Active activities as Widgets

[Eben Eliason]

> I would like to see the OLPC retain its non-windowed presentation style.
> I have run into people that have no idea how many windows are running.
> When they do not see the browser, they simply start another one,
> ignoring Z order and minimized applications. Don't laugh, my wife and I
> are the ISP for our condo complex and we have a few service calls along
> these lines. Given the OLPC environment, fixed frames and whole screen
> activity switching makes a lot of sense. So if I am performing an
> activity that does not require chat and wish to reference a colleague on
> line, hitting F3 and choosing the chat application is not offensive at all.

Agreed.  We aim to implement some really nice forms of activity
switching as well.

> For those activities that require chat, the interaction should happen in
> the context of the application's display structure. I am lucky that my
> particular application is square, this lends the rest of the rectangle
> to the buddy panel, which has the list of the participants in the upper
> half with the lower half containing the chat window. I am just finishing
> the basic game communications and will be moving on to the game player
> negotiation and setups this weekend.  I am resisting tabbing the tool
> bar for these tasks if at all possible to prevent my square Go board
> from getting any smaller.

I really think that the toolbar should be tabbed, actually, despite
the loss of those 45px.  You really should have some basic controls
like "new game", perhaps "undo/redo move", a board size selector, etc.
 Having all of these basic games controls neatly laid out along the
top of the screen would be quite appropriate, I think.

> I have been reviewing the code in the chat application and given the
> abilities of the dbus do not feel that text messages will add all that
> much complexity to the application. My original query was not as much
> having a chat window in my activity but more of a Delphi like component
> that I could drop into the buddy panel weld into my existing tubes and
> be done with chat.

This, I do believe is probably a fantastic thing to work on.  What we
really need in cases like this is, as you say, a chat widget that is
based on the chat activity, having the same look, feel, options, etc.
Just as we have an Abiword widget for text which can be used anywhere
we should adopt a standard chat widget that can be designed and
maintained by OLPC, so that the experience is always consistent and
any fixes or improvements are automatically seen within any activity
that makes use of it.

Do those working on Chat see this as a viable possibility?

> I have now become anxious about whether the 19x19 go board is feasible
> on the OLPC. The game does have 9x9 and 13x13 modes of play. But the Go
> world considers these less than optimal. There will be quite some time
> before I get my G1G1's and only have sugar-jhbuild to run on. Is it
> possible for anyone reading this to download the basic frame and report
> if the 19x19 grid is usable?  You may find it at
> https://dev.laptop.org/git?p=projects/PlayGo;a=tree

Even if you tab the toolbar, you'd wind up with a square that's about
41px in size.  Our "recommended minimum" size is 45px square for a
clickable area, so it sounds like you'll be fine, albeit on the
smaller side.

- Eben


> Thanks
>
> - Gerard
>