of the roles mentioned above, or at least
> not in much capacity.  So who can take over this work? It is certainly
> very important. My gut feeling is that SugarLabs should - but that
> really is only because (1) a number of the OLPC people who would be
> involved in the above roles are no longer OLPC people, but they are
> still sugarlabs contributors, and (2) there are no other good
> candidate parties that I can think of, so I naturally have desires
> that the one that I do know of pick up the work ;)

Don't think we should see in Sugar Labs more than there really is.
It's true that we have a rather broad mission, so most of what can be
done with Sugar has a place in SLs, but that broadness of mission also
means that we (as a single organization) don't have enough focus to
solve every issue that real users find.

The broadness of our mission means that everybody who wants to use
Sugar for learning has a place in SLs, but that doesn't mean that SLs
itself is going to take care of everything. Rather, it means that
people who want to use Sugar in 

Re: [Sugar-devel] SoaS-for-XO-1 image

[Martin Dengler]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 03:53:21PM +0530, Joshua N Pritikin wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:02:31AM +0100, Martin Dengler wrote:
> > From that process I will get:
> > 
> > soasxoXX.iso - iso9990 file system (for use with livecd-iso-to-disk)
> > soasxoXX.img - for ...
> > soasxoXX.crc - ... copy-nand'ing
> > soasxoXX.plc - ... NANDblast'ing
> > soasxoXX.removable.img.tar.lzma - for dd'ing to a removable device
> 
> These seem to be there already.

Yup.

> > soasxoXX.tree.tar.lzma - for untarring, hacking, and re-tarring as you
> >  want to do
> 
> This is the one I want.
> 
> Can you post announcements somewhere of new snapshots?

Once I've ironed out the process, sure.  For now you can see the
package and size deltas using the obvious *-changes.txt files, and
I'll reply to this thread when I get a new build out.

Martin


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Re: [Sugar-devel] SoaS-for-XO-1 image

[Joshua N Pritikin]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:02:31AM +0100, Martin Dengler wrote:
> From that process I will get:
> 
> soasxoXX.iso - iso9990 file system (for use with livecd-iso-to-disk)
> soasxoXX.img - for ...
> soasxoXX.crc - ... copy-nand'ing
> soasxoXX.plc - ... NANDblast'ing
> soasxoXX.removable.img.tar.lzma - for dd'ing to a removable device

These seem to be there already.

> soasxoXX.tree.tar.lzma - for untarring, hacking, and re-tarring as you
>  want to do

This is the one I want.

Can you post announcements somewhere of new snapshots?

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Re: [Sugar-devel] SoaS-for-XO-1 image

[Martin Dengler]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 03:31:25PM +0530, Joshua N Pritikin wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 09, 2009 at 08:14:12PM +0100, Martin Dengler wrote:
> > http://people.sugarlabs.org/~mtd/soas-xo1/soasxo50.{img,crc}
> 
> Alt-ESC does not stop the current activity. Although the new toolbar 
> design will help, this is one of the few keyboard shortcuts I use 
> frequently.

The new shortcut is Ctrl-Q.

> The software update widget appears on first boot. However, it seem to be 
> missing from the "My Settings" panel. I clicked "Cancel" when it first 
> appeared. I am not sure how to invoke it now.

It shouldn't appear upon first boot - have to fix that.  The software
updater as currently available from Fedora 11's repos doesn't make
mcuh sense, so it's not included.  I've managed to fail to remove the
first boot software update notification, despite trying :).

> I tried upgrading an activity (Read Etext from 14 to 15) using the 
> Browser. Read Etext downloaded. A journal detail screen appeared, but I 
> couldn't start the new activity. When I exited the journal detail view, 
> I could not find the new download in the main journal listing. I checked 
> ~olpc/Activities/ReadETexts.activity/activity/activity.info for the 
> version (still 14). Version 15 seems to have disappeared.

Not sure what's happening there, sorry.  I will keep that use case in
mind when testing, but I'd appreciate future testing against future
builds to see a) if it gets fixed; or b) what future errors are.

> I upgraded Read Etexts using sugar-install-bundle from USB key. That 
> worked (according to what is in my home dir). However, the home view 
> still claims that I have version 14 installed. This was corrected by 
> restarting sugar (Ctl-Alt-Del).

Sounds like sugar-install-bundle and sugar-shell aren't interacting
the way one would like.

> Read Etexts shows the Speech tab, but I'm not sure how to get it to read 
> what is on the screen. I didn't try to load a book. I just want to read 
> the introductory text. Pressing the play button does nothing. I looked 
> at the log file, but I didn't find anything suspicious.
>
> The Speak activity works, so it's not a sound problem.

Sounds like something Read Etexts specific - not sure what it could be.

> Gotta go.

Thanks for the notes.

Martin



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[Sugar-devel] Fwd: [Server-devel] Fwd: Simple Digital Library Index System

[Christoph Derndorfer]

Sorry, looks like sugar-devel dropped of the CC list there...

-- Forwarded message --
From: Christoph Derndorfer 
Date: Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 3:48 PM
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Fwd: Simple Digital Library Index System
To: Mike Dawson 
Cc: Martin Langhoff ,
server-de...@lists.laptop.org


On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 10:45 AM, Mike Dawson wrote:

> Hope that answers some questions - we shall look forward to putting up
> the demo library asap.


Hi Mike,

I was curios how far along you were with the demo of the library?

I'd definitely like to take a look at it once it's online:-)

Thanks,
Christoph

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co-editor, olpcnews
url: www.olpcnews.com
e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com



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Re: [Sugar-devel] SoaS-for-XO-1 image

[Martin Dengler]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 02:44:12PM +0530, Joshua N Pritikin wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 09:10:17AM +0100, Martin Dengler wrote:
> > And to disable permanently, remove/comment this line from
> > /home/olpc/.xsession :
> 
> It seems that jffs2 is a hard format to edit. mtdram refused to load 
> with a total_size of 650M.
> 
> Martin, can you provide the same image in some non-jffs2 format like 
> compressed ext3?

Yes, soon.  In the meantime, this is a compressed tar file with one
sparse file in it that is a set of partitions, the one member of which
is an ext3 filesystem:

http://people.sugarlabs.org/~mtd/soas-xo1/soasxo50.removable.img.tar.lzma

...which is a mouthful to describe but useful to use like:

cat soasxoXX.removable.tar.lzma | lzma -dc - | tar xf - -O - > /dev/sdX

... in order to get a 4GB removable drive (subject to the dangers of
re-partitioning said drive[1]) with a ext3 partition for booting on an
XO-1.  Right now one has to edit its olpc.fth appropriately so it
boots from the USB/SD device one is using, but I will be rebuilding an
image with a better olpc.fth soon now that I've got a key OFW tip.

From that process I will get:

soasxoXX.iso - iso9990 file system (for use with livecd-iso-to-disk)
soasxoXX.img - for ...
soasxoXX.crc - ... copy-nand'ing
soasxoXX.plc - ... NANDblast'ing
soasxoXX.removable.img.tar.lzma - for dd'ing to a removable device
soasxoXX.tree.tar.lzma - for untarring, hacking, and re-tarring as you
 want to do

I hope to merge the build changes necessary to soas's main git repo so
we can get similar artifacts out of SoaS3 builds soon.

I can do something similar for F11-on-XO-1 if that's interesting to
the F11-on-XO-1 people.

> I'd like to make some changes like this and add some 
> activities before I NANDblast the image out.

Let me/us know how it goes.

> Thanks!

Martin


1. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/How_to_Damage_a_FLASH_Storage_Device


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Re: [Sugar-devel] SoaS-for-XO-1 image

[Joshua N Pritikin]

On Sun, Aug 09, 2009 at 08:14:12PM +0100, Martin Dengler wrote:
> http://people.sugarlabs.org/~mtd/soas-xo1/soasxo50.{img,crc}

Alt-ESC does not stop the current activity. Although the new toolbar 
design will help, this is one of the few keyboard shortcuts I use 
frequently.

