journal is hard (was Re: notes from the field - Mongolia)

[Eben Eliason]

On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 8:45 AM, Garrett Goebel
<garrett.goebel at gmail.com> wrote:
> Elana Langer wrote from Mongolia:
>> basically when teachers and students try to find their work (write,
>> record, etoys)  in the journal it is hard for them to locate it -
>> especially if it is more than a few days old. This is why everyone is
>> desperate to save their projects on USB keys.
>
> This could be made much easier if Sugar apps prompted the user for
> tags when shutting down an application.

Yes, I think we need to assume this model.  I don't think this is
going to break the basic paradigm of Sugar, since this prompt need
only happen for *new* activities.  Anything which has been previously
kept in the Journal will continue to autosave.  It's only the first
time that you *really* need to give a meaningful title, and also then
that you might decide it's not worth keeping at all.

> I know it is a goal to require as little text as possible. And I'm not
> sure what images could universally convey the message correctly... but
> basically:
>
> Would you like to tag the state of this activity? Y/N
>
> ...followed by a prompt for the user to enter tags.

We can do a little better than that, actually, by making it all one
prompt.  It can have a name field, already filled out with the best
darn attempt at a name we can manage, a tag field (and perhaps even a
list of popular tags as well, to apply to it with a click or a
drag/drop), and buttons for [Erase] (Or [Don't Keep]?) and [Keep].

- Eben

> cheers,
>
> Garrett
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