[Etoys] DrGeoII for OLPC

[Bert Freudenberg]

On Oct 7, 2007, at 16:55 , Hilaire Fernandes wrote:

> I am please to announce a ready to use version of DrGeoII for  
> Squeak OLPC.
> Thanks to the help of Spanish Squeaker José Rodríguez, we have build a
> SAR archive containing localization in English, French & Spanish.
>
> ftp://ftp.ofset.org/squeak/drgeo/
>
> To install DrGeoII, you just need to download the DrGeoII.sar file
> from the previous location and drag and drop it in the image, then
> chose "install drgeoII.sar" from the popup menu.

Dragging from the Sugar frame where the download is placed into Etoys  
works. Installing the SAR takes about 2.5 minutes on a B4 machine. We  
need to work out some mechanism for faster code loading - perhaps  
based on image segments?

Once loaded it is quite fast. Only the red points are a bit too small  
on the XO's 200 dpi screen.

What did not work is choosing "open" of the SAR in the Sugar  
clipboard or Journal, which actually launches Etoys and gives it the  
file, but apparently as a plain zip file so the "install as SAR" menu  
item was not shown.

> If unsure, review the videos coming along the DrGeoII.sar file.

Great! They work fine on my Mac (with VLC), but unfortunately they do  
not play on the XO - I filed a bug:

	https://dev.laptop.org/ticket/4079

> For recall, DrGeoII is an interactive geometry framework, Morphic
> based and Smalltalk programmed, which can be embedded and mixed with
> any existing Morph user interface element of the Squeak OLPC
> environment.
>
> As the confusion between interactive geometry and vector drawing is
> very common, I have produced a few video recording exposing the
> installation and the use of the framework. Moreover the videos show
> how the Morph UI gives freedom to mix in a constructive manner various
> unrelated Morph components (user interface construction, user
> interface scripting between different unrelated components).

This is very nice.

> Let's revitalize the Squeak/Smalltalk/Morph jewels for the development
> of educative application...

Definitely!

One problem remaining to be solved is how to make those applications  
work nicely under Sugar. For example, when I quit Squeak with a DrGeo  
construction open, it is saved to the Journal as a project. However,  
loading that project does not work because the code additions were  
not saved in the project.  Stef's BotsInc has the same problem. I  
hope we can figure something out.

- Bert -