[Etoys] Feature future Re: The New Etoys image

[Bert Freudenberg]

On Feb 19, 2008, at 12:27 , Karl wrote:

> Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>> On Feb 19, 2008, at 5:12 , Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>> Also, could you comment how does 2.3 and 3.0 relate to the non-  
>>>>> OLPC version
>>>>>
>>>> announced in earlier post "A new experimental version of OLPC   
>>>> image for
>>>> non-XO environments".
>>>>
>>>   The new non-OLPC version (Squeakland-Etoys) will based on Etoys  
>>> 3.0,
>>> but besides the version number, Etoys 3.0 will accumulate  
>>> incremental
>>> changes from Etoys 2.3, so, there aren't too big differences.
>>>
>>
>>
>> 3.0 really is only an incremental step over 2.3, it could as well   
>> have been named 2.4. The reason to go with 3.0 was simply because  
>> we  wanted a new sources file (EtoysV3.sources). We do not expect  
>> to  introduce major incompatibilities or even features in this  
>> line of  development. It has to go stable now. Contributions from  
>> the  community are welcome, but the core team will not add  
>> features. There  certainly will be improvements, one biggie is  
>> better international  text rendering, another restoration of media  
>> playback, but from a  user's point of view Etoys can be considered  
>> pretty much feature- complete.
> I know feature creep is easy but here are a few items I have  
> thought would be great:
>
> -Some sort of  scripting access to Journal files so one can build  
> media players (slideshows, music player etc) without internalizing  
> the files.

That would be cool. Can you imagine how it should look like? We have  
not had that functionality in Etoys before (like, making a slideshow  
from a directory of files).

> -Ogg Theora video seems to be the format of the Recording Activity  
> so we should support that.

We hope to have a gstreamer plugin, which also would support Theora.

> -Diego's Image Processing (http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/2411) and  
> since there is no photo enhancement / adjusting activity I know of  
> it is quite useful.

Did you test this on the XO? Might make a nice activity.

> -Export of pictures to Journal

You can copy to the clipboard and add it to the journal from there.

> -Enhance the sound and music tools in the image so they look and  
> feel and behave better.

Who could work on that? But it would be great, yes.

> -Skeleton (http://languagegame.org:8888/ggame/11) and further  
> enhance the spread sheet and animation

That would be cool as a project, as well as ODECo.

> Faster project loading could make diverse activities possible by  
> quick loading of features.

That's stuff I wouldn't count as "new feature". And Luke seems to be  
onto something there ...

> Did I forget anything ? :-)

Certainly, and me too ;)

- Bert -