[sugar] Implicit saving

[Bert Freudenberg]

On Aug 31, 2007, at 8:00 , Eben Eliason wrote:

>> The implicit saving on activity close gets in the way of how etoys
>> traditionally worked. If I create, say, a simulation, I will arrange
>> everything and then save that project, so when I later open it for
>> demonstration, it is in a state ready to be started. But when I then
>> run the simulation and quit, it will not be in the ready-to-run state
>> anymore.
>>
>> Any idea how that problem should be tackled in Sugar?
>
> Hmmm, that's a little tricky.  The implicit saving is designed to
> track versions naturally and to prevent data loss, but it does seem to
> get in the way in this case. I don't know the APIs myself, but I
> assume the activity gets prompted to save upon close and then handles
> the save itself.  It seems you could keep track of "read" vs "write"
> actions, where pressing "run" or "reset" buttons (basically a revert
> button) wouldn't count as "write" modifications.  You would only need
> to save upon close if code or graphics were actually changed during
> the session.

Well, in Etoys there really is no distinction between "authoring" and  
"running". Like, we can't really distinguish between a kid moving an  
object intentionally to a new "start state" or moving it while  
playing a game.

> In any case, you might actually think of this to your advantage.
> Since the files are (will be) properly versioned, this implicit save
> hasn't actually erased your default simulation setup, which will still
> live in the Journal as an entry from yesterday when you set it all up.
>  Instead, you now have that "starting state" entry and one or more
> "experiment" entries which represent the results of running that
> simulation.  With randomness this could actually create a series of
> interesting results that would be useful for learning.

Honestly, I don't think we should treat every design bug as a feature.

But anyway, since in trial-3 there is no versioning, what's the short- 
term solution? Do we have the option to store a new version without  
clobbering an older one?

- Bert -