etoys-dev December 2006

etoys-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org

14 participants
20 discussions

[Etoys] The Event Roll
by Scott Wallace 26 Dec '06

26 Dec '06

Hi, Alan, and all, The first alpha release of a new event-tape-editing tool, called the "Event Roll", has now been published to the etoys/olpc2.0 update stream. Click on the magenta "?" buttons on the Event-Theatre and the Event- Roll to obtain instructions and hints. The text of these help messages could still stand improvement, but may be adequate for getting started. A few important things to know and watch out for in this initial release: (1) To get the halo on any token in an Event Roll, hold down the SHIFT key as you halo-click on it. (2) Do *NOT* overlap mouse-event-sequence tokens in an Event Roll. It's fine to move them or resize them, just don't let any two of them overlap, since once the time-stamps of unrelated mouse event get mixed together, it is impossible to separate the individual sequences again. I'll bulletproof against this in January. (3) The event-theatre work at present does not play nicely with event-recordings that span multiple projects, nor even with nested invocations of event-theatre-based playbacks. These loose ends will also be addressed in January. For multi-project event-tapes, please continue to use the "traditional" event-recorder (rather than an "event theatre,") and, for now, in such event recordings do not mix event-theatre-based sequences with other event recordings. Sorry about this limitation -- hopefully it can be sorted out in the new year. (4) To *move* an event-roll, alt-drag it. Or, to drag it without using a modifier key, pick it up by clicking on the area near the left edge where you see the "mouse", "keyboard", and "media" words (5) The "keyboard" track at present only deals with *keystrokes* -- not with individual key-down and key-up events. This is because the underlying event-recorder mechanism for capturing key-down and key-up information seems quite inconsistent and unreliable. (6) After you've made an event-recording, if you want to add voiceovers you can do it in either of two ways: [a] Play back the recording with the "sound" panel open (triangle control at bottom-right of event-theatre); once you start playback, a button will appear in the sound panel offering the opportunity to record voiceover. Hit it when you wish, and record your voiceover; hit "stop recording voiceover" when you're done. You can do this multiple times per pass through the event tape if desired, and you can can make multiple passes through the tape. Every voiceover you record will appear in the Media track of the Event Roll at the appropriate place. You can remove an unwanted voiceover by just picking up its token in the event roll and dragging it out. [b] Alternatively, use a separate, traditional, Squeak "Sound Recorder" to record a snippet of voiceover. It may help to play back the event tape as you do this. When done with a sound snippet, use the "Morph" button on the sound-recorder to get a little rectangular "sound morph" that represents the sound; drop that little rectangle where you want the voiceover to appear in the event roll. I will be out of town, and probably mostly (or entirely) away from internet connectivity, until the first weekend in January. I invite my colleagues Takashi and Yoshiki to support and improve these tools in any way they wish, if they have time and inclination; in any case, once I am back I will pick up the pieces of this work, and will try to deal quickly with bugs and other issues that have arisen in the meantime. Cheers, -- Scott

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[Etoys] Impressions on B1 Machine
by Yoshiki Ohshima 25 Dec '06

25 Dec '06

Hello, Since we (people at Viewpoints Research) got couples of B1 Machines, we've been experimenting with them. All in all, it is really nice to have the machine! First some comments and questions: * Unfortunately, the touch pad is not working well. To experiment various (software related) stuff on the machine, using an external mouse makes a lot of sense. * The infrastructure mode of wireless works with my 802.11b wireless router. However, we are having hard time to do it with our office network. It is to do with the router is 802.11g, the wep key is different or some other reasons. * Is there any way to set up ad hoc (mesh) network between units? I think I saw a wiki entry that says it is not working perfectly, but would like to try it. Now, a bit of my thought: Speaking of experiments, I would like to encourage the developers to use Etoys in various ways. It is pretty much the only thing that you can *make* something on the actual machine, currently. For application designers and developers, or content designers, it should give some sense on what it is like to do stuff on it. Its UI is different from the standard OLPC idioms, but the available functionality of Etoys and Squeak still let you do a lot of prototyping. For example, there is a paint tool in Etoys. If you would like to feel the painting experience on the machine, you can try it in Etoys. It comes will the real-time collaboration, so you can experiment a real-time collaborative painting, for example, with two B1 machines. (Once Sugar gets its own painting tool, we would like to use it, or at least modify the look of the Squeak's painting tool so that it imitates the native painting tool.) If you think that constructionist approach is a good idea, it would be good to think that kids should *make* stuff by themselves to learn stuff. For example, I think that the things like Memory game are something to be written by children. Also, there was some discussion on a clock application: waking up the machine is out of scope of Etoys, but the other part, making a functioning clock, is something an elementary school children can do in Etoys. Instead of giving a nicely done, professional looking clock from us, it would be great to see kids-made versions. This means that what we should write is to create the materials on how to make such games or things. We have a few examples in Etoys. Launch Etoys on it, and press "All" button. In the file list, go to "ExampleEtoys" and choose one. If you say that the curriculum is supposed to be something to be built by the local goverments and users. So, we should make an authoring tool to make such materials. Viewing source code was under discussion. The implementation langauge of Etoys, again, is different from the standard language on OLPC, so it wouldn't serve as a prototype or mockup. That said, Etoys already have built-in development facility that expose all source code in the system. One may get some idea from there. (Is somebody going to write a Python development environment for children?) For the basic concepts, take a look at: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar_EToys If you don't have your own projects, Etoys try to load a default project and it takes some time (too much time). Once you make one, the start up time is almost acceptable We are actively improving Etoys. To try the latest stuff please download: http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/etoys-2.0-1133.zip and copy/replace the etoys-2.0-1133.image to: /usr/share/etoys/etoys.image If you are interested in developing something in it, download: http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/etoys-dev-2.0-1133.zip and launch the image with a Squeak VM that you already have on your computer. Thank you! -- Yoshiki

