OLPC eToys!

   Hello,

   As you may know, the "eToys team" at Viewpoints Research is working
on a version of Squeak tailored to suit the OLPC.  (Please take a look
at http://wiki.laptop.org/ and their wiki site from there.)

   Many of us have gathered together at the OLPC office in Cambridge,
MA, for two weeks of intensive, quality hacking time.  The plan is to
finalize the image by the middle of October.

   We are making many UI changes and optimizations suitable for the
relatively modest resource on the laptop.  The effort includes
performance tweaks, simplification of menus, reduction and
reorganization of objects in the parts bins, and tweaks to both
Viewers and Scriptors, including font, color, and size choices.

   At the same time, we are trying to minimize the changes so that we
don't introduce new bugs, and in order to remain consistent with
existing documentation.

   If you are interested in what is going on, please grab the images
at:

   http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/OLPCPlugin.zip        (initial version without updates)
   http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/OLPCPlugin-960.zip    (updated on Sep. 18th)
   http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/OLPCPlugin-latest.zip (identical to the latest in this folder)

or for developers:

   http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/OLPCSqueak.zip        (initial version without updates)
   http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/OLPCSqueak-960.zip    (updated on Sep. 18th)
   http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/OLPCSqueak-latest.zip (identical to the latest in this folder)

Obviously, there are a lot of changes going into this version, so
please update the image often (I mean, really often.)

   Any comments, suggestions, and bug reports are welcome.  We are
setting up a mailing list for discussion on OLPC eToys.  Also, there
is a wiki page at:

   http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Etoys

Feel free to edit it for discussion on this.

   Thank you!

-- Yoshiki
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  Serge,

> Nice work, Yoshiki ! This is based on Squeak 3.8 ou 3.9 ?
> Maybe some of your optimisations, enhancements could be port to the
> Squeak core version ?

  This is based on Squeakland 05, or the one also known as Squeakland
3.8-05.  (Which is based on Squeak 3.8-6665).

  Most of the optimizations we are doing may not be really relevant on
more than decent computers, and many UI design decisions are based on
the particular screen, but sure, some stuff makes sense to be
incorporated.

  One thing, though, that we haven't checked well the compatibility of
existing projects.  There would be good reasons not to merge some
other changes.  (Again, we haven't checked thoroughly, yet)

-- Yoshiki
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Hey Yoshiki!

Nice to see the advances of the Squeak people on the olpc/2b1 platform.
I have downloaded the OLPCPlugin.image.zip
<http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/OLPCPlugin.image.zip>  and it works like a
charm including Spanish support. Will be really a charm to work on olpc
in the creation of multimedia educative Spanish content using Squeak.

Thanks a lot,

Offray

Yoshiki Ohshima escribió:


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Hi Yoshiki, what are you doing with the midi support? are you using a
plugin to reproduce midi or using the Squeak synthesis?
If you've developed a midi plugin it would be also very useful for
Scratch that lacks midi reproduction in linux..

2006/9/18, Yoshiki Ohshima <[hidden email]>: _______________________________________________
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On Sep 19, 2006, at 9:07 PM, José Luis Redrejo wrote:

> Hi Yoshiki, what are you doing with the midi support? are you using a
> plugin to reproduce midi or using the Squeak synthesis?
> If you've developed a midi plugin it would be also very useful for
> Scratch that lacks midi reproduction in linux..

Good question! I also liked to know the exact requirements for midi  
and soft synthesis of sounds for squeak on the 2b1.

As far as I understood midi is not in the focus of the October  
release, but Ian is working on an ALSA plugin which should in theory  
give one hardware based midi. But I don't know much about the details  
here.
Andreas mentioned in a previous mail that csound would be included  
with the 2Be1 and that it would be nice to have an interface for it.

Cesare Marilungo and me got some first beeps from csound triggered by  
squeak via osc.
As soon as time allows (for me it would be middle of November) I  
would love to continue working on this interface with Cesare.

Cheers,

Markus

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  Offray,

> Nice to see the advances of the Squeak people on the olpc/2b1 platform.
> I have downloaded the OLPCPlugin.image.zip
> <http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/OLPCPlugin.image.zip>  and it works like a
> charm including Spanish support. Will be really a charm to work on olpc
> in the creation of multimedia educative Spanish content using Squeak.

  Thank you for testing.  While we haven't done so much testing on the
translation part of system, we sort of tried not to introduce new
(natural language) phrases.  So, the user expecience of non-English
native speakers should be relatively comparable with the Squeakland
eToys.

-- Yoshiki

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  José,

> Hi Yoshiki, what are you doing with the midi support? are you using a
> plugin to reproduce midi or using the Squeak synthesis?
> If you've developed a midi plugin it would be also very useful for
> Scratch that lacks midi reproduction in linux..

  Ian is looking at the VM primitives.  For the October release, it
seems that we are going to use ALSA sound driver and do synthesis in
Squeak.  In the future, some collaboration with other guys sound
synthesis is on the horizon.

