etoys-dev April 2007

etoys-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org

15 participants
18 discussions

[Etoys] Rehashing saves 600 KB
by Bert Freudenberg 12 Apr '07

12 Apr '07

Hi folks, Marcus Denker pointed out that rehashing reduces the image size quite a bit. I did Set rehashAllSets and the saved image indeed is 650 KB smaller. Can anyone think of a reason not to do this? Maybe there are some Sets/Dictionaries intentionally made larger than necessary for speed reasons? - Bert -

2 3

[Etoys] [Fwd: Re: A few notes on eToys interface - playing withlatest eToys in olpc]
by Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas 11 Apr '07

11 Apr '07

Hi, I forgot to answer also to the list. Here comes the answer. Cheers, Offray

1 0

[Etoys] Big cursors in event theater
by Bert Freudenberg 10 Apr '07

10 Apr '07

Hi Folks, I just published an update that corrects the cursor display when playing back - it looked terrible because it was trying to construct a 2-bit cursor from the 32-bit bitmap. It still enlarges the cursor by 2 as the original replay did - not sure if we want this. Please test. This also lets you try the new cursors on an old VM, so if you have never seen the OLPC cursor, try this: ActiveHand showTemporaryCursor: CursorWithAlpha olpcNormal - Bert -

1 0

[Etoys] Re: A few notes on eToys interface
by Richard Karpinski 09 Apr '07

09 Apr '07

Wild idea for geographic navigation. On 2007, Apr 2, , at 9:00, Milan Zimmermann wrote: > - I think the largest potential issue is ease of eToys > navigation for > someone who is running the system for the first time. I am thinking > how to > modify the UI, without significant changes, to help a new user to > not "get > lost" (for example by following a few projects from the cloud > menu). I think > people's sense "not getting lost" is greatly satisfied when there > is a way to > know "how to go back" - either one step back, or all the way to the > beginning. I realize this is where the "Navigator->Prev" is used, > but it is > not very obvious for a first time user, mostly because it's > contents (the > Prev button) is "hidden". I am thinking if the following would help: Background - Why geographic navigation works When Jef Raskin, the father of Macintosh, proposed a zooming user interface for a hospital information system, it was built that way. It worked well, but the part that interests me now is that utter novices learned the system quickly. They became comfortable and competent in literally less than a single minute. Of course, computer experts took longer but they succeeded in less than two minutes. This was using a mouse with two buttons designated Zoom In and Zoom Out. My analysis is that for millions of years, our ancestors succeeded in getting back to the nest. This imbues their living descendants with a natural talent for learning to navigate in a geographic world, even one where there is a lot of content in zoomable regions. I want to take advantage of that native ability in an even simpler system, one which uses the graphical input device alone with no keys or buttons at all. Utility - Why auto-zooming is good for you The first thing to notice is that there is room for unbounded content if you can write it very small and zoom in to read what interests you. If you showed a shelf full of products, there would always be room for more detail, even a complete user manual, in a region no larger than ten or sixteen pixels on a side. The rollover event could be interpreted to auto-zoom into the region. The amount of zooming could be arranged in the construction of the zoom world to be just right for reading text or viewing images in that region. Next, we can observe that rollover works the other way too. If you do the natural thing to return to where you were, you will cross the same region boundary in the other direction and be back there again. This is so simple that nearly everyone, I claim, will discover it on their own. They shouldn't have to, when less than a minute of training is required, but they could, especially if they are kids and not yet overly concerned with making no mistakes. Indeed, it works for the preliterate as well as those who can read and compose text. Beyond zooming - Making the graphical input device alone do even more I would go further and devise a mouse only (or touch pad only) gesture for select, and at that exact moment, make a pie menu appear to permit the second half of a noun-verb command to be chosen and activated. But I shall leave further discussion of such extensions for future occasions. Initial introduction - How to make first use painless In gaming arcades, there is often an attract mode which gives hints about what this game offers. For us, this includes several introductory eToy projects. With the auto-zooming interface, it would make some sense for the initial screen to have each of them in a region with a well defined border and let folks auto-zoom in to whichever strikes their fancy. Re-crossing that border, anywhere, naturally returns you to the original screen contents. Rapid learning can be expected. Since there is always room for another help sheet or demonstration video on any screen, gentle training can always be at hand. Even a direct passage to the initial screen, despite violating the strict geographic navigation paradigm can be arranged to be awfully clear and quite effective. Any navigation problem which is discovered to be common can be addressed in such a way without much time or effort required to set it up. Barriers - Why this scheme cannot be adopted at this time We need to press forward and we already have much too much to do. This would be a radical change which we have no time to consider at present. It would take weeks to set this up just to see if it works. Nobody needs this. It won't work. People will fall into the auto- zooming regions and be lost and stuck. It is not now such things are done. Richard Karpinski, World Class Nitpicker 148 Sequoia Circle, Santa Rosa, CA 95401 dick(a)cfcl.com Home +1 707-546-6760 Cell +1 707-228-9716 http://cfcl.com/twiki/bin/view/Karpinski ps Put (or leave) "nitpicker" in the subject line to get past my spam filters.