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[Etoys] Sound manipulation, Markus?
by Yoshiki Ohshima 21 Dec '06

21 Dec '06

Markus, While ago, there was some discussion about adding a few tiles for controling the tone of sound. Apparently^^; you had some other high priority business back then. How things are going now? WorldStethoscope code is in the OLPC image now, and we are in the mood of enhancing the image toward the middle of January. -- Yoshiki

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[Etoys] eToys in OLPC image under Qemu - eToys projects Larger than window
by Milan Zimmermann 20 Dec '06

20 Dec '06

Hi, I setup OLPC under Qemu (on windows). I have the eToys projects (well at least the intro project and the castle tutorial) about 30% bigger then the window size, overflowing to the right and down. Is it a result of a resolution mapping that I can adjust, and/or do others see the same problem? (I assume it is not that way on the OLPC hardware) Thanks Milan

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[Etoys] Pie menus for XO?
by Ken Ritchie 17 Dec '06

17 Dec '06

When I saw the XO home view at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Home.jpg I thought, "Nice...the XO has pie menus! XO users won't be locked into a linear list landscape." ;-) I have yet to find any guidance in the OLPC wiki about using pie menus anywhere in the project. Am I overlooking something? Has anyone evaluated pie menus for Sugar? Celeste -- Have you seen any usability lab or fish bowl observations on pie menu usage? Alan -- Have you already experimented with pie menus in eToys or Squeak? Is anyone here using pie menus anywhere, for anything, today? cheers, --ken ritchie PACKAGES FOR PLAY: RadialContext (Firefox plugin) pie menus https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/67/ easyGestures (Firefox Add-on) https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/29/ REFERENCES FOR READING: "Pie Menus a Brief Examination" (Ben Meadowcroft) http://www.benmeadowcroft.com/reports/piemenu/ "Pie Menu Central" (Don Hopkins) http://www.piemenu.com/

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[Etoys] A bug in resize and undo
by Yoshiki Ohshima 16 Dec '06

16 Dec '06

Hello, (and Scott^^;) Abe-san found a bug in the latest OLPC image. To reproduce: * Paint an object. * Add a script to the object. (a "turn by" would do.) * Tick the script for a while. * Stop the script. * Resize the object with yellow handle. * Undo "resize Sketch" from the navigator. And, if you tick the script again, it doesn't work. The object seems to be substituted by different one. -- Yoshiki

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[Etoys] Trash icon
by karl 15 Dec '06

15 Dec '06

I made a new icon for the trashcan trying to be in line with the OPLC HIG. What do people think ? Karl

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[Etoys] OPLC video on youtube.com
by karl 14 Dec '06

14 Dec '06

I saw on Slashdot a link to a video of the UI of the OPLC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwzCsOFxT-U&mode=related&search= It was painful to watch the Squeak part of that video. I shows so many of the common mistakes people make with Squeak. And it shows a lot of quirks in Squeak and etoys. Should the event playback be modal so the user input will not disrupt the playback. What are do other people think ? Karl

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[Etoys] SqueakMap on OLPC
by Göran Krampe 14 Dec '06

14 Dec '06

Hi! I stumbled over the laptop.org lists and decided to join. I noticed some posts about the SqueakMap loader, Yoshiki mentioned there is no simple way of opening it for an eToys user. Is there any interest in enabling it? And what would be a simple way? It has been prepared to be included in the Tools flap btw - you just need to regenerate the flaps to get it IIRC. But the loader itself is not targeted at this audience of course so: Are there any existing thoughts about how we could enable SM for OLPC use? We could create specific categories for OLPC packages and we could even create a tailored SqueakMap Loader for OLPC users. Since Brian Rice and I are currently reviving SqueakMap development I am all ears. regards, Göran PS. The plans include decentralization of the map etc so it will be possible to set up special maps for OLPC use - just as you can set up Debian repositories for specific usage.

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[Etoys] Camera to do
by Bert Freudenberg 12 Dec '06

12 Dec '06

As I wrote in the other message, the btest machine's camera works, but it's really slow right now even at 320x240 (the camera actually supports 640x480). We'll have to optimize it significantly to be usable. We should allocate a 16 bit form and let the plugin read the camera data right into the form bits. Then only do an in-place palette conversion (YUYV8888 to 2xRGB555). This hopefully will be a lot faster than the current version, which first converts to a 24 bpp bitmap and then to a 32 bpp form using float math for contrast/ brightness adjustment which is then drawn on the 16 bpp display. Anybody up to implement this? We maybe also could learn from the camera demo activity. AFAIK, it streams directly into the framebuffer and uses the Geode's video overlay/scaling/color conversion units. It achieves full-screen full- speed video. As an aside, the VideoMorph's controls do not work for me, I can not change the resolution in the dialog. - Bert -

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etoys-dev December 2006