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<erikos> hello everybody - sugar meeting time - who is around?
<xobot> erikos: by the way, morgs told me to tell you 'pong' 6 hours, 19 minutes and 43 seconds ago (on Tue Mar 11 12:41:26 2008)
<ChristophD> I'm here
<erikos> hi ChristophD 
* benzea too
<erikos> benzea: better kernel support this time ? :)
<ChristophD> erikos, heya :)
<garycmartin-ff33> I'm here to.
<benzea> heh, yup, everything working again :-)
<erikos> benzea: great!
* homunq here
<erikos> ok let's see what we have on the map: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar_dev_meeting#Topics
<erikos> frame redesign is tomeu's work but he seems not to be around at the moment - so i say we skip this
<ChristophD> makes sense
<erikos> 2. multilingual dictionary activity - cjb around
<erikos> (i put this on the list - since cjb might want to share the work and maybe someone is interested)
<erikos> - just guessing
<erikos> cjb cansay something when he is around...skip as well :)
<erikos> 3. new sugar packages (marco's domain)
<homunq> nobody here :(
<erikos> gah guess we skip this as well :/
<erikos> maybe i should have again announced it on the ml?
<erikos> what do people think make an announcement each week again?
<erikos> the fact that you guys are here is telling me that you can remember the date :)
<benzea> it is probably a good idea to do that
* benzea nearly forgot :-)
<garycmartin-ff33> Thought it was quite clear it was weekly, perhaps some folksneed reminding (more likely 'events' have overtaken them)
<ChristophD> I have to admit without the reminder on my mobile phone I would have also forgotten...
<ChristophD> but maybe it makes sense to remind people each monday that the meeting happens on tuesday
<erikos> ok.. email the same day in the morning would work?
* homunq only remembered because I wanted to talk to marco and tomeu
<benzea> well, maybe a good thing about sending a reminder is also that more people read the topics and can join if it sounds interesting
<erikos> good point
* ChristophD agrees
<erikos> ok i suggest:
<erikos> - people can put topics on the wiki till tuesday morning
<erikos> - i than will send a message including these topics to the ml
<erikos> does this sound good?
<ChristophD> sounds good to me
<garycmartin-ff33> sure
<benzea> sounds good
* homunq agrees
<erikos> good i will note it then in the minutes of today
<erikos> so i guess we can make it short today - 
<garycmartin-ff33> :-)
<erikos> the last item i had on my list is the scp - development is going on here http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=users/erikos/sugar;a=shortlog;h=controlpanel
<erikos> this is a branch you can check out
<ChristophD> scp looks good, much better than what I started working on ;)
<erikos> ChristophD: try to make it as dynamic as possible
<cjb> 'lo all.
<ChristophD> btw, I do have two questions that came up a lot during CeBIT last week: (1) why is it only possible to start an activity by clicking the icon and clickin the text does nothing (a lot of people had issues with that) and (2) why "click" is disabled on the touch-pad
<ChristophD> cjb, hi
<erikos> cjb: hello :)
<garycmartin-ff33> hi cjb
<cjb> ChristophD: do you mean "tap to click" on the touchpad?
<cjb> ChristophD: it's not "disabled" -- the hardware doesn't support it.
<homunq> ChristophD: I know that my daughter has a much easier time using XO than a normal laptop because of the click thing.
<ChristophD> cjb, exactly
<ChristophD> cjb, the hardware does... just run xubuntu on the xo and give it a shot ;)
<erikos> 1) tomeu is working on accelerators and part of this is to fix this as well
<cjb> ChristophD: oh, wow, really?
<cjb> ChristophD: that breaks my understanding of the hardware, then :) cool.
<ChristophD> cjb, I'm 99% positive about it ;)
<cjb> I'll check it out.  Still, not clear we want to turn it on.
<ChristophD> homunq, what do you mean? are you talking about accidental clicks?
<homunq> yes
<cjb> I agree with homunq; when someone hasn't used *any* computer before, the trackpad is a huge deal is learn.
<erikos> it is true - from observing people they are always trying to click on it - since they are used to
<ChristophD> cjb, I'm not saying "turn it on", just asking about the motivation to turn it off?
<garycmartin-ff33> accidental clicks, yea a real pain, it's probably the first thing I disable when using a laptop
<cjb> ChristophD: we didn't turn it off on purpose.  we've never had it working in our build.
<erikos> garycmartin-ff33: have it disabled in my laptop as well :)
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<cjb> xubuntu is probably using a different X driver, I guess
<cjb> _bernie: hey, do you know about this?
