11.2.0 release notes ready for review

Thu Jul 21 20:51:45 EDT 2011

Hi Alan,

On 21 Jul 2011, at 20:46, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn wrote:

> Hi Gary,
> 
>> 	Complicated! ;)
>> 
>> 	As to why there is no 'don't save', well a couple of points:
>> 
>> 	1) the Journal was designed to be a log of activity not just a flat list of saved data files, it would be great to have more interesting metadata auto stored (e.g. length of time spent in activity, 	number of times resumed), and/or to be able to better encourage the child to write short descriptions about what they were doing for later review (e.g. "I searched google for cool pictures of 	sharks with lasers, for my school essay, but didn't find one I liked.").
>> 
> 
> Yes, in theory. I am Uruguayan. I have seen thousands of XO .. No one uses the journal that way, the little disk space (1 GB 400 MB are available) and when you have hundreds of entries, and begins to complicate, to walk slower.

Journal entries, especially ones that are just metadata that an activity was used are very small amounts of data on the disk. I think perhaps the worst case would be if a child is making lots of video or audio recordings using the Record activity, EToys projects, and perhaps Paint being the next worse for disk size. I would love to know what children are using up their disk space with. I'm guessing some of it is downloads of the less disk space efficient Activity software ports from Gnome (Tux Paint, Open Office, Firefox, some of the GCompris activities), and perhaps using Browse to save music, video and pictures from the Internet. Would be great if you have any information/data on how you see children have used up most of their disk space!

With the new builds OLPC are currently finishing up for release, the version of Sugar in them supports sorting the Journal by size, and by creation date (in addition to the default modification date). Sorting by size is great for tracking down where all your disk space went, sorting by creation date is helpful when you are looking for work you know you started last Monday, or at the beginning of term, or you can remember other activities you did at the same time (I took 5 photos and then started the essay I'm looking for).

> And the problem of "find nothing" is repeated often. Cause: You may need to teach children the proper use of labels. But the kids out of an activity and never notice that ... I have come across many machines you have to reflash because it does not leave or enter the newspaper to delete things (in old sugar images, in this new I not do a stress test) …

I'm hoping this is only an issue with an old version of Sugar, and it's now been fixed… But please do report back if you continue to see such things in new releases.

> 
>> 	2) The naming dialogue was added as an opportunity for the child to provide a useful name, description and tags when they stop a new activity instance. The activity state will very likely have 	been already automatically stored in the Journal (e.g. activity state is stored in the Journal whenever you switch views). So the 'don't save' button would really be an 'erase this entry from the 	journal' button.
>> 
> 
> Changing the implementation of the saved, change this too
> 
>> 	FWIW, there is already an accepted design for dropping this naming dialogue (at least one deployment has already removed it from their builds) as the psychology of a user who has just clicked 	'Stop' is one of "get me out of here, I want to do something else now", not "I would like to describe what I was just doing", most folks seem to skips past the dialogue as fast as they can, 	annoyed/distracted by the interruption. The replacement design is a system wide 'detail view' dialogue (similar features as per the current Journal details view) that can be opened at the users 	discretion while working in an activity.
>> 
>> "most folks seem to skips past the dialogue as fast as they can, annoyed/distracted by the interruption"
> 
> Yes, I'm agree. 
> Also is annoying is to have the obligation (not freedom) the save something ..
> For example, when I use the Activity Maze, entered to play at level 1. When I return to the entrance that, start in 1! That's the point? Many of the activities create an entry "habit", butbear no relevant information,

For the Maze activity, this is considered a missing feature. I'm pretty sure we have a bug ticket (or two) open requesting that a resumed Maze activity continues from the level you had last reached (and perhaps having a leader board for who solved the maze first/second/third for each level completed). Over time, Activities are getting better and better at keeping useful state in the Journal (have you experimented with the Physics activity yet?), we need to keep on making sure activity designers make best use of Journal state.

> and generate an endless list of meaningless entries(knowing that no labels are used). In addition, save the entries as a record of what thechild does (one kind of blog, journal) in practice is not viable .. Maybe I'm wrong 

Well I'd argue over 'endless list of meaningless entries' ;-) I think even with the limited metadata we currently do keep it would be great if local deployments collected some random samples of counts of activity usage. This would be VERY useful information for the translation teams to make sure the activities being used are localised in the languages most needed; for activity developers to decide which bugs and features to work on first; for usage time patterns for considering perhaps power saving improvements, and other design needs; for object disk sizes so developers can focus on optimising the activities that most fill up disk space. To my knowledge I've not yet seen any deployment feedback data from actual usage – the best I have so far is trying to keep a general eye on the activities that deployments are choosing to install by default on their local builds.

Kind Regards,
--Gary

> ..
> 
>> 	Thanks for taking the time to write some feedback, hope the above was of some help.
>> 
>> 	Regards,
>> 	--Gary
>> 
> 
> Alan
> 
> 
> Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 20:26:42 -0300
> Subject: Re: 11.2.0 release notes ready for review
> From: gonzalo at laptop.org
> To: alanjas at hotmail.com
> CC: dsd at laptop.org; devel at lists.laptop.org; support-gang at laptop.org
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 8:04 PM, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn <alanjas at hotmail.com>wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm down the new version ...
> 
> When you leave an activity, a window appears that asks the name of the journal entry..
> 
> Is like this? (capture01.png)
> 
> Why is not this? (capture02.png)
> 
> 
> God question.
> What is your idea about the X icon?
> Do not close the activity? 
> There are times when I accidentally close one activity and think about this.
> Close the activity without saving?
> 
>  
> Some activities don't save any relevant information in the journal...
> 
> All the time, I used an activity, exit of it, click on the 'tick' button to
> save the entry in the journal and need to delete it...
> 
> 
> If one activity does not save relevant information and save to the Journal,
> is a bug in the activity. Can you point to the failing activities?
> 
> Is important remember the window is opened only when you start a new instance
> of the activity and by default you restart the last instance.
> 
> Gonzalo
>  
> Give to the users the freedom to save or not the entry, as in any system...
> 
> I think in this... It's possible? A very small change...
> 
> Alan
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:32:50 +0100
> > Subject: 11.2.0 release notes ready for review
> > From: dsd at laptop.org
> > To: devel at lists.laptop.org
> 
> > 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > The 11.2.0 release notes are now ready for review by the OLPC team and
> > by any other interested contributors:
> > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/11.2.0
> > 
> > Feedback needed quickly, as the release is imminent.
> > 
> > cheers
> > Daniel
> > _______________________________________________
> > Devel mailing list
> > Devel at lists.laptop.org
> > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
> 
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