Journal, Clipboard and activity instances vs. files (was Re: Recent Updates to Sugar Almanac)

[Wade Brainerd]

Hey James,

It actually sounds a bit like we're talking about the same thing...

On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 3:26 PM, James Simmons
<jim.simmons at walgreens.com> wrote:
> What you propose sounds difficult for a kid to master.  For myself, I'd like
> external storage to be treated differently from Journal entries and to
> *look* like its being treated differently.  External storage could have
> files and directories, you could navigate through them with a Midnight
> Commander-like interface, and you could lauch Activities from files in them
> if they had the needed MIME type.  This interface would be for the grownups
> (teachers), who would be the main users of external storage.

Right, I was moving the external storage into the clipboard UI
(extending the clipboard to handle it basically) as an alternative to
introducing a third UI for managing data objects.  Since the clipboard
deals in MIME types already, it seemed natural to put external storage
there too, and to "route more data" to the clipboard by default, for
example downloaded files.

> The current Journal user interface would be left pretty much alone, because
> it *does* work for kids.  Meta data would be fixed so that it persisted
> across reboots.  Journal entries would *not* be made for Activities that
> don't really need them (Terminal, Log Viewer, etc.  The Activity would
> specify that it did not want to be resumeable).

Agreed completely, I just want to remove the "files" from the Journal
and put them somewhere else.

Also, I think Terminal could use a decent Journal implementation, that
would save the environment and scrollback buffer.

The problem is more that the current home UI encourages creation of
new blank activity instances over resuming old ones.  This is somewhat
addressed in the new UI design, at the cost of some clarity in the
separation between activities and activity instances.  I also wrote up
some ideas on how to deal with it at
[[User:Wade/Ideas/Activity_Management]].

Regards,

Wade