[Etoys] Etoys Based Activity - FreeCell Sugar interactions

[Milan Zimmermann]

Hi Bert,

I finally did some investigation into Squeak interaction with DBus and
Datastore. I went through the classes that implement the DBus and Datastore
interaction. This is some great stuff! Among others, if I understand this 
correctly, your Squeak DBus client framework could, for example, allow to use 
Squeak to write a KDE or gnome panel applet? But that is an aside.

As Step 1, my goal was to figure out how to save a project in Journal from a 
set of commands in Workspace. Going to the debugger, I found that if I open a 
project in Etoys, and in a workspace, and do

       Project current storeOnServerWithNoInteractionThenQuit.

the project is saved in Journal, and on restart, Etoys must have read
the Journal saved project because it shows any changes I have made in
the project. It seems that the core method called from
storeOnServerWithNoInteractionThenQuit that interacts with Datastore is

       SugarDatastoreDirectory>> #writeProject: self
                                       inFileNamed: fileName
                                       fromDirectory: localDirectory

So I tried to do the the same (Project current 
storeOnServerWithNoInteractionThenQuit.) from a workspace in the FreeCell 
activity. When performed,  it does write to the Journal, but upon restart, I 
get an exception that appears a DBus object cannot be found  -
picture attached.


Could the difference be it because Freecell, on startup, does not
setup some DBus interaction?

Well in any case, I am looking for some help trying to figure this out. I was 
thinking about these steps I'd like to achieve:

	1) Command in Workspace that saves the FreeCell project on Journal. I seem to 
be able to do that, but on fairly high level ( Project current 
storeOnServerWithNoInteractionThenQuit.). Eventually I'd like to get it done 
with more but lower level commands.

	2) Sure and understood way to open the saved Journal Project in FreeCell. (So 
far within Etoys it seems to work, but I have little understanding of it. In 
FreeCell it does not)

	3) A command or set of commands in workspace, which wil allow to Rename the 
FreeCell project (and save on Journal under the new name)

	4) Ability to start using the black Launcher ribbon on top, with the standard 
Etoys project name a project stop widget that would call the commands from 1 
and 2. .

	5) More interaction such as copy/paste on Journal

Do these goals and order make sense?

I will try to maintain a blog about what I am playing with. 

http://mzimmerm.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-install-and-run-sugar-
activity.html

I am unfortunately frustratingly slow and sometimes fail to respond for a long 
time, combination of lack of time and experience in this area 
(Squeak/DBus/Sugar), but will keep going... Appreciate any help.

Milan
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