An OLPC Development Model

[Erik Garrison]

On Fri, May 09, 2008 at 04:02:07PM -0400, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:
> I'm under the impression that the Sugar shell was specifically 
> designed to be EASY TO LEARN for people lacking Western education. 
> Yes, there are many who desire to run desktop applications (without 
> having to re-program them) in the Sugar shell.  But *already* there 
> have been successful efforts at 'sugarizing' certain applications 
> ('opera' comes to mind).  From my perspective, what is needed is an 
> __excellent__ "thunk" layer to wrap around desktop applications. 
> Developers -- don't agonize -- go do it !!  [The most intractable 
> problem seems to be Bitfrost - the security model for Sugar is NOT 
> the same as the security model for current desktop applications -- 
> something has to give (or be re-programmed).]

The compatibility layer (thunkatron) which you describe is something
I'd like to work on.

Is there any prior work?  Has anyone attempted such a layer?  Does
anyone have any ideas about how it might be implemented and how
existing software would best interface with it?

-Erik