[Etoys] Another Etoys on XO testemonial

[Bert Freudenberg]

Well, I don't believe in preferences ;) There should be an optimal size.

Besides, we have no simple way to persist preferences yet. See

	https://dev.laptop.org/ticket/8831

Also, until someone comes up with funding we're in bug fixing /  
maintenance mode, so this is unlikely to be worked on by the core team  
soonish. Patches welcome, of course :)

- Bert -

On 20.11.2008, at 14:27, Greg Smith wrote:

> Hi Bert,
>
> The cursor control is much improved in releases after build 656  
> (e.g. in release 8.2 = build 767). So getting people upgraded off  
> 656 is a quick win in terms of reducing cursor jumpiness.
>
> That said, there is new hardware coming and we believe it will  
> reduce the occurrence of this issue even more.
>
> In terms of when the new touchpad will be available, I don't know  
> the exact date. I believe its a matter of some weeks from now but I  
> don't have the final word.
>
> BTW, what I'm suggesting on the cursor size is to allow the user to  
> pick it. In my primitive view, everything in Etoys (or is it  
> Squeak?) can be changed via tweaking variables (objects?). Make the  
> cursor size and maybe a variable which is easily accessible and  
> documented and you can pass the buck to the user :-)
>
> Thanks,
>
> Greg S
>
> Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>> On 20.11.2008, at 13:50, Greg Smith wrote:
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> FYI here is another link I saw recently about people using eToys  
>>> with
>>> the XO. Interestingly, they used the tutorials on your web site to  
>>> great
>>> effect.
>>>
>>> http://blog.laptopmag.com/olpc-mali-collaboration-emerges-as-the-program-winds-down
>> Nice :)
>>> I see one feature requests in there about allowing people to  
>>> change the
>>> size of the cursor. Since everything can be modified on the fly, I
>>> imagine that is possible already. If so you may want to document it
>>> somewhere and if not you may want to add it.
>> Well, there actually is a preference indeed to enable the big  
>> cursor, and it is of course enabled on the XO for its 200 dpi  
>> screen (the regular 16 pixels-tall cursor is *tiny*). We already  
>> made the cursor quite a bit smaller and pointier than Eben's Sugar  
>> default cursor. But maybe it's still too large ...
>> Takashi, what do you think?
>>> I'm not sure what version of the XO they had in Mali but I would  
>>> guess
>>> that its an old one with cursor control problems which have been
>>> minimized in later releases.
>> Well, the touchpad seems to be the single biggest annoyance of the  
>> current hardware. I noticed that the Waveplace pilots in the  
>> Carribean actually provided USB mice to children. Any idea when the  
>> new touchpad goes into production?
>> - Bert -