[OLPC library] questions about PDFs

[Walter Bender]

> The Read activity.info file however, says that it should not appear in
> the home view. I wounder why it appears in spite of that.

And it shouldn't in its current form, since it has no way of opening a
document on its own--it is designed to be launched from the Journal.
If it were to be able to scan the Journal, then there would be every
reason to include it on the Home View.

I think that there is somewhat of a chicken and egg problem here. We
had expected the Journal to be a bit further along in its development
by now, but have lacked the horses to make the necessary improvements.
Until it is as easy to retrieve an object out of the Journal as launch
an activity on the Home View, it would make sense to include an
Activity to open documents.

Ideally you can directly access the Journal for resume from the Home View:

1. View list of (recently opened ebooks)
2. Open the selection in Read

Until then, it would seem that we could use the following:

1. Click on a Read-launcher Activity
2. Select from a list of ebooks in the Journal
3. Open the selection in Read

This replaces the current option:

1. Open Journal
2. Sort based on Read
3. Select from a list
4. Open the selection in Read

or:

1. Open Browse
2. Search/select an ebook
3. Open Journal
4. Open the selection in Read

Reduction to three steps (and no storing of extra copies of the PDF in
the Journal) seems like a worthwhile investment.

-walter

On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 6:43 AM, Sayamindu Dasgupta <sayamindu at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 3:23 AM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I wonder if it wouldn't make sense to have Read, when launched from
>> the Home View, opens the Journal to search for PDFs, etc.? This would
>> perhaps save a step in some cases and also prevent some instances of
>> the profusion of copies of PDFs.
>>
>
> It sounds like a good idea - in fact, I had suggested this as a
> feature that could be invoked via a game key in Ebook mode. I'll look
> into this as soon as some of the higher priority items are dealt with.
> The Read activity.info file however, says that it should not appear in
> the home view. I wounder why it appears in spite of that.
> Thanks,
> Sayamindu
>
>
>
>
> --
> Sayamindu Dasgupta
> [http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]
>



-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org