[etoys-dev] Sharing objects when not running in Sugar

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 08.11.2009, at 11:35, Séverin Lemaignan wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> I was wondering if someone had successfully used (or enabled) the
> collaboration features of Etoys 4.0 when running a normal desktop
> (Gnome under Linux or even Windows).
>
> We basically want to have children to share their scripted objects
> from one computer to another one.
>
> More specifically, I'm wondering if the collaborative features rely
> only on DBus and if it would be possible to "reproduce" a viable DBus
> environment without running Sugar.

They do not really rely on DBus, the communication is done with a  
simple TCP connection. In fact it's even older than Sugar.

The problem is the user interface - how to find the other party's IP  
address. In Sugar there is a presence service precisely for that.

What you can do is create a "badge" for someone else - it's in the  
object catalog, under B. You need to enter an IP address in the second  
row. This is basically the same badge that is created when you share  
under Sugar. To receive messages you need to open a Listener. We  
removed that from the object catalog, but you can create one from the  
source menu (alt-comma, new morph, from alphabetical list,  
EToyListenerMorph).

Once your partner is listening (click to show the listener's "antenna  
ears") you should be able to drop a morph onto the batch and it should  
get transferred.

I have not tried in a while, so please report back whether it still  
works.

And it would be great if someone could implement an auto-discovery  
feature that would detect all listeners in the same room / network  
segment ...

- Bert -