[sugar] Journal: two quick suggestions

[Christoph Derndorfer]

Eben Eliason schrieb:
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 3:11 PM, Edward Cherlin <echerlin at gmail.com 
> <mailto:echerlin at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 11:41 AM, Eben Eliason
>     <eben.eliason at gmail.com <mailto:eben.eliason at gmail.com>> wrote:
>     >
>     > > while toying around with the Journal today I had two ideas
>     about the
>     > > "anything" and "anytime" filter functions:
>     > >
>     >
>     > Both interesting ideas...
>     >
>     > > "anything": Apart from offering activities and file-types as
>     > > filter-options I'm thinking that it might make sense to also
>     offer an
>     > > option for different subjects that kids will have at school.
>     So things
>     > > like "Maths", "English", whatever... My thought is that many
>     activities
>     > > will be started and resumed in a certain class-context and
>     offering
>     > > such a filter could help them to quickly find related matters.
>     >
>     > One of our fears here is the proliferation of options within
>     this menu,
>     > which could eventually limit its usefulness, and is the reason
>     we chose to
>     > limit to some "primitive" types and the installed activities.
>
>     A common way to address this problem is to make the menu customizable
>     with user-defined filters and the ability to remove unneeded filters
>     (but keep the option to restore them later). Google mail is an
>     example, where users can create their own tags and set filters to
>     apply them automatically.
>
>
> Indeed.  The implied hypothetical at the end of my response alluded to 
> the fact the almost anything is possible, assuming you add additional 
> UI/management tools, but we're trying to find a balance between 
> functionality and management overhead. I'm using Gmail to write this, 
> and their system does work pretty well, but naturally has an entire 
> screen dedicated to both creating labels and assigning filters.
>
> We've also discussed the possibility of adding "saved searches" or the 
> like (there are 15 names for this basic idea...) in the future, but 
> there is a lot of basic functionality left to add before we add this 
> form of meta-functionality.  Perhaps the "What" list is the 
> appropriate place for these saved filters to live, eventually.  Thanks 
> for offering that idea.

I agree, adding those customized filters to the what category would make 
a lot of sense.

>
> - Eben
>
>     The usual alternative is folders, as in Moodle.
>
>     > One can
>     > imagine that the "subject" of an activity is actually
>     subjectively defined,
>     > and even when it's relatively clear, we might wind up with some
>     for each of
>     > "math", "geometry", "trigonometry", "algebra", etc.
>     >
>     > To make a similar functionality available, though, we've chosen
>     to allow
>     > developers to supply a list of tags within the .info file for
>     any given
>     > activities, which could include several subject related words,
>     as well as
>     > more abstract or general terms like "game", "simulation", or
>     "language".  We
>     > hope that the ability to search by broad terms such as "math" or
>     "games"
>     > will then turn up a list of appropriately related activities.
>     >
>     > Having just typed this and then reviewing the wiki, I notice
>     that this part
>     > of the spec doesn't appear to be there yet!  Can those familiar
>     with this
>     > respond about the presence or absence of this capability?  If
>     this isn't
>     > there, it should get a ticket.  It should be a pretty
>     straightforward
>     > addition and simple to implement, it seems.
>

Ahhh, that's indeed interesting, I hadn't been aware of this 
functionality before...

Per Eben's question: Does anyone happen to know whether this is already 
implemented or not?

>     >
>     >
>     > > "anytime": Here it might make sense to add more informal
>     filters such
>     > > as "5 grado", "2nd semester" or something along these lines.
>     >
>     > This one is actually much harder to do in a general way.  We
>     chose, on
>     > purpose, to treat time in the relative sense with respect to the
>     Journal.
>     > Instead of seeing a story you wrote on November 28, 2007 you
>     might find a
>     > story you wrote "3 months ago".  This approach was chosen, in a
>     sense, to
>     > internationalize (or perhaps simply generalize) the Journal with
>     respect to
>     > time, so that school systems with widely different schedules
>     (some might
>     > have class daily for one of every 3 months, for instance) can
>     all take
>     > advantage of it.
>     >
>     >
>     > > Of course one could also argue that such information could be
>     > > explicitly added via the tags but I think a more implicit
>     mechanism
>     > > could potentially make more sense.
>     >
>     > You can see how, in the former case, the tag model is still
>     implicit, in a
>     > sense, when installing an activity.  In the latter case, I don't
>     see any
>     > good way other than explicit tagging that doesn't have additional UI
>     > overhead/management to function.  I'm open to ideas here.
>

Mmmm, shouldn't it be possible to also add some tags when it comes to 
the "anytime" case?

Maybe just a variable somewhere that allows the teacher or potentially 
each pupil to automatically add a tag to every Journal entry for a 
certain period of time. Basically a batch-tagging that does its thing 
until it's stopped.

That way on the first school day in a new year / semester / trimester 
the option could be set and then subsequently forgotten.

That approach would probably have the least impact in terms of UI overhead.

Greetings from the LinuxTage in Chemnitz/Germany,
Christoph

>     >
>     > Thanks for your feedback!
>     >
>     > - Eben
>     >
>     >
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>
>     --
>     Edward Cherlin
>     End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business
>     http://www.EarthTreasury.org/
>     "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay
>
>