[sugar] Frame/Activity Management Memory economics

[Eben Eliason]

It's unfortunate that we've lost that aspect of the design intent.
However, also realize that we've never actually achieved an
implementation that accurately represented memory usage anyway.  No
builds shipped with it, and all attempts to do this were so inaccurate
as to be misleading.

Perhaps we'll take another stab it such an idea in the future.

- Eben

On Sat, Apr 5, 2008 at 7:06 PM, Frederick Grose <fgrose at gmail.com> wrote:
> From
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Talk:Designs/Activity_Management#Memory_economics:
>
> Memory economics
>
> The memory ring was a very effective instructor for memory economics not
> present in the new design proposal. Perhaps the Frame segment to be occupied
> by running activities could be used for this purpose by greying the Frame
> background for each activity with the proportion of memory usage consumed by
> the overlaid icon. Minimal segment dividers may also help complete the
> picture. --FGrose 15:02, 5 April 2008 (EDT)
>
> The intent is described in the HIG, Key design principles, Performance:
>  ...
>  Since there is no swap space on the laptop, only a limited number of
> activities can run concurrently; the Sugar UI exposes these details directly
> to the children. The Home screen features an activity ring that contains
> icons representing each instance of an open activity. The size of the ring
> segment that a given activity occupies represents its overall memory usage;
> when the ring fills up, no additional activities may be launched until some
> resources have been freed. ...
>
> and also from the Zoom metaphor, Home:
> ... The activity ring surrounds the character, indicating all of the
> currently open activities. Furthermore, the section of the ring that a given
> activity occupies directly represents the amount of memory that the
> particular activity requires to run, providing immediate visual feedback
> about memory constraints and exposing a means for resource management that
> doesn't require knowledge of the underlying architecture. ...
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