<eben> Yeah, I'd consider myself a pretty avid computer user, and I never got used to tap-to-click either.  Drives me nuts.  But assuming the hardware supports it (news to me, as well), I don't see why we couldn't make it possible to turn on in the control panel.
<erikos> hey eben 
<ChristophD> eben, yeah, having it as an option would make sense IMHO
<eben> erikos: howdy.
<ChristophD> so about (1) why isnt the pop-up text on the buttons clickable?
<homunq> eben: so you are not trying to act as a conservative gatekeeper for control panel options?
<erikos> ChristophD: this one is not intentional - tomeu fixed it as far as i can remember bt notina build
<ChristophD> erikos, ahh, thanks, good to know
<eben> homunq: Well, only within reason.  I don't want it to become a jumbled mess of options, but there's certainly room for all the basics.
<ChristophD> btw, wrt to scp, will this become a core-activity? because I'm thinking that options such as colour-changing will also be of great interest to the children
<eben> homunq: I also expect that the module design erikos is working on might be built in such a way that additional modules could be added, or others replaced, so that hacking up advanced preferences is possible to do....
<cjb> ChristophD: yes
<homunq> just a thought - as options which make it hard to switch XOs arrive, the control panel search (and intelligent, invisible tags) become more important.
<eben> ChristophD: color changing is also slated to be adjustable in the control panel.
<ChristophD> ah, and another suggestion I heard at cebit, could an option be added to replace your color-coded XO in the mesh and friends view with a photo or another custom image?
<ChristophD> cjb, eben, ok, thx
<erikos> ChristophD: it is not an activity - it is a standalone window - a modal (to the view) alert
<ChristophD> sorry, I know I should have added these topics to the agenda but as mentioned I had totally forgotten about the meeting
<garycmartin-ff33> Can I ask what the reasoning was between making the control panel not an activity? Was there some technical reason?
<erikos> ChristophD: this leaves room for improving :)
<cjb> garycmartin-ff33: perhaps bitfrost
<erikos> garycmartin-ff33: i am not sure it fits in the model of an activity
<cjb> but it sounds fine as an activity to me
<eben> garycmartin-ff33: Well, the philosophical reason is because activities are designed to be (in general) collaborative, logged in the journal, etc.  The control panel, on the other hand, is a configuration screen for the system as a whole.
<eben> garycmartin-ff33: And, due to security alone, I believe, needs to be owned by the shell.
<garycmartin-ff33> eben, thanks
<ChristophD> eben, any plans to have an IRL meeting at 1CC about sugar re-design?
<erikos> eben: one interesting point about making it an activity is that you could log the activity - 'making system changes'
<cjb> eben: well, we'd have to put in a bitfrost exception for it, just like terminal/log viewer/etc.
<eben> erikos: Ah, but you can do that anyway....the new design for the Journal supports actions that aren't "activities"
<eben> "you made a friend today", "you changed your colors today", etc.
<erikos> eben: cool, yeah that sounds interesting
<homunq> IRL - should have a virtual component/mirror/minutes
* ChristophD agrees with homunq 
<erikos> IRL ?
<homunq> in real life
<eben> yeah, I'm lost too...
<eben> ohhhh
<homunq> xobot: IRL
<xobot> homunq: I'm not following you...
<homunq> xobot: IRL is in real life
<xobot> homunq: gotcha
<ChristophD> sorry guys for the abbreviation, my bad
<eben> ChristophD: We've had many in-person meetings about the new designs.
<erikos> would make sense to make a meeting in europe
<erikos> most of the devs are here :)
<ChristophD> erikos, good point
<ChristophD> something like a sugar-weekend-jam
<erikos> ChristophD: yup that is the idea for a while now...
<ChristophD> erikos, where you are you all located?
<erikos> i am in berlin
<erikos> tomeu in prague
<erikos> marco in italy - i thin knear milano
<homunq> OK, do we want to go back to "dictionary" now that cjb is here?
<benzea> I am in Karlsruhe
<erikos> so do we have any other important items on the map?
<erikos> homunq: right
<erikos> cjb: do you want to talk about your new ad fancy activity?
<cjb> hm, not sure I have anything to say on it :)
<cjb> tomeu suggested adding merge support to it
<garycmartin-ff33> all those words and nothing to say :-)
<erikos> :)
<homunq> this is another case where "merge" functionality becomes important
<cjb> and I wonder if merging text data can be done as a datastore-ish service, rather than just in my activity
<cjb> but I'm not sure that it can
<homunq> if the datastore is in charge of version control, then it should have merge hooks & UI.
