[squeak-dev] etoys web browser plugin on Linux

Bert Freudenberg bert at freudenbergs.de
Wed Jul 13 12:00:48 UTC 2011


Sugar does not use XMPP directly. Instead there is a library aptly called "telepathy" which establishes a communication channel by any means available. E.g. if both parties are in the same local network, it can just use a direct tcp connection. Otherwise it might open a tunn via XMPP, which allows NAT traversal etc:

http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/

Communication is via D-Bus. Which makes it harder to use on platforms other than Linux. 

Note that this is not a replacement for Nebraska, but simply a way to open a TCP connection to someone else without having to type in an IP address. Nebraska (or whatever) sits on top of this. 

- Bert -

On 13.07.2011, at 04:27, Gary Dunn <garydunnhi at gmail.com> wrote:

> Local or cloud depends on your requirements. I happen to prefer local,
> stand-alone capability for Open Slate, with network connections just a
> way to research and collaborate, and log telemetry (student
> performance).
> 
> The choice of XMPP server will require a reasonable amount of testing,
> and may be influenced by your ability to use commercial software, GPL
> software, etc. You can try out XMPP by creating a free account on
> Jabber. Mostly acts like any old school chat program, a la AIM. Kind
> of passe these days, what with SMS and Twitter. What we are interested
> in is the ability to know who is available at the moment. XMPP is not
> very useful as a data exchange format, rather slow. HTTP being an
> obvious alternative.
> 
> I believe Etoys has an XMPP class. No need to reinvent the wheel. The
> best man to speak to that is Bert Freudenberg, the squeaker behind the
> whole Etoys OLPC movement.
> 
> -- 
> Gary Dunn
> Honolulu
> http://openslate.org
> 
> On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 2:27 PM, Brad Fuller <bradallenfuller at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Wow Gary, thanks.
>> 
>> I gleen from your reply that you think going the "client" route - with
>> an app on the user pc - and then connecting to the cloud as need, is a
>> proper, or best approach for this idea.
>> 
>> So, looking through the Presence info and then taking the XMPP link,
>> it seems that Apache already has an XMPP service and there\s a list of
>> many more. I have no idea what this really mean, but maybe it means an
>> XMPP client can be created in squeak and work with your own XMPP
>> service? Again, I"m only speculating after looking at this in 10min.
>> 
>> thanks,
>> brad
>> 
>> On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 16:37, Gary Dunn <garydunnhi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I have been investigating similar issues for the Open Slate Project.
>>> Many challenges to overcomes, but it is possible.
>>> 
>>>    o Security
>>>    o Presence, as in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presence_information
>>>    o Version synchronization, dependencies
>>> 
>>> I have been poking around in Nebraska. Realistically only applicable
>>> in a LAN environment and even then awkward by today's standards, but
>>> not so bad if the goal is to learn how it works -- what is an IP
>>> address, what does it do, where does it come from. In Nebraska you can
>>> share a desktop and have several people access and work on a common
>>> project.
>>> 
>>> You should look at the OLPC implementation of Etoys. They have
>>> replaced Nebraska with other technology better suited to Internet
>>> usage.  I think it adds XMPP for presence. http://www.squeakland.org/
>>> and http://www.sugarlabs.org/
>>> 
>>> Good luck!
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Gary Dunn
>>> Honolulu
>>> http://openslate.org
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 5:03 AM, Brad Fuller <bradallenfuller at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> For some reason, I knew it would be you, Bert, who would reply ;-)
>>>> 
>>>> Ok, I'll look again for what you suggested later today. Thanks !
>>>> 
>>>> But, while I'm on the subject: Maybe there's a better way than the
>>>> plugin for my needs.  I'm looking for the best way(s) to have
>>>> applications be "connected" to other people (not locally). What does
>>>> "connected" mean? I don't know exactly, yet. I'm still in the early
>>>> stages of writing the proposal. I know the apps will be
>>>> interactive/exploratory "modules" for educational subjects. But I
>>>> would like a major portion of their facility to share ideas among
>>>> others with the same modules, get input from remote instructors (and
>>>> hopefully to receive code updates.) I thought maybe it could be just
>>>> an AJAX-type web service where everything could be done from the
>>>> backend server. But, it seems a better approach would be to use the
>>>> power of a local application that is "connected" or has "access" to
>>>> the other remote applications.
>>>> 
>>>> Smalltalk is not a requirement, but it seems to be a no-brainer when
>>>> it comes to quickly prototyping on multiple platforms.
>>>> 
>>>> Any direction is most humbly welcomed
>>>> 
>>>> brad
>>>> 
>>>> On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 02:29, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
>>>>> On 12.07.2011, at 03:05, Brad Fuller wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> Hey all,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Does the etoys/squeak web browser plugin still work?
>>>>> 
>>>>> It should.
>>>>> 
>>>>>> If so, where do I get it and how to I install?
>>>>> 
>>>>> In theory it should just work after installing Etoys. Also in theory, theory and practice are the same.
>>>>> 
>>>>>> Specifically, I'm running Ubuntu at the moment, but would like it to
>>>>>> work on other platforms as well. I've "installed" the debian packages
>>>>>> of etoys, but that doesn't seem to contain the plugin.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The plugin should be in /usr/lib/squeak/<version>, called npsqueak.so. There should be a script "npsqueakregister" in /usr/lib/squeak. That script should have been run by the installer. It should have placed a symlink to npsqueak.so in the browser's plugins directory. The plugin should be listed in Firefox's "about:plugins" (possibly after restarting the browser).
>>>>> 
>>>>> Would be interesting to know which of these steps failed.
>>>>> 
>>>>> If you can't make it work, there is an unofficial way of making Etoys-To-Go work as a plugin. For that, download Etoys-To-Go from http://squeakland.org/ , unzip in your home directory, and run the Contents/Linux-i686/npetoysregister script.
>>>>> 
>>>>> - Bert -
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
> 



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