The software update widget appears on first boot. However, it seem to be 
missing from the "My Settings" panel. I clicked "Cancel" when it first 
appeared. I am not sure how to invoke it now.

I tried upgrading an activity (Read Etext from 14 to 15) using the 
Browser. Read Etext downloaded. A journal detail screen appeared, but I 
couldn't start the new activity. When I exited the journal detail view, 
I could not find the new download in the main journal listing. I checked 
~olpc/Activities/ReadETexts.activity/activity/activity.info for the 
version (still 14). Version 15 seems to have disappeared.

I upgraded Read Etexts using sugar-install-bundle from USB key. That 
worked (according to what is in my home dir). However, the home view 
still claims that I have version 14 installed. This was corrected by 
restarting sugar (Ctl-Alt-Del).

Read Etexts shows the Speech tab, but I'm not sure how to get it to read 
what is on the screen. I didn't try to load a book. I just want to read 
the introductory text. Pressing the play button does nothing. I looked 
at the log file, but I didn't find anything suspicious.

The Speak activity works, so it's not a sound problem.

Gotta go.

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Re: [Sugar-devel] Karma IRC meeting - August 11

[Christoph Derndorfer]

Mmm, I'm not sure how realistic it is for people to be interested in
providing that kind of data... But I could be wrong.
Having said that I certainly believe that such a feature would be overkill
at this point, there's a bunch of much higher priority tasks that we need to
tackle before and it's important not to lose focus of our main goals.

Christoph

2009/8/10 NoiseEHC 

>  Hi!
>
> It could be a little bit off topic and can be totally irrelevant because of
> the difference between education systems, but have you considered a
> possibility to generate lesson plans, examples and questions from a wiki?
> I mean that it is a lot of work to create a coherent lesson structure but
> after that filling it with simple data (examples and questions) can be crowd
> sourced. Handling hundreds of participants each only adding several
> sentences can be best handled with a wiki is not it?
> (It can be that it is just my fantasy and does not fit the group dynamics
> or the lesson structure you have in Nepal but what is your opinion?)
>
>
> Christoph Derndorfer wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
>  here's a preliminary agenda for tomorrow's IRC meeting on
> #sugar-meeting: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Karma:Meeting_11_Aug_2009
>
>  Time permitting OLE Nepal's Roxan (in CC) will also be joining us at some
> point so we can discuss his involvement regarding the teacher's note and
> lesson plan.
>
>  Here are some early notes regarding the teacher's note and lesson plan:
>
>  * in html
> * images allowed (even encouraged?)
>  * a lesson can potentially have multiple lesson plans
> ** for different languages
> ** for different learners
> ** for the lesson / exercise / game part of the unit
> * lesson plans should contain an introduction which gives a very brief
> overview (1~2 sentences) of what exactly the lesson will teach the pupils
> ** this information can be used to identify interesting lessons in a given
> library
> * should be easy to navigate
> ** e.g. question of whether very long documents should be split into
> several pages for on-screen (target 1024x768) consumption
> ** should also look half-decent when printed
> * templates should be provided
>
>  Cheers,
> Christoph
>
>  --
> Christoph Derndorfer
> co-editor, olpcnews
> url: www.olpcnews.com
> e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com
>
> --
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Karma IRC meeting - August 11

[NoiseEHC]

Hi!

It could be a little bit off topic and can be totally irrelevant because 
of the difference between education systems, but have you considered a 
possibility to generate lesson plans, examples and questions from a wiki?
I mean that it is a lot of work to create a coherent lesson structure 
but after that filling it with simple data (examples and questions) can 
be crowd sourced. Handling hundreds of participants each only adding 
several sentences can be best handled with a wiki is not it?
(It can be that it is just my fantasy and does not fit the group 
dynamics or the lesson structure you have in Nepal but what is your 
opinion?)



Christoph Derndorfer wrote:

Hi all,

here's a preliminary agenda for tomorrow's IRC meeting on 
#sugar-meeting: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Karma:Meeting_11_Aug_2009


Time permitting OLE Nepal's Roxan (in CC) will also be joining us at 
some point so we can discuss his involvement regarding the teacher's 
note and lesson plan.


Here are some early notes regarding the teacher's note and lesson plan:

* in html
* images allowed (even encouraged?)
* a lesson can potentially have multiple lesson plans
** for different languages
** for different learners
** for the lesson / exercise / game part of the unit
* lesson plans should contain an introduction which gives a very brief 
overview (1~2 sentences) of what exactly the lesson will teach the pupils
** this information can be used to identify interesting lessons in a 
given library

* should be easy to navigate
** e.g. question of whether very long documents should be split into 
several pages for on-screen (target 1024x768) consumption

** should also look half-decent when printed
* templates should be provided

Cheers,
Christoph

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e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com 


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Re: [Sugar-devel] SoaS-for-XO-1 image

[Christoph Derndorfer]

Thanks a lot for the clarifications Martin, much appreciated.

Christoph

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 3:17 PM, Martin Dengler wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 03:06:05PM +0545, Christoph Derndorfer wrote:
> > Apologies if this is a stupid question but what are the differences and
> > advantages/disadvantages of a SoaS-on-XO-1 install versus the F11-on-XO-1
> > approach that some are taking?
>
> They have very similar goals; the main differences in goals,
> AFAICS, are:
>
> 1) release schedule (SoaS-linked vs. OLPC-linked);
>
> 2) target audience (SoaS-users vs. OLPC XO-1 build users);
>
> 3) the supported desktop experiences (Sugar alone vs. Sugar and
> GNOME)
>
> But I'm publishing my images mainly because I can.  I happen to be
> creating them for my own (XO-1) use, and trying to make them useful to
> the SoaS people and (hopefully) the F11-on-XO-1 people (in the
> future).
>
> > I'm quite confused about this at the moment as on first sight it seems
> like
> > both efforts are trying to do exactly the same thing (making the latest
> > Sugar run on an XO-1)...
>
> They are, almost.  I'm also a commiter to fedora-xo (though I haven't
> had time to do any SoaS or F11-on-XO-1 work lately) and an avid
> follower of Daniel Drake, Stephen Parrish, and others' work therein.
> So I hope we're not really duplicating much work, though we're
> duplicating some git repos and bits-on-disk :).
>
> > Thanks,
> > Christoph
>
> Martin
>



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Re: [Sugar-devel] SoaS-for-XO-1 image

[Martin Dengler]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 03:06:05PM +0545, Christoph Derndorfer wrote:
> Apologies if this is a stupid question but what are the differences and
> advantages/disadvantages of a SoaS-on-XO-1 install versus the F11-on-XO-1
> approach that some are taking?

They have very similar goals; the main differences in goals,
AFAICS, are:

1) release schedule (SoaS-linked vs. OLPC-linked);

2) target audience (SoaS-users vs. OLPC XO-1 build users);

3) the supported desktop experiences (Sugar alone vs. Sugar and
GNOME)

But I'm publishing my images mainly because I can.  I happen to be
creating them for my own (XO-1) use, and trying to make them useful to
the SoaS people and (hopefully) the F11-on-XO-1 people (in the
future).
 
> I'm quite confused about this at the moment as on first sight it seems like
> both efforts are trying to do exactly the same thing (making the latest
> Sugar run on an XO-1)...

They are, almost.  I'm also a commiter to fedora-xo (though I haven't
had time to do any SoaS or F11-on-XO-1 work lately) and an avid
follower of Daniel Drake, Stephen Parrish, and others' work therein.
So I hope we're not really duplicating much work, though we're
duplicating some git repos and bits-on-disk :).

> Thanks,
> Christoph

Martin


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Re: [Sugar-devel] SoaS with SD cards irregularities

[Sascha Silbe]

[CC list trimmed quite a bit]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 04:20:17PM +0930, Bill Kerr wrote:


aborted
boot:


I then tried tab anyway and got:

linux0 check0 local


Please try typing "linux0 rootwait" (without the quotes) and pressing 
 at the "boot:" prompt.