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<homunq> I doubt that a generalized merge would be too useful,
<cjb> but merging is often domain-specific.
<homunq> though having library functions available is of course good
<cjb> yeah.  so, since there's nothing obvious here, let's forget about it and move on.
<homunq> but having hooks for apps to hang on to
<cjb> I'd love to talk about the faster branch stuff with tomeu.  Does anyone know if he's working on the new shell model full-time?
<homunq> and a generalized UI, some networking support
<cjb> 'cause I think getting our load time down is really really important.
<homunq> is not a bad idea.
<erikos> cjb: yup that is what is keeping him busy
<cjb> homunq: I think you're doing that overdesigning thing again :)
<cjb> erikos: ok.  is there an end in sight for it, do you think?
<erikos> cjb: sure there is :) well it comes now to the details which always take longer...
<cjb> I guess I feel like the performance work is more important, but I guess it's natural that I'd think that ;-)
<erikos> cjb: i guess both is important - he needs maybe some helping hands on both
<cjb> 'kay.
<erikos> cjb: when the scpis out of my way i will join him
<homunq> "hooks" = "one line in activity.info saying I can merge, and a common call signature for 2-way, 3-way merges"
<erikos> s/scips/scp is
<erikos> ok finished the dictionary
<cjb> homunq: I think it's quite far in the future.  No harm in letting an activity or two come up with their own implementation that we can use for ideas.
<homunq> OK
<erikos> any other points someone wants to discuss ? otherwise we close the meeting
<garycmartin-ff33> Quick question...
<erikos> sure
<garycmartin-ff33> Activities and available .xo bundles...
<garycmartin-ff33> Lots of current activities don't have .xo for download on the Wiki, and with the build core changes there's a bunch of then that are now hard to test/use
<garycmartin-ff33> What's the best way of getting the message out the the owners?
<garycmartin-ff33> (oficially)
<erikos> this is the page people use to download or? http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities
<garycmartin-ff33> yea
<erikos> ok the links are not really up to date
<erikos> garycmartin-ff33: is your question how this page is updated?
<erikos> who should take care of this?
<garycmartin-ff33> It seems odd to me that when you test, build and update the git reps, that the .xo isn't part of the upload. That could solve a lot.
<erikos> garycmartin-ff33: i remember that we had this functionality at one point
<homunq> garycmartin-ff33: I know that marco is working on bundlebuilder.
<garycmartin-ff33> My question is, now that most Activities have been officially pulled, how do we get the activity dev's the gwt with the game.
<cjb> ah, another meeting starting
<cjb> bye all
<erikos> cjb: thanks for joining
<garycmartin-ff33> s/gwt/get
<homunq> I know that it is in some way overdesign
<cjb> garycmartin-ff33: revision control doesn't typically host binary files
<homunq> to put functions in bundlebuilder that are really not intended for use on the XO
<homunq> but it already has several.
<homunq> Uploading to the wiki would not be out-of-place in that module as it stands.
<erikos> garycmartin-ff33:  'setup.py release' pushed the bundle at one point to a repository you could then browse
<homunq> exactly
<homunq> what do others think of cleaning up and fixing this functionality?
<garycmartin-ff33> OK, so we're just in a really bad place just now. I understand. Takes time to get it right when the goal posts randomly move :)
<erikos> yeah - i think the decision is not even in stone yet
<homunq> Either it should be in bundlebuilder, or not. To have it there but half-broken is wrong.
<erikos> or maybe it is - but we have not kept up with the new request
<garycmartin-ff33> It only take a few min to upload your activity .xo, you have to build one to test changes, at least I hope folks do!
<garycmartin-ff33> It seems more a matter of dev procedure, seem like lost got slack as they were in the core builds.
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<erikos> well people tend to be lazy :)
<benzea> something small about the redesign ...
<garycmartin-ff33> All the effort of developing, and then no time spent on dist, oh well...
<erikos> garycmartin-ff33: maybe for the moment - until we know for sure what is going on - every dev is encouraged to push his latest bundle and fix the links
<benzea> I noticed that you are going to reorder the activities when the activities are switched
<benzea> so I was wondering if this gives enough feedback if one has eg. two browse instances running
<garycmartin-ff33> erikos, yes maybe just something semi formal on the ml.
<erikos> garycmartin-ff33: yeah, how do we proceed from here?
<erikos> benzea: is this in a specific slide?
<benzea> I don't think it is shown in the slide
<erikos> benzea: where i can see what you mean? (eben)
<eben> erikos: benzea: what do you want to see?
