It appears that Sayamindu's fbreader activity isn't in ASLO. Since it supports many additional formats (including epub, which I just uploaded a bundle full of), is there any plan to make this activity work on the SOAS releases?
On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 2:52 PM, James Simmons <jim.simm...@walgreens.com>wrote: > Wade, > > One thing that I hope Unified Bundles will do is make ebooks more like > real books. In a real library you have books with pictures, books with > just words, comic books, coloring books, and books with things that pop > up when you open them. All are recognizable as books. On the XO it > should be the same way. Whether an etext is DJVU, or plain text, or > images in a Zip file, or HTML with images and JavaScript animations and > Flash it should be recognizable to the child as a book. He shouldn't > have to think about how he'll go about reading it. He should be able to > just launch it without being burdened with knowing how it is launched. > This would mean you would have just one icon to indicate a book in > either the journal or the activity ring, probably the one Read has now. > The various viewers should try to be consistent, but may deviate when it > makes sense to. Some kinds of books with let you copy text to the > clipboard or have text to speech with highlighting, and some won't, just > like some kinds of books have pop-ups or have characters speak in word > balloons and others don't. > > I wrote my own Activities because I tried converting Gutenberg etexts to > PDFs and didn't like the results. I was hoping that Read would handle > more formats than it does, and it was easier to make my own specialized > Activities in Python than it would have been to make Evince plugins, > etc. I thought that in time somebody would make Read do more formats. > > If the download counts from http://activities.sugarlabs.org are anything > to go by my Activities are pretty popular. I think that says more about > the popularity of the formats they support than the quality of the > Activities themselves, and I would guess it is adults who are doing the > downloading. Adults have been trained by Microsoft Office to use > different programs for different kinds of documents, so using a > different Activity for plain text files than you use for PDFs is > something adults are willing to put up with. A kid shouldn't have to > deal with that unless he's creating his own books. > > Maybe in the future Read Etexts and View Slides could become tools to > actually create content, in the form of Unified Bundles. A teacher > could go to Gutenberg to get an etext in Zip format, load it into Read > Etexts to have a look at it, then have the Activity create a new Journal > entry which is a bundle. She could then use the Journal to share the > bundle with her class. > > To the kids the bundle would be just a book. > > James Simmons > > > > Wade Brainerd wrote: > > Good question.. My proposal is that activities which don't allow the > > creation of brand new content (e.g. they require some initial content > > to be used) become Content Viewers which is a special case of > > Activity. > > > > As it stands, I'm not sure whether they need to be merged into Sugar > > or whether they can exist independently, with some sort of "This > > bundle requires the Read Content Viewer". > > > > My initial instinct was that they should be merged into Sugar. But > > now, given the inspiring "Unified objects" thread, I kind of think > > they should be allowed to remain separate. > > > > -Wade > > > > On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 4:58 PM, James Simmons <jim.simm...@walgreens.com> > wrote: > > > >> Wade, > >> > >> Thanks for your response. It clears up a lot now that I have a better > idea > >> of the purpose of Unified bundles. There is still one question I have, > >> which is what becomes of Activities in this scenario? For instance, if > you > >> have a bundle containing a PDF, what happens to the Read activity to > make > >> that possible? Does code from Read move out of the Activity and become > part > >> of Sugar? What's left in Read if you do that? Or does Read go away? > >> > >> James Simmons > >> > >> > >> > > > _______________________________________________ > Sugar-devel mailing list > Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel > -- "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair
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