Guidance sought on collaboration techniques

[Gary C Martin]

On 13 Feb 2009, at 16:16, Wade Brainerd wrote:

> Hey James,
>
> FYI here is the collaboration code in Colors!
>
> http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/colors/repos/mainline/blobs/master/colors.py#line641
>
> It's fairly well commented but let me know if you have any questions  
> about how it works, or what you should do differently in Read Etexts.
>
> I totally agree that Etexts should be a killer app for the XO.
>
> As an aside, does anyone know if there is a manual way to force the  
> XO screen into sunlight mode?

The below will switch to BW, but still leave the backlight on:

	su
	echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/dcon/output

And to kill backlight and go to BW mode all at once:

	su
	echo 0 > /sys/class/backlight/dcon-bl/brightness

Hmmm, I wonder if there is dbus hooks for this for a less hacky  
solution.

--Gary

> -Wade
>
> On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 10:56 AM, James Simmons <jim.simmons at walgreens.com 
> > wrote:
> Wade,
>
> I'll have to check out the code in Colors!  What I really need is  
> some sample code and some good docs on the APIs available.  What I  
> have now was copied from the Read activity, and not all of it is  
> clear to me.  If I understood what APIs were available that would be  
> a big help.  I will welcome feedback on my code once I have  
> something good enough to criticize, but I'm not there yet.
>
> Thanks,
>
> James Simmons
>
>
>
> Wade Brainerd wrote:
>>
>> Hey James,
>>
>> I can help you out with this if you want.
>>
>> Your collaboration design sounds fine to me.  I did something  
>> similar in Colors! where certain parts of the UI are disabled on  
>> the joining instances.
>>
>> What point are you at now?  Do you need an example to get started  
>> with, or feedback about existing code, or just ideas about which  
>> APIs to use?
>>
>> Best,
>> Wade
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 4:55 PM, James Simmons <jim.simmons at walgreens.com 
>> > wrote:
>> Benjamin,
>>
>> I had been using two machines to develop my Activities.  One ran  
>> Xubuntu
>> and used the sugar packages provided with the Sugar Live CD that  
>> someone
>> made up.  These were not perfect, but it was a simpler way to set  
>> up a
>> Sugar test environment than anything else available at the time.  My
>> second box was running openSUSE 10.2 and I attempted to install
>> Sugar-jhbuild on it with middling success.  I had both pointing to  
>> the
>> Collabora server to test sharing, and what I found was the sharing
>> through that server worked OK for small files (like Read Etexts used)
>> but took forever for slideshows, and frequently ran out of gas in the
>> middle of a transfer.  As for collaboration between two instances of
>> Sugar with no jabber server between them, that never worked at all,  
>> even
>> a little bit.
>>
>> As of last night both machines have Fedora 10 with the Sugar RPMs
>> installed, so this should eliminate lots of problems I had in the  
>> past.
>> I don't expect it to make large file transfers through the jabber  
>> server
>> any faster, though.  Plus, in my opinion copying a file from one XO  
>> to
>> another would be better done as a function of the Journal.  It  
>> isn't my
>> idea of what real collaboration should be.  The VNC idea, while
>> worthwhile, doesn't excite me either.
>>
>> As an XO user I have no use for collaboration.  I have nobody to play
>> with.  I could strip the collaboration code out of both my Activities
>> and have something more than adequate for my own use.  My goal is to
>> create Activities that will get other kids excited about using  
>> them.  My
>> idea is a modest step in that direction.  If I get that much working
>> other ideas may come.
>>
>> I would like to stick with API's that are currently available for a
>> couple of reasons:
>>
>> 1).  I want to use the Sugar environment in Fedora 10.  Now that I
>> finally have a robust test environment I don't want to lose it.
>> 2).  I want to make the Activity available to the largest number of
>> users possible.
>>
>> I think telepathy might do the job for me if I just understood it
>> better.  All I'm asking it to do is send some messages to a list of
>> buddies and have them initiate some file transfers.  Chat is already
>> doing the first part, I think, and the Read code might be persuaded  
>> to
>> do the second.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> James Simmons
>>
>>
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