On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 11:40 AM, Marco Pesenti Gritti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 7:33 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > The question of whether activities are included "by default" refers either > > to prefabricated disk images or packages for distros like Fedora and > > Ubuntu. Regarding disk images, the answer is clear: do both. We should > > have minimal disk images, with just the Sugar base, and also demo images > > with all the activities we think someone might want. > > > > Determining what to do in the case of packages for other distros, the > > situation is much muddier. The plan for Activity packaging is designed > > around the idea of thousands of unknown authors writing code that installs > > and runs with minimal privileges. Users will be able to install multiple > > distinct activities with the same name, distinguished by cryptographic > > authorship and history, upgrade or downgrade them, and modify their source > > code, all without superuser access. It's already difficult to harmonize > > this with yum/rpm and apt/deb, and it's only going to get harder with the > > new Activity bundle system. I think our best option is to let Sugar > > retain control of Activity installation, even when running on a system > > with its own package management. > > I think it's useful to separate distribution and development when > discussing this. > > You are discussing several distribution models. Some of them goes > through a no-activities state during the process, but all of them > include activities in their final form (unless for the distro case you > are thinking to start clean and let the user select the activities he > wants).
There is another issue to consider. Those of us planning for a next-generation textbook want to know for sure what software they can count on. Otherwise, every active document will have to be packaged with dependencies. I am considering textbooks in drawing, music, any of the sciences that can make use of external measuring devices, photography, math, and other subjects. At the secondary and college levels, packaging a textbook with accompanying software is not a problem, but in elementary school classrooms we don't want to put the burden on both teachers and students to deal with extra installation steps. > To me including activities in the coordinated development process has > two main advantages: > > 1 It gives distributors a complete product they can customize and > extend for their users. > 2 It makes developers work on a concrete, complete product, rather > than on a set of libraries and services. > > Activities are our strength. Putting a bunch of them at the core of > our development processes is the best way to ensure they get the > attention they need. > > Marco > > > _______________________________________________ > Sugar mailing list > Sugar@lists.laptop.org > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar > -- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay _______________________________________________ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar