#5208 NORM Update.: Sugar puts an extra circle in the donut for SimCity

[Zarro Boogs per Child]

#5208: Sugar puts an extra circle in the donut for SimCity
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  Reporter:  gnu     |       Owner:  marco                            
      Type:  defect  |      Status:  new                              
  Priority:  normal  |   Milestone:  Update.1                         
 Component:  sugar   |     Version:  Development build as of this date
Resolution:          |    Keywords:                                   
  Verified:  0       |  
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Comment(by gnu):

 Indeed, !SimCity is not written in Python.  Please excuse Will Wright and
 Don Hopkins for coding it years before Python was invented.  It's an X
 application, written in C and using Tcl/tk for its window management.  We
 have a large file of "glue", reportedly derived from eToys by Don Hopkins,
 that succeeded in making it work under Sugar for Ship.1
 (simcityactivity.py).

 > I see the gtk.Socket code commented out... Are you forking off an
 executable with his own main window? Activity inherits from gtk.Window...

 OK.  Yes.  So what?   Does an activity author need to understand the guts
 of the Sugar implementation?  Or is there a well defined interface that
 sugar won't break or "evolve"?  If so, where is it documented?  Someday
 (preferably before shipping 600,000 copies of it) Sugar has to settle into
 a production component instead of a hacker playground -- or it will never
 attract a large herd of stable, working activities.

 If !SimCity broke because Sugar is evolving in a direction that makes it
 harder for ordinary X applications to run under it, then let's consider it
 the canary in the coal mine and quickly "ventilate" the sugar changes that
 caused it to keel over.  If on the other hand the double entry in the
 donut is caused by Sugar newly seeing both the "glue" and the underlying X
 app, then let's cheer and remove a bit more of the glue!

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/5208#comment:5>
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