[sugar] Announce: Pippy activity.

[Chris Ball]

Hi,

I wrote an activity called Pippy, and it's present in build553.
It's a learn-to-program-Python activity that gives you an input pane
(gtksourceview), an output pane (python), a run button and not much
else.  It's inspired by the simple but powerful interpreters that
taught many of us to program on machines such as the C64 and Spectrum.

There's a screenshot here¹.  The sidebar on the left contains example
scripts, and I'd love help with writing more of them.  You can see the
current scripts on Pippy's wiki page² -- please feel free to add new
scripts there!  I'm interested in any examples of fun and basic uses
of python, such as simple sound, animation, image or game generation,
as well as examples of standard Python use.

The biggest items on the TODO list are:
   * journal integration
   * a way to turn a Pippy program into a standalone activity
     that opens a Python shell full-screen and runs the program
     in it, so that kids can share their code easily
   * a way to specify an icon for the generated activities --
     perhaps it's time to work on an icon editor activity?

Does anyone have any other ideas?

By the way, Pippy isn't intended to replace Develop.  While Develop is
a full IDE, Pippy intends to be for simple input/output-based programs,
usually with only one source file.

Thanks!

- Chris.

Footnotes:
  ¹:  http://dev.laptop.org/~cjb/pippy.png
  ²:  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pippy
-- 
Chris Ball   <cjb at laptop.org>