Journal Suggestion

[Tomeu Vizoso]

Hi,

On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 9:26 PM, James Simmons
<jim.simmons at walgreens.com> wrote:
> I, too have suggestions for the Journal:
>
>  1).  The Journal should show, as a percentage perhaps, how much disk
>  space is free in the Journal, or in whatever removeable media (SD card,
>  Thumb drive) the user is currently looking at.  It should give some kind
>  of warning cue when the disk space is dangerously low.  The Freevo PVR
>  project does something like this.  A full Journal drive can make the XO
>  unbootable.

Showing the amount of free NAND space is already implemented in latest
joyride images.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Designs/Frame#11 shows how this would work
for removable devices, but it hasn't been implemented yet.

I think that Eben wants a notification when the journal is getting
filled, but the XO shouldn't be rendered unbootable anyway if the NAND
fills up.

>  2).  The problem with custom metadata like page numbers not being saved
>  across a reboot should be fixed.

Yup.

>  3).  Metadata should be saved when the user is loading data from
>  removeable media.  For instance, if I keep books on my SD card or thumb
>  drive, I should be able to return to the saved page number, and also see
>  a screenshot of the page I left off on.

Yes, I'm not sure if we have agreed in a way for storing metadata in
removable devices.

One option is to store "actions" as a zip file that includes all the
"objects" and metadata for them. This has the inconvenient of having
to unpack the zip if you insert it in any other desktop system.

Another option is to have a hidden directory in the device with a text
file for every action that contains its metadata.

The current approach of storing the metadata inside a Xapian index in
every removable device hasn't worked very well.

>  4).  It should be possible to specify for certain Activities that they
>  should *not* create Journal entries, ever.  I'm thinking of the Terminal
>  activity and the Log Viewer activity specifically.  The entries for
>  these activities don't preserve the state of when they were last used
>  (and probably should not do so) so there isn't much point in making
>  Journal entries for them.  Resuming them is no different that launching
>  them anew from the menu.  We already have a way of specifying that an
>  Activity not appear in the menu.  This would be an extension of that idea.

Yes, there may be some cases when a journal entry won't give any value
to the user, so it makes no sense to write an entry.

>  5).  For extra credit, make the Journal able to do something with
>  read-only removeable media like CDs and DVDs.  I'm thinking for instance
>  of letting the user copy a file from a CD into a new Journal entry.
>  Obviously not needed for the XO, but if Sugar was to become a product
>  separate from the XO but aimed at the same audience (poor children
>  needing education) this would be a useful feature.

Definitely.

>  I think Jacob's suggestion has some merit as well.

Agreed.

I'm sorry that the Journal development has stagnated during the last
milestone, due to missing someone working on the DataStore and me
having been dragged to other parts of Sugar. I hope this is going to
change during the rest of this year.

Thanks a lot for sharing your feedback,

Tomeu