3 3

[Etoys] Ogg Vorbis and Speex CODEC for Squeak eToys
by Takashi Yamamiya 04 Apr '07

04 Apr '07

Hello, I have uploaded some change sets to the update stream (#1230, #1231) for Ogg Vorbis and Speex sound codec support. It allows you to compress sound data efficiently, and it would be easy to make tutorial project with voice guidance. - Recoding a voice with codec using Sound Recorder in parts bin. - Making a tile from the recoeded voice, and saving as a .pr file. - Playback .ogg / .spx music from File List. I will apply the Event Theatre soon. However, you need a plugin file to test this feature. Please download and try it. http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/OggPlugin/OggPlugin.linux.tgz for OLPC machine and linux. http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/OggPlugin/OggPlugin.win.zip for Windows http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/OggPlugin/OggPlugin.mac.zip for Mac OS X The mac plugin requires universal binary ftp://ftp.smalltalkconsulting.com/. Note that because this is my first time to build something on Macintosh, it is possible that something is completely bad. At least it worked on a MacBook though, please tell me if it doesn't work on your mac. And give me your advice! Source code is available at: http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/OggPlugin/ogg_plugin.tar.gz Thank you, - Takashi

3 10

[Etoys] WikiPhone on OLPC
by Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrero 03 Apr '07

03 Apr '07

Hi everyone, I would like to know if there are any plans to implement WikiPhone on the OLPC machine, it would be great to see that.. Thanks, -- Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrero OLPC Colombia http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Colombia Grupo de robotica libre DROZ http://www.el-directorio.org/DrozConfluence http://el-directorio.org El sitio de software Libre en Colombia

2 2

[Etoys] sugar-jhbuild: moved squeak repository
by Bert Freudenberg 03 Apr '07

03 Apr '07

Hi folks, I moved the Squeak VM build to an "olpc" branch on squeakvm.org. You need to pull the new module definition and remove the old sources: cd sugar-jhbuild git pull rm -rf source/squeak ./sugar-jhbuild buildone squeak The switch to this branch will allow faster turn-around for us. Currently this branch has the big cursor support and improved camera plugin which is not in the mainline VM, yet. - Bert -

1 0

[Etoys] Trial1
by Bert Freudenberg 02 Apr '07

02 Apr '07

Folks, I just published an updated RPM that makes $HOME the default location when loading or storing projects. This is because for Trial1 it was decided to put user-created files in that directory. It will be rsynced to a school server and retrieved via the web activity, somehow - this is as much information as I could coerce of of the developers. See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Trial1_Software I think someone should add etoys information there. Also, our example etoys should be made available in the Library which is on each laptop, as well as here: http://dev.laptop.org/pub/content/library/ Perhaps someone could just create an HTML page with projects and thumbnails from /usr/share/etoys/ExampleEtoys so SJ can easily add it to the library? - Bert -

1 0

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

etoys-dev April 2007