"Yay!, Bee, See" (ABC) software

[Ben Wiley Sittler]

Thanks!

A few questions, though:

1. Is there any reason I shouldn't start with your version 2 .xol as
my baseline? I'd like to update it to use the new lower-resolution,
lower-quality images (which still look just fine on the XO-1 even in
greyscale high-resolution mode zoomed out to the 1px = 1px scale.)

2. Is there some way to install the .xol more user-friendly than just
unzipping it into the ~/Library directory?

3. I notice that in the description on the wiki for the bundle you
wrote "fdl text, pd, cc-by and cc-sa images". Some of the images are
cc-by-sa and fdl, too. Also, the HTML text is actually pd (or at least
it was in the version I released — of course you are welcome to
license copyrighted derivative versions however you like.)

4. And finally, is there some reason the OLPC wiki does not work right
when viewed from an XO-1? I had to go through URL-hacking contortions
to open that page in Browse (it just said the page was empty
otherwise.)

Thanks, (and please pardon my ignorance!)
-Ben

On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 8:43 PM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
>  Ben --
>
> When you're zipping up the directory, if you add a metadata file in
> this subpath:
>  library/library.info
>
> and give the resulting zip file the extension .xol, you'll have an XO
> library bundle.
>
> Here is a sample info file, with all required fields :
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Yay-bee-see-library.info
> Note that the 'name' field in the info file should match the name of
> the root directory.
>
> Our standard is to increment the version # in the metadata every time
> you make a change; that allows tools like Sugar's software updater
> know when there are newer versions of packages available to install.
>
> SJ
>
> On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 7:31 PM, Ben Wiley Sittler <bsittler at gmail.com> wrote:
>> yeah, i added a 1200x900 version with more agressive JPEG compression
>> which looks good both in color mode and in monochrome mode and is only
>> 4 MiB or so:
>>
>> http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc.zip
>>
>> hosted version:
>>
>> http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc/index.html
>>
>> does that seem any faster?
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Gary C Martin <gary at garycmartin.com> wrote:
>>> On 24 Nov 2008, at 17:21, Ben Wiley Sittler wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I have just joined this list and read through the archives, but could
>>>> not find anything similar. I also didn't find mention of anything
>>>> similar on the OLPC Wiki.
>>>>
>>>> I recently wrote some software for use by my daughter on her OLPC. It
>>>> runs inside the Browse activity, either locally using a "file:" URI or
>>>> over the network. I don't know whether it will be of interest to
>>>> anyone else, but I have released the software to the public domain and
>>>> packaged it along with scaled-down (1600x1200 or less) copies of some
>>>> public-domain images and some copyrighted-but-free-to-redistribute
>>>> images under GFDL, and various Creative Commons Attribution-Share
>>>> Alike, Attribution, and Share Alike licenses. Individual attribution
>>>> for each image is included in the application source code.
>>>
>>> Seems a great addition for the younger age range :-)
>>>
>>> I did notice that even on a high specced laptop (1.5Ghz, 2Gb ram, broadband
>>> connection) the background image was very slow to display (until it had been
>>> cached locally).
>>>
>>> One suggestion, 1600x1200 seems a bit large (even as a max size). For the
>>> XO, 800x600 (max!) would seem to be a fair max image size to save nand space
>>> and keep image quality. The XO screen is capable of 1200x900 in black/white,
>>> and 800x600 seems a reasonable number for it's colour resolution abilities:
>>>
>>>        http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Display
>>>
>>> --Gary
>>>
>>>> overview:
>>>>
>>>> I wrote some software using DHTML (JavaScript, HTML and CSS.) It's to
>>>> help learn letters and numbers, and is intended to be used with adult
>>>> supervision and involvement. It is fairly easy to customize it to use
>>>> different images and support different alphabets simply by editing the
>>>> contents of the <style> element in the HTML file.
>>>>
>>>> The software is very, very, very simple — it just echoes typed letters
>>>> and numbers in a large, colorful font and shows a somewhat-relevant
>>>> background image for each one. The images are various freely-usable
>>>> ones I found on Wikipedia or in the Wikimedia Commons. View source
>>>> code for full copyright information for the associated images.
>>>>
>>>> online version of the "Yay!, Bee, See" application:
>>>>
>>>> http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see.html
>>>>
>>>> an archive of the application (ZIP, ~15 MiB) including all images:
>>>>
>>>> http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see.zip
>>>>
>>>> blog post about it:
>>>>
>>>> http://bsittler.livejournal.com/15244.html
>>>>
>>>> background:
>>>>
>>>> My daughter (who turns two this week) has been enjoying her OLPC from
>>>> last year's G1G1 program much more than I expected she would
>>>> (originally I intended to wait until she was older and literate to
>>>> introduce her to the OLPC, but she seemed to treat it as a favorite
>>>> toy starting around the age of 18 months.) She likes the Record
>>>> activity (she calls it "Waving hand" and uses it like a mirror-image
>>>> mirror,) Skype (not bundled, but she uses it to talk to and see
>>>> far-away family,) and listening to music (theclassicalstation.org).
>>>> She also likes pressing buttons, rotating the "ears" and screen, and
>>>> opening and closing the laptop. However, she seems somewhat frustrated
>>>> by not being able to do things on it for herself (or as she puts it,
>>>> "do it self!",) so I thought I might write a small program where her
>>>> keypresses give some feedback, and help reinforce her interest in the
>>>> digits and letters of the alphabet (she loves being read to and
>>>> recognizes many letters and digits, but does not seem to understand
>>>> reading yet.)
>>>>
>>>> -Ben
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>>>
>>>
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