[etoys-dev] Re: Etoys-to-go goes AWOL?

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 11.08.2009, at 03:49, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:

> On Monday 10 Aug 2009 3:26:12 pm Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>> It's not even released, don't declare it dead already ;) I hope it
>> will become the if-all-else-fails version of Etoys that Simply Works.
> I am sure it will become the preferred way for children. I have been  
> carrying
> Etoys on a chip for over two years and I can't imagine working any  
> other way
> now :-).

It is useful in certain circumstances. But the preferred way is to  
have Etoys pre-installed on each machine. Our largest user base is  
children using XOs, where that's the case. Getting it packaged into  
every Linux distribution is also almost like pre-installing, and in  
education-targeted distros like Edubuntu it might well get installed  
by default. Same for education-targeted laptops - would be great to  
have it pre-installed on all kids machines, don't you think?

Besides, for viewing projects in the web browser installation is  
necessary, and the web is the future, you know? ;)

>> Yes, somehow I replaced it with an older version. But the one checked
>> in now should be okay, yes?
> Looks good. The TMP copy trick can also be merged. It will be a null- 
> op for
> traditional launch from /usr/share.

Having this in the script for fixed installation makes no sense to me  
at all. If an installation is broken there should not be scripting  
magic to fix it. Rather, the packaging should be fixed.

>> Doing it manually is error-prone. The makeEtoysToGo script exports
>> Etoys.app as Etoys-To-Go.app and then exports the Etoys-To-Go files  
>> on
>> top of it. Very simple.
> etoys.sh is maturing well. We could retain Linux-i686/squeak as a  
> binary and
> move etoys.sh as Linux-i686/etoys.

The main reason I renamed the squeak binary to "etoys" is so it shows  
up properly in a process list.

> A small desktop launcher at the top level
> can override the default settings in this launcher. This would be  
> consistent
> across platforms. See
>    http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/etoys/2009-March/003053.html

We are not using this batch file approach on Windows. You and I come  
from a Unix background so shell scripts feel natural to us, and we  
know they are much more powerful than what other platforms use.  
Nevertheless, they are alien to Windows or Mac. Launching Etoys should  
use the preferred method for the platform. No self-respecting app on  
Windows would have to be started by a batch file, or by a shell script  
on the Mac.

IMHO of course, I'm just one voice in the group :)

> I haven't figured out how to do such overrides on OSX yet. I am sure  
> there is a
> way.


Only if the Mac VM is changed to interpolate environment variables in  
its directory specs from Info.plist. I don't think it does this, yet.  
Besides, as I mentioned earlier, having to launch a Mac app with a  
script is decidedly user-unfriendly.

- Bert -