CU Sascha

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Re: [Sugar-devel] SoaS-for-XO-1 image

[Christoph Derndorfer]

Apologies if this is a stupid question but what are the differences and
advantages/disadvantages of a SoaS-on-XO-1 install versus the F11-on-XO-1
approach that some are taking?

I'm quite confused about this at the moment as on first sight it seems like
both efforts are trying to do exactly the same thing (making the latest
Sugar run on an XO-1)...

Thanks,
Christoph

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e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com
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Re: [Sugar-devel] SoaS-for-XO-1 image

[Joshua N Pritikin]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 09:10:17AM +0100, Martin Dengler wrote:
> And to disable permanently, remove/comment this line from
> /home/olpc/.xsession :

It seems that jffs2 is a hard format to edit. mtdram refused to load 
with a total_size of 650M.

Martin, can you provide the same image in some non-jffs2 format like 
compressed ext3? I'd like to make some changes like this and add some 
activities before I NANDblast the image out.

Thanks!

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[Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Release Read ETexts-15

[Sugar Labs Activities]

Activity Homepage:
http://activities.sugarlabs.org/addon/4035

Sugar Platform:
from 0.82 to 0.86

Download Now:
http://activities.sugarlabs.org/downloads/version/29206

Release notes:
This version fixes several bugs I found while making an instructional video 
called Read Etexts:The Movie.  Coming to a screen near you soon.  Also, Cory 
Doctorow published his novel Little Brother as a text file which Read Etexts 
could not read because it required word wrap.  So Release 15 has word wrap.  It 
is perhaps not the most polished way to implement word wrap, but it is 
perfectly adequate for reading Little Brother.

In Browse in Sugar .82 there is no way to download a text file to the Journal.  
If you want to read Little Brother using .82 you`ll need to copy the text file 
to a thumb drive using another computer, then copy it from the thumb drive to 
your Journal.  Browse in .84 will let you download a text file to the Journal.

Reviewer comments:
This request has been approved. 

Sugar Labs Activities
http://activities.sugarlabs.org

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[Sugar-devel] Karma IRC meeting - August 11

[Christoph Derndorfer]

Hi all,

here's a preliminary agenda for tomorrow's IRC meeting on #sugar-meeting:
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Karma:Meeting_11_Aug_2009

Time permitting OLE Nepal's Roxan (in CC) will also be joining us at some
point so we can discuss his involvement regarding the teacher's note and
lesson plan.

Here are some early notes regarding the teacher's note and lesson plan:

* in html
* images allowed (even encouraged?)
* a lesson can potentially have multiple lesson plans
** for different languages
** for different learners
** for the lesson / exercise / game part of the unit
* lesson plans should contain an introduction which gives a very brief
overview (1~2 sentences) of what exactly the lesson will teach the pupils
** this information can be used to identify interesting lessons in a given
library
* should be easy to navigate
** e.g. question of whether very long documents should be split into several
pages for on-screen (target 1024x768) consumption
** should also look half-decent when printed
* templates should be provided

Cheers,
Christoph

-- 
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co-editor, olpcnews
url: www.olpcnews.com
e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com
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Re: [Sugar-devel] SoaS-for-XO-1 image

[Martin Dengler]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:16:21AM +0530, Joshua N Pritikin wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 09, 2009 at 08:14:12PM +0100, Martin Dengler wrote:
> > Adventurous people can copy-nand:
> > 
> > http://people.sugarlabs.org/~mtd/soas-xo1/soasxo50.{img,crc}
> 
> This is quite close to usable!
> 
> * It mounts USB keys.
> * Sound works.
> * The font size is tolarable.
> 
> The only critical bug I found after brief testing is that sometimes the 
> menus get stuck on the screen. This is fairly reproducable.

I've seen this as well, and it's been due to the compositing manager,
which is now enabled.  Perhaps for strawberry this is too aggressive.
To disable temporarily, you can:

 killall xcompmgr

And to disable permanently, remove/comment this line from
/home/olpc/.xsession :

(sleep 5 ; xcompmgr ) &

Martin



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