-- Yoshiki

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On 2006 September 18 12:49, Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:

> Obviously, there are a lot of changes going into this version, so
> please update the image often (I mean, really often.)
>
>    Any comments, suggestions, and bug reports are welcome.  

Yoshiki,

I used the latest OLPC Image (updated to today) to build a fairly large
project, and then run it in the OLPC pluging. Overall, the OLPC image seems
very good without problems.

The project is quite large (Simulation of Wave moving across Elastic Band: on
a website here: http://squeakers.ca:9091, last project “Wave Simulation”), so
I think I tested large pieces of eToys building it. I did have one crash (log
attached), also the Plugin Image did not auto-update and load my exported
project, maybe that is expected?

Attached is list of things I found and commented on (OO format), and also the
crash log.

Milan



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Also I forgot to report, sounds does not work for me in the OLPC image on
Linux, but I assume that may because I am using the stock 3.9 Linux VM..

Milan

On 2006 September 24 02:26, Milan Zimmermann wrote: _______________________________________________
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  Milan,

  Thank you for reporting.  I'll take a look at them.  The bug is not
known yet.  Updating strategy is still under discussion, but I think
we shouldn't rely on the luxury of auto-update.

  The crash you got was when you load a project from Squeakland image?
We'll investigate it as well.

  Thanks!

-- Yoshiki

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On 2006 September 24 11:28, Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:
>   Milan,
>
>   Thank you for reporting.  I'll take a look at them.  The bug is not
> known yet.  Updating strategy is still under discussion, but I think
> we shouldn't rely on the luxury of auto-update.

ok makes sense.

>
>   The crash you got was when you load a project from Squeakland image?

Yoshiki,

I got the crash at some point when building my project. I started with the
downloaded OLPC-Squeak-960.image, updated it to the latest (Friday evening I
think), and saved. Then I started building my project in it (I have an
equivalent project in an older 3.8-tweak image, but this was rebuilt from
scratch without any import, just pasted some code over a few times). A few
hours into building the project I got the crash when manipulating tiles in a
script. I tried to duplicate it but failed.


Milan

> We'll investigate it as well.
>
>   Thanks!
>
> -- Yoshiki
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  Milan,  (Now [hidden email] is included.)

> Attached is list of things I found and commented on (OO format), and also the
> crash log.

  I started looking at the issues in the file.  Below is my comment:

> B2. Text and Images in Tools Flap seems cut when first started.

  We won't have Tools Flap in eToyFriendly mode with eToys flaps.
Somewhat lower priority.

> B3. Loading Something using SqueakMap Package Loader: Message about
> Squeak MasterServer is running a different version (2.2) ...etc.

  At one point, probably we should make sure that SqueakMap and
Monticello works.  But again, the primary goal is to provide good
eToys experience.  (Thank you for testing!)

> B5. Installing RemoteFrameBuffer into OLPC image (updated) from
> SqueakMap, I received a MNU "SystemDictionary changes" around
> SMDefaultInstaller>>fileIntoChangesetNamed:fromStream

  Ok.  

> B6. Error Not Indexable: Try TranscriptShow: someNumber,someNumber
> bombs- But CANNOT duplicate, Squeak log attached.

  Thank you.  I'll look at it, but it would be nice if we can
reproduce...

> B7. I think the following will be probably unreadable on OLPC Small
> Screen: (Publish Project and Save Project on File.)

  The first patch for this problem is already in the update stream.
But, Takashi will look at it and clean it up.

> B8. (script in text mode.)

  I tried it and seems to be doing the right thing here.  Are you
certain that you did put "^" in the textually coded script?

> B9. I created a project completely in OLPC image with latest
> updates. Saved the project and put it on a website here:
> http://squeakers.ca:9091...

  At this point, we aren't keen to make it possible to load a project
from the OLPC image into the Squeakland image.  It would make sense to
modify the Squeakland image.  (A radical idea is to make OLPC image
with some font modifications *be* the next Squeakland image, but there
are pros and cons.)

> N1. Menu simplification.

  The first cut is in the update stream.  Again, a typical user won't
see the World menu.  Some useful stuff in the World menu were moved to
the red-halo menu of the World.

> N2. Source file.

  It should be SqueakV3.sources.  Basically, we should lobby for the
space on the flash to put it.

> N3. capitalization of names on menus.

  Yes.  Since there are translations for other languages, it would be
wise to provide the English translation from Squeakly language.

  Thank you!

-- Yoshiki
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On 29.09.2006, at 02:05, Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:

>
>
>> N2. Source file.
>
>   It should be SqueakV3.sources.  Basically, we should lobby for the
> space on the flash to put it.
>

Dan did a quite nice compression scheme for the .sources (compression
to 1/4 of the size). This was done for the Weather station flash based
system. Code is on SqueakMap and in the image (3.9, maybe 3.8, too),
but slightly broken. Should not be too hard to fix.

     Marcus
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  Marcus,

  Thank you for reminding me of it.  We don't know how much is the
hard limit given to us (or its existence), but this would be a good
option if we *need* to squeeze our stuff.

-- Yoshiki
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