Fedora Desktop on XO

[C. Scott Ananian]

On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 11:00 AM, John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com> wrote:
>> I'm very interested on this, as it would give us also for free a FUSE
>> interface. Why I haven't pursued it yet is because the API for
>> developing new gio backends is still private and our new backend would
>> then need to live inside the gvfs gnome module or as a patch in every
>> distro. Aside from having to periodically adapt to any API changes.
>>
>> See http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gvfs-list/2008-May/msg00004.html
>>
>> That said, such a backend would be very simple, for the journal in Sugar 0.84.
>
> Hi Tomeu, I'd say write the simple backend and submit it upstream.  Their
> interface sounds very much like every other interface in a computer,
> i.e. not quite done right in retrospect and always subject to change.
> Their mailing list only got a dozen messsages that month -- it's not
> evolving SO fast.  Host the code in their gnome module and then it'll
> evolve along with the module and also go into each distro.
>
> My idea is that when an ordinary GUI program pops up an "Open File"
> dialog, if an OLPC Journal exists for that user, it will be one of the
> icons in the left column (like "Desktop" or "File System" or each
> mounted removable storage device).  If Journal is already the default,
> or is selected, then the filename and type are pre-defaulted, though
> the user can override them by typing.
>
> Even on a sugarized OLPC, people are going to neet to touch files that
> have real names in the real filesystem (e.g.  Python source code,
> config files, even new firmware downloads) as well as Journal entries,
> so they'll need ways to pick things OTHER than the Journal, too.
>
> This design would also let people try out the Journal concept, just by
> "apt-get install olpc-journal" and starting it up.  Then by picking
> Journal in the file dialog or file browser, it will arrange the files
> that they save or read, by date of access in one big glob, with tags
> or whatever, rather than making them pick hierarchical names.  This
> would all happen modularly, without installing the Sugar GUI.  (It
> would only be interfaced to Sugar and Gnome, but maybe other desktops
> would get the hint.)
>
> This would also be a really cheap way to browse USB keys, etc.  Open
> two Gnome file browsers (one hierarchical in USB key; the other in
> Journal) and drag things back and forth.  The code's already there,
> it just lacks this one interface.

John, I don't know if you ever saw: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Journal,_reloaded

Given the massive disruption to the status quo, I'm not sure that I
would attempt to argue for one approach over the other; just noting
that there is an alternative.
 --scott

-- 
                         ( http://cscott.net/ )