soas70xo impressions

[Mikus Grinbergs]

Disclaimer:  I am not asking for help;  I'm sharing my experiences.


Ran with soas70xo (booted from nand) on my XO-1.  Many of the
difficulties with previous SoaS builds were still present, with some 
new ones added.

The "X crash" scrolling problem is a BLOCKER - for instance, because 
of this problem I cannot change the Jabber server specification.


Speak did not produce any sound.  [It did not even attempt to wiggle 
its mouth until I in Frame "unmuted" the volume.]  Record did not 
launch.  Browse came up with its display window size significantly 
exceeding the physical size of the XO screen.
'rpm -q kernel' attests to sloppy composing of the build.

With now more exposure to it, I still do not like the new toolbar 
design.  The XO has a *small* display screen.  Now many Activity 
capabilities (such as 'Edit' in Terminal) can only be invoked from a 
secondary toolbar that drops down from the primary toolbar.  The two 
toolbars together take up a significant amount of XO screen real 
estate.  And each time the secondary toolbar needs to be shown or 
hidden, it takes one *extra* click (after me having to move the 
cursor off the part of the screen that I was doing my work on).


I notice that now Sugar 0.86 has been "upstreamed" into Rawhide.
I suspect that some Activities still need changing to fit 0.86.


mikus

[Gary C Martin]

Hi Mikus,

On 29 Sep 2009, at 15:14, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:

>  With now more exposure to it, I still do not like the new toolbar
>  design.  The XO has a *small* display screen.  Now many Activity
>  capabilities (such as 'Edit' in Terminal) can only be invoked from a
>  secondary toolbar that drops down from the primary toolbar.  The two
>  toolbars together take up a significant amount of XO screen real
>  estate.  And each time the secondary toolbar needs to be shown or
>  hidden, it takes one *extra* click (after me having to move the
>  cursor off the part of the screen that I was doing my work on). 
Just a quick hint that you do not need to click if you don't want to.  
The secondary toolbars hover expose (or right click if you want them  
instantly), in this mode they work just like any palette menu, taking  
up no canvas space, forcing no canvas redraw.

I would argue your 'significant amount of XO screen real estate' is a  
rather large exaggeration ;-)

Here's a quick screen shot comparison for the worst case when you have  
a secondary toolbar locked open to the canvas. On a 1200x900 display,  
two layers of toolbars is only an extra ~30 pixels, and you have the  
choice of not locking open the secondary toolbar (especially for edit,  
just use the keyboard shortcuts), gaining you an extra ~40 vertical  
pixels of canvas space.




Regards,
--Gary

[Walter Bender]

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 1:01 PM, Gary C Martin <gary(a)garycmartin.com&gt; wrote:
>  Hi Mikus,
>
>  On 29 Sep 2009, at 15:14, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:
>
> > With now more exposure to it, I still do not like the new toolbar
> > design.  The XO has a *small* display screen.  Now many Activity
> > capabilities (such as 'Edit' in Terminal) can only be invoked from a
> > secondary toolbar that drops down from the primary toolbar.  The two
> > toolbars together take up a significant amount of XO screen real
> > estate.  And each time the secondary toolbar needs to be shown or
> > hidden, it takes one *extra* click (after me having to move the
> > cursor off the part of the screen that I was doing my work on).
>
>  Just a quick hint that you do not need to click if you don't want to. The
>  secondary toolbars hover expose (or right click if you want them instantly),
>  in this mode they work just like any palette menu, taking up no canvas
>  space, forcing no canvas redraw.
>
>  I would argue your 'significant amount of XO screen real estate' is a rather
>  large exaggeration ;-)
>
>  Here's a quick screen shot comparison for the worst case when you have a
>  secondary toolbar locked open to the canvas. On a 1200x900 display, two
>  layers of toolbars is only an extra ~30 pixels, and you have the choice of
>  not locking open the secondary toolbar (especially for edit, just use the
>  keyboard shortcuts), gaining you an extra ~40 vertical pixels of canvas
>  space.
>  
Not to mention that many (most) toolbar items have keyboard shortcuts.
Edit certainly does :)

-walter

>  Regards,
>  --Gary
>  _______________________________________________
>  Devel mailing list
>  Devel(a)lists.laptop.org
>  http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
>
>  


-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org

[Martin Dengler]

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 10:14:34AM -0400, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:
>  The "X crash" scrolling problem is a BLOCKER 
I know, you heard it here first.  Care to bugzilla it?

>  'rpm -q kernel' attests to sloppy composing of the build.
Sloppy is hardly the moniker for the general practice of having two
kernels installed (one backup/running and one to-be-booted into, for
example).  The way the kickstart file installs the OLPC one is indeed
terrible, and I'm not proud of it.

>  I notice that now Sugar 0.86 has been "upstreamed" into
> Rawhide.
>  I suspect that some Activities still need changing to fit 0.86. 
Oh yeah.  It's going to get worse before it gets better, I think.

>  mikus 
Martin

[Peter Robinson]

> > The "X crash" scrolling problem is a BLOCKER
>
>  I know, you heard it here first.  Care to bugzilla it?
>
> > 'rpm -q kernel' attests to sloppy composing of the build.
>
>  Sloppy is hardly the moniker for the general practice of having two
>  kernels installed (one backup/running and one to-be-booted into, for
>  example).  The way the kickstart file installs the OLPC one is indeed
>  terrible, and I'm not proud of it.
>
> > I notice that now Sugar 0.86 has been "upstreamed" into Rawhide.
> > I suspect that some Activities still need changing to fit 0.86.
>
>  Oh yeah.  It's going to get worse before it gets better, I think. 
Record would be one of those.

Peter