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

Yoshiki Ohshima a écrit :
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 ?

--                                                         oooo
Dr. Serge Stinckwich                                     OOOOOOOO
Université de Caen>CNRS UMR 6072>GREYC>MAD               OOESUGOO
http://purl.org/net/SergeStinckwich                       oooooo
Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]   \  /
                                                             ##

  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

Yoshiki,
beside the main goal of your image you plan to deploy the image with tests green? If somebody run the Testrunner with all tests he will end up with a, I think, japanese environment. For beginners a little bit strange behavior. Only one little thing.

Cheers,
  Frank

P.S. Sorry for the last unreadable mail.

  Frank,

> beside the main goal of your image you plan to deploy the image with
> tests green? If somebody run the Testrunner with all tests he will
> end up with a, I think, japanese environment. For beginners a little
> bit strange behavior. Only one little thing.

  I haven't thought about it^^; but the answer has to be "no", at
least for the October release.  In general, we should move toward that
direction, though.

  Thank you for pointing it out!

-- Yoshiki

This is very exciting and interesting, Yoshiki!  Thank you for letting the
wider Squeak community "look over your shoulders" as this work progresses.

Are special learning/teaching materials being developed particularly for the
Squeak OLPC effort, or will this be left to local implementors?

All the best,

Gary


----- Original Message -----
From: "Yoshiki Ohshima" <[hidden email]>
To: "'The general-purpose Squeak developers list'"
<[hidden email]>; <[hidden email]>
Sent: Monday, September 18, 2006 12:49 PM
Subject: 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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  Gary,

> This is very exciting and interesting, Yoshiki!  Thank you for letting the
> wider Squeak community "look over your shoulders" as this work progresses.
>
> Are special learning/teaching materials being developed particularly for the
> Squeak OLPC effort, or will this be left to local implementors?

  We are working on a kind of "mentoring system" that can teach kids
how to use eToys.  (We should make it so that a kid can do it without
adults around.)  It may or may not be in good shape for October build,
but definitely one of our main focus.  Takashi, Scott and Ted are
working on various ideas.

  BTW, since yesterday, we published 11 changesets.  More to come...

-- Yoshiki

>    We are making many UI changes and optimizations suitable for the
> relatively modest resource on the laptop.

UI is quite nice!

> 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)

links are:
http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/OLPC-Squeak.zip
http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/OLPC-Squeak-960.zip
http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/OLPC-Squeak-latest.zip

Vaidotas

  Vaidotas,

  Oops.  Thanks!

-- Yoshiki

Cool!

Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:
>   We are working on a kind of "mentoring system" that can teach kids
> how to use eToys.  (We should make it so that a kid can do it without
> adults around.)  

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]>:

Yoshiki,

Thanks for sharing progress and plans with us, eToys and OLPC admirerers and
fans.

For testers, do you have any particular things to look at, perhaps loading
existing eToys projects, making sure they still work, building new projects,
or just generic playing?

Also, is there a VM preference for testing (3.9 on Linux?)

BTW, siplifying some menus sounds good  :)

Thanks Milan

PS: Just as a note, the Squeak links are slightly different from those in the
email (dashes were missing)

http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/OLPC-Squeak-960.zip
http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/OLPC-Squeak-latest.zip
http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/OLPC-Squeak.zip


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

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

  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

  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

Yoshiki Ohshima wrote: That's good to hear. I started an ALSA plugin a while back.
Fundamentally working but had to go back to work to pay bills, so it
halted. I'd be glad to help test.
I trust that Ian's work will be transparent for 3.9. Ian?

--
brad fuller
sonaural: www.sonaural.com
personal: www.bradfuller.com
          www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/2184

  Milan,

> Thanks for sharing progress and plans with us, eToys and OLPC admirerers and
> fans.

  Thank you!

> For testers, do you have any particular things to look at, perhaps loading
> existing eToys projects, making sure they still work, building new projects,
> or just generic playing?

  Existing eToys may not work, but I would like you to test many
stuff.

> Also, is there a VM preference for testing (3.9 on Linux?)

  Ideally, the VM should be the one built from SVN repository
http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/sugar/, but 3.9 line of Linux VM is pretty
much identical so far.


>> PS: Just as a note, the Squeak links are slightly different from those in the
> email (dashes were missing)
>
> http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/OLPC-Squeak-960.zip
> http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/OLPC-Squeak-latest.zip
> http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/OLPC-Squeak.zip

  Thanks!

-- Yoshiki

Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:
What would be really interesting is if someone could come up with a way
to author projects at their native OLPC resolution (1200x900) while
viewing them at half that size, that is, scaled by 0.5 in a 600x450
window. This is because the actual resolution of the display is 200 dpi,
whereas a normal monitor has 100 dpi.

Of course we also need cool example projects to show off all the stuff
that is accessible for etoys (remember the "Worlds of Squeak" projects
that were in Squeak releases prior to 3.8?).

>> Also, is there a VM preference for testing (3.9 on Linux?)

We use the very latest Linux VM, which is 3.9-8 (only available from SVN
for now). I did set up a build system, follow the Sugar instructions at
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Etoys

>   Ideally, the VM should be the one built from SVN repository
> http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/sugar/, but 3.9 line of Linux VM is pretty
> much identical so far.

In fact, it is identical, because it is just pulling the latest from SVN
  on checkout.

- Bert -

Hi，

It's greate! congratulations!
I downloaded the OLPCPlugin-latest.zip, and try it. It works well.

I found the position of "Navigator" flap changed sometimes.
It's original position is at the 1/3 width from left (I thought it may
due to the screen size is expected as 640x480.)
When I clicked and opened it, then clicked it again to close the flap,
Its position reset to the begining of the left below.

Also when I performed "update code from server" or just resize the
window its position changed.

Have a nice day.
Liu.

On 2006 September 19 17:52, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>
> What would be really interesting is if someone could come up with a way
> to author projects at their native OLPC resolution (1200x900) while
> viewing them at half that size, that is, scaled by 0.5 in a 600x450
> window. This is because the actual resolution of the display is 200 dpi,
> whereas a normal monitor has 100 dpi.

Hmm. I never really tried a resolution outside of the "standard" (1280x960
etc), but if setting X to non-standard resolution to 1200x900 / 600x450
works .. if I build a project on the higher resolution and then restart X on  
lower, and run the project - is that what you have in mind?

>
> Of course we also need cool example projects to show off all the stuff
> that is accessible for etoys (remember the "Worlds of Squeak" projects
> that were in Squeak releases prior to 3.8?).

Heh, I use a stretched captured of that "Squeak Rulez" window as my laptop
background image when working in the office on my Java contract :)) -
generated a few questions, it is a really nice background. That aside, would
porting the Worlds of Squeak be of interest?

I plan to test the image for sure over the weekend, whether I manage to build
the VM is in question :(, as I run KDE and suspect some gnome libraries
dependencies fight etc, but will try!

Thanks for the pointers, Milan

>
> - Bert -