Re: [Sugar-devel] Sugar Digest 2012-10-27
Thanks Walter! +1 To the idea of code-in! 2012/10/27 Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com On the unspoken truth behind the education system Calvin: As you can see, I have memorized this utterly useless piece of information long enough to pass a test question. I now intend to forget it forever. You’ve taught me nothing except how to cynically manipulate the system. Congratulations. -- Bill Watterson == Sugar Digest == 1. Akarsh Sanghi asked me some questions about computing for a survey he is conducting. I thought I would share some of my answers here. ;How do you think future technologies in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) affect the daily lives of people? [In context of the rapture of interactive and touch based devices like the iPhone iPad]: I think that HCI has little impact. Yes, things arguably get easier to use, but ease of use is not the gating factor in the use of these devices. It is access and utility. Also, it is important to note that very few of the touch-based interfaces represent advances in HCI. These are old ideas (most from the 1970s) that are only finally becoming commercially viable. ;How do you think interactive technologies affect the learning process in primary education? Will these form of technologies help to expand the horizon of a child growing up in practically a virtual world?: Well, somewhat in contradiction to my previous answer, touch does make a difference to very young children, for whom hand-eye coordination is still an issue. As far as learning, I am skeptical of the premise that the virtual world is particularly relevant. I think the character of the tasks the children engage in is far more important than the technology. The advantage of some small subset of the technology is that facilitates engaging children in authentic open-ended problem solving. Making worksheets electronic games is a complete waste of time (although it may help the children pass an exam to measure how quickly they can do worksheets.) ;As a part of the Sugar Labs community, I would like to ask you where does it stand in the future?: Sugar, the learning platform developed and maintained by the Sugar Labs community, is about giving children an opportunity to use technologies to engage in authentic open-ended problem solving. We'll continue down this path, trying to reach more children in more contexts (laptops, desktops, phones, tablets, etc.) ;Sugar Labs and the OLPC projects are primarily targeted towards developing nations and their education system, do you think the education system in a country like America should also be put under consideration and be directed more towards a student’s own creative thought process?: Sugar Labs is trying reach children everywhere: north or south, rich or poor. We have programs in every corner of the globe. ;Every time while discussing OLPC, one hears about Constructionism. Is the Constructionist approach a guiding or necessary aspect of distributing laptops to children for learning? For designing an interface for them? Why or why not?: Constructionism is completely orthogonal to the problem of distributing laptops. But not to the problem of using laptops for learning. (This is where Mr. Negroponte and I differed in our approach.) You can give a child a laptop and they will learn to use it (See my answer to the first question), but will they learn to use it for learning? Not likely unless we craft an environment in which they are encouraged to “imagine and realize, critique and reflect, and iterate.” That is a constructionist environment. ;How do you think Seymour Papert’s theory of constructionism should be applied in the today’s time? Should people be involved in developing tangible objects in the real world to understand concepts or follow experiential learning processes to gain insight into the world around them?: Not sure what you mean by “tangible objects”. I think more in terms of authentic problems. Some of those problems may be tangible. ;How do you think Electronic Publishing is evolving with the rapid development of reading devices like iPad, NOOK, Kindle and the major use of ebooks?: To me, the interesting questions are more along the lines of: Who will write books? What will be the relationship between reading and writing? What is the future of copyright and the commercialization of writing. ;Do you think in the near future this kind of electronic publishing will hamper the growth of children as they will be devoid of physically reading a book and understand the values that come along with it?: I think that the difference is not so much paper vs plastic; but rather, to what extent does an electronic interface afford the freedom to write and share margin notes (or the books themselves) to engage in personal expression, etc. The physicality of electronic media is not the issue. ;In context of the famous phrase by Marshal McLuhan, “medium is the
[Sugar-devel] sugar-build support for Ubuntu 12.10
Hello, I created a fork of sugar-build which supports the recently released Ubuntu 12.10. http://git.sugarlabs.org/~dnarvaez/sugar-build/gnome-3-6 The nice thing is that we don't have any unpackaged external dependency, so the build is very quick. I will try to add Fedora 18 support when the beta is released. I have only tested that it builds and run, so there is likely work left to do, but it's a start. There is no buildbot for it yet, I will setup one soon. -- Daniel Narvaez ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Release Ruler-21
On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 10:38 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: Mostly kind of worked, but how do I get my local branch (gtk2) to appear on g.sl.o? git push -u origin gtk2 That's a one-off - all future git push should then update both branches (if there are local unpushed changes). (git push --dry-run first is a good habit to get into) Daniel ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Release Ruler-21
On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 8:17 AM, Sugar Labs Activities activit...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Activity Homepage: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/addon/4192 Sugar Platform: 0.98 - 0.98 Download Now: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/downloads/file/28270/ruler-21.xo The other weird thing here is that 13.1.0 build 6 (from October 12th) already includes this version, but this mail suggest it was just released a day or two ago. http://build.laptop.org/13.1.0/os6/xo-4/31006o4.activities.txt Are there two Ruler-21s in the wild? Thanks Daniel ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Release Ruler-21
On Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 2:58 PM, Daniel Drake d...@laptop.org wrote: On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 8:17 AM, Sugar Labs Activities activit...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Activity Homepage: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/addon/4192 Sugar Platform: 0.98 - 0.98 Download Now: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/downloads/file/28270/ruler-21.xo The other weird thing here is that 13.1.0 build 6 (from October 12th) already includes this version, but this mail suggest it was just released a day or two ago. http://build.laptop.org/13.1.0/os6/xo-4/31006o4.activities.txt Are there two Ruler-21s in the wild? I don't think so. Ruler-21 should be the GTK3 version. Ruler-19 is the last GTK2 version, although I may pull the new translations and release a Ruler-20 as well. -walter Thanks Daniel ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
[Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Release Abacus-38
Activity Homepage: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/addon/4293 Sugar Platform: 0.82 - 0.96 Download Now: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/downloads/file/28315/abacus-38.xo Release notes: 38 ENHANCEMENT: * New translations NOTE: This is the GTK2 version of Abacus. While it will run on any version of Sugar, the GTK3 version is recommended for Sugar 0.98+ Sugar Labs Activities http://activities.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
[Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Release Abacus-41
Activity Homepage: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/addon/4293 Sugar Platform: 0.98 - 0.98 Download Now: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/downloads/file/28316/abacus-41.xo Release notes: 41 ENHANCEMENT: * New translations NOTE: This is the GTK3 version of Abacus. It is for Sugar 0.98+ only Sugar Labs Activities http://activities.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Release Ruler-21
So I have begun the somewhat painful process of updating all of my activities as per your recommendation: master == GTK3 branch gtk2 == GTK2 branch So far: g.sl.o/abacus g.sl.o/ruler Just another 32 to go :P FWIW, I plan to still issue i18n releases of the gtk2 branch. I'll maintain a gtk3 version with a higher version number, tagged in a.sl.o for Sugar 0.98+ as well. regards. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
[Sugar-devel] Fwd: [Maliit-discuss] Maliit 0.93.0 released
Kudos to dsd and garycmartin. -- Forwarded message -- From: Michael Hasselmann micha...@openismus.com Date: Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 3:08 PM Subject: [Maliit-discuss] Maliit 0.93.0 released To: Maliit maliit-disc...@lists.maliit.org Cc: maliit-announce maliit-annou...@lists.maliit.org What's new? === Maliit Keyboard can be used with 50 different language layouts. It's one of the strength of Free Software that we don't have to use arbitrary selection critera (such as amount of native speakers) when deciding which language layout to include. Everyone can contribute new layouts and so far, we have always accepted and merged them (once they passed basic testing). The language layout file format is XML based and has grown quite powerful over time. While editing by hand is still feasible (the recent contributions are proof), we could really make use of a graphical layout file editor which supports all the layout file features. The QML reference plugin (Nemo Keyboard) can now be selected even if maliit-framework was compiled against Qt5. Use $ qmake CONFIG+=disable-[nemo|maliit]-keyboard to prevent building and installation of either the QML or the C++ reference plugin. Where can I get it? === * framework: http://maliit.org/releases/maliit-framework/maliit-framework-0.93.0.tar.bz2 * plugins: http://maliit.org/releases/maliit-plugins/maliit-plugins-0.93.0.tar.bz2 What is it? === Maliit provides a flexible and cross-platform input method framework. It has a plugin-based client-server architecture where applications act as clients and communicate with the Maliit server via input context plugins. Maliit is an open source framework (LGPL 2) with open source plugins (BSD). Visit http://maliit.org for more informattion about the project. Who contributed to this release? * Aby Z Thomas * Daniel Drake * Gary Martin * John Brooks * Marco Martin * Michael Hasselmann * Norayr Chilingarian * Ruediger Gad What changed in detail? === CHANGES IN FRAMEWORK SINCE 0.92.5 * Monitor SW_TABLET_MODE to determine hardware keyboard presence - A new, default implementation for MImHwKeyboardTracker: we look for a readable evdev device which has a SW_TABLET_MODE switch. If found, we use that device for determining the presence/availability of the hardware keyboard. * Allow QML plugins to send key events: - Use MInputMethodQuick.sendKey() CHANGES IN PLUGINS SINCE 0.92.5 * Added 10 new language layouts - Armenian, Bengali, French-Swiss, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. * Implemented key actions to switch between language layouts - Use key action=[left|right]-layout.../key to define keys for switching to surrounding language layouts (also known as subviews, from the framework's perspective). * Various improvements to Nemo Keyboard plugin. * Allow to disable either Nemo or Maliit Keybord plugin - Use qmake CONFIG+=disable-[nemo|maliit]-keyboard to prevent building and installation of either the QML or the C++ reference plugin. BUG FIXES * Fix focus handling for Qt5 * Fix the build when disabling GTK+ support * Fix QML plugin loading for Qt5 * Fix fullscreen surfaces (required by QtQuick still): - Events can be passed through to application again even if input method with a semi-translucent fullscreen surface is shown. * Fixes: MALIIT#195 - Extended key feature does not work with any keys where a width is specified in the layout * Fixes: NEMO#451 - Use a single MouseArea for the whole keyboard ___ Maliit-discuss mailing list maliit-disc...@lists.maliit.org http://lists.maliit.org/listinfo.cgi/maliit-discuss-maliit.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