<benzea> eben: I think you discussed with tomeu that the activities in the frame should be ordered so that the one that was last active is first
<eben> benzea: right
<benzea> which then matches tabing or something
<benzea> I am wondering if the location of the button may be an important information if you have multiple instances of an activity running
<eben> benzea: Yeah, the ordering of the activities would match the alt-tab stack
<eben> benzea: Ah....well, you can argue that both ways, though.
<eben> Maybe the "browse instance furthest to the left" is the one I care most about, since I visit it frequently...
<eben> benzea: admittedly, we're going to have some form of this problem regardless, since the text comes on rollover.
<eben> benzea: I think it's yet to be seen if it makes more sense to reorder them or not, but we thought it was worth trying.
<benzea> sure, that is fine. just thought I would raise my concern :-)
<erikos> benzea: ok i understood now what you mean :)
<garycmartin-ff33> eben, with the new alt-tab, will you be able to tab through to the activity you want before the switch happens - will make the UI more responsive.
<eben> garycmartin-ff33: Yeah, that's definitely a benefit we're after.
<garycmartin-ff33> fab
<benzea> maybe one could show the frame and the show the primary toolbar of the activity that would get the focus
<eben> benzea: yeah, that might work.
<benzea> s/toolbar/palette/
<erikos> yup that sounds like a good iddea
<benzea> though the shell needs to handle tabbing then instead of metacity
<erikos> garycmartin-ff33: so you want to write an email with the concern?
<garycmartin-ff33> I didn't think I was a voice of authority :-)
<garycmartin-ff33> Guess it's cat managment and all that...
<erikos> garycmartin-ff33: everyone is somehow i think :)
<eben> benzea: Well, we've always needed graphical feedback for switching....it's a matter of when.
<eben> benzea: the new design goes hand in hand with a nice switcher, and should make it easier and faster to do...
<erikos> garycmartin-ff33: i guess replying to the thread on devel and raising the concern would be already good.
<erikos> garycmartin-ff33: then an auth voice will speak up i guess
<garycmartin-ff33> So how official is the pulling of all but some of the activities? I get nothing but public chit chat, the track ticket is the only official thing that's close to a 'your all dust' message.
<erikos> garycmartin-ff33: i think there is only the trac item and a thread on devel
<erikos> garycmartin-ff33: let me see if i find the mail and i will reply then
<garycmartin-ff33> erikos, I did that already, and started a bit of that flame war I think... No one spoke up to say 'activity developers should all consider updating their .xo files as they're not going to ship any more'
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<erikos> garycmartin-ff33: oh i see - sorry did not read that part
<erikos> garycmartin-ff33: oh you did the moon activity?
<garycmartin-ff33> yea, that's my first so far, goal of getting up to speed with sugar et al.
<erikos> cool that made me stay up late on the lunar eclipse :)
<garycmartin-ff33> :-)
<erikos> actually it would be cool to have a short explanation what the lunar eclipse is in the activity itself or a link, or...
<erikos> or maybe the latest version has this already and i just did not find the download :)
<garycmartin-ff33> I was worried about translation costs, keeping text to a minimum. Though I could add an illustration instead.
<erikos> oh translation right - illustration would be terrific
<garycmartin-ff33> The latest version has lon/lat view and north/south hemisphere viewing locations, helps with the terminology a little more than before.
<erikos> cool will have a look
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<garycmartin-ff33> I might email a few of the activity developers directly and see if I get any traction getting wiki .xo bundles.
<erikos> garycmartin-ff33: i will raise the issue in the minutes as well - and we can put it on next week item as well
<garycmartin-ff33> I've done some svg icons for Reinier and his Calculate activity, so I might just start there.
<garycmartin-ff33> erikos: cool
<erikos> garycmartin-ff33: you might want to just post to sugar ml as well - so we are in the loop 
<homunq> garycmartin-ff33: Calculate has icons for functions now? very cool
<garycmartin-ff33> homunq, yes in the latest git rep, I liked the mockup eben did so I thought it was time to 'make it so' Hope to tweak the UI also (contrast & spacing), not there yet :)
<homunq> garycmartin-ff33: never saw the mockup but intended to make some "one day" myself.
<garycmartin-ff33> The mockup is on the Calculate wiki page, there's two screen shots there currently, one the original mockup from eben and one of the actual activity
<garycmartin-ff33> OK, catch you later guys!
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<erikos> btw: thanks everyone for joining in
<garycmartin-ff33> erikos, thanks for hosting
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