gmane.linux.laptop.olpc.sugar

Jason Kridner | 18 Aug 22:56

[sugar] Sugar on Beagle Board training at ESC Boston

Call for presentation from Sugar developers,

I think it would be great if the Sugar community would put forth a
training at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston in October[1].
They will be holding several classes[2] on the Beagle Board and I
believe the board is well-suited for higher-level educational
environments (low-cost, low-power, small, DSP capabilities, 3D
graphics, etc.).  It is certainly no OLPC replacement, but I'd like to
get the people who are playing with that board thinking a bit
differently about how we train programmers to think about computers--
and I believe Sugar is a good tool for that.

The Beagle Board is an ARM-based platform that is intentionally
incomplete[3] (no case, no built-in LCD, no built-in Ethernet, etc.).
It *is* intended to promote TI's OMAP3530 device which comes from an
architecture originally intended for mobile phones and I'd understand
if the tie-in with a particular company's promotional goals puts some
people off, so I want to be up-front about that.  Still, there are a
lot of developers who are interested in the platform and, being a fan
of the OLPC software architecture, I don't want them to miss out on
Sugar.

Let me know if you are interested.  I'd be happy to help with the
port.  Python, GTK+, and GECKO are already running.

Regards,
Jason Kridner

[1] http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8405005860.html
[2] http://www.cmp-egevents.com/web/escb/beagleboard

(Continue reading)

David Farning | 19 Aug 04:23

[sugar] Sugar on Beagle Board training at ESC Boston

On Mon, 2008-08-18 at 16:00 -0500, Jason Kridner wrote:
> Call for presentation from Sugar developers,
> 
> I think it would be great if the Sugar community would put forth a
> training at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston in October[1].

What sort of class do you have in mind?  I will see what we can put
together.

> They will be holding several classes[2] on the Beagle Board and I
> believe the board is well-suited for higher-level educational
> environments (low-cost, low-power, small, DSP capabilities, 3D
> graphics, etc.).  It is certainly no OLPC replacement, but I'd like to
> get the people who are playing with that board thinking a bit
> differently about how we train programmers to think about computers--
> and I believe Sugar is a good tool for that.

Further collaboration between the embedded world and Sugar has the
potential for significant payoffs down the road.  We share a common
interest in doing more with less.  Less power, less cpu, less memory,
more usefulness.

> The Beagle Board is an ARM-based platform that is intentionally
> incomplete[3] (no case, no built-in LCD, no built-in Ethernet, etc.).
> It *is* intended to promote TI's OMAP3530 device which comes from an
> architecture originally intended for mobile phones and I'd understand
> if the tie-in with a particular company's promotional goals puts some
> people off, so I want to be up-front about that.  Still, there are a
> lot of developers who are interested in the platform and, being a fan
> of the OLPC software architecture, I don't want them to miss out on

(Continue reading)

Tomeu Vizoso | 19 Aug 10:01

[sugar] Sugar on Beagle Board training at ESC Boston

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 4:23 AM, David Farning <dfarning at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-08-18 at 16:00 -0500, Jason Kridner wrote:
>> Call for presentation from Sugar developers,
>>
>> I think it would be great if the Sugar community would put forth a
>> training at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston in October[1].
>
> What sort of class do you have in mind?  I will see what we can put
> together.
>
>> They will be holding several classes[2] on the Beagle Board and I
>> believe the board is well-suited for higher-level educational
>> environments (low-cost, low-power, small, DSP capabilities, 3D
>> graphics, etc.).  It is certainly no OLPC replacement, but I'd like to
>> get the people who are playing with that board thinking a bit
>> differently about how we train programmers to think about computers--
>> and I believe Sugar is a good tool for that.
>
> Further collaboration between the embedded world and Sugar has the
> potential for significant payoffs down the road.  We share a common
> interest in doing more with less.  Less power, less cpu, less memory,
> more usefulness.

One more point where can be synergy between the two projects is that
Sugar has shown how viable is to do an alternate desktop with
technologies like python, the GNOME stack, etc. Even if people decide
to build their own thing instead of just porting it, Sugar will
benefit from other platforms using these technologies in similar ways,
and we can share our experience in exchange.

(Continue reading)

Jason Kridner | 19 Aug 14:54

[sugar] Sugar on Beagle Board training at ESC Boston

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 3:01 AM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at tomeuvizoso.net> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 4:23 AM, David Farning <dfarning at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
>> On Mon, 2008-08-18 at 16:00 -0500, Jason Kridner wrote:
>>> Call for presentation from Sugar developers,
>>>
>>> I think it would be great if the Sugar community would put forth a
>>> training at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston in October[1].
>>
>> What sort of class do you have in mind?  I will see what we can put
>> together.

It is a 90 minute session.  I think some small portion covering the
experience of the port would be useful, but I would be particularly
interested in 2 aspects:
 * Can and how can Sugar be used to provide a rapid prototyping
front-end to embedded devices targeted towards some end-equipment
space?
 * Is graphical programming something useful outside of education and why?

Those certainly don't have to be the topics, but those are interesting
to me and I think could help close the gap between the educational
programming and embedded programming divide.

Electronic collaboration is becoming a very important aspect of our
daily lives and it is becoming quite possible for many more people to
create devices that solve different aspects of this collaboration.  It
can be shown that building a UI in Sugar is relatively simple and that
collaboration capabilities can "come for almost free".  Just one idea,
could something like this be put into the UI for a caller-ID telephone
to share notes and address book entries with the other phones in the

(Continue reading)

David Farning | 20 Aug 02:44

[sugar] Embedded Sugar

It has been a bit of a plug but it looks like we have reach critical
mass for a self sustaining embedded Sugar community.

The first board will be the beagleboard[1]. We have assembled a core
group of developers who are in doing the port.  We will be using the
Open Embedded[2] toolkit.

OE is an interesting toolkit because it is both a cross compiler and an
embedded package management system.

thanks
dfarning

1.  http://beagleboard.org/
2.  http://www.openembedded.org/

Bill Gatliff | 20 Aug 04:29

[sugar] Why Embedded Sugar?

David Farning wrote:
> It has been a bit of a plug but it looks like we have reach critical
> mass for a self sustaining embedded Sugar community.

I love the idea of getting a critical mass around something, but I don't yet
"get it" regarding Sugar for embedded work.  The problem is most likely that I'm
not thinking out-of-the-box, but if you present Sugar at ESC then you're going
to have to really know--- and show--- the embedded itches that Sugar can scratch
to a room full of people like me.  A demo of a pretty UI on non-PC hardware
isn't enough.

I'm not discarding Sugar's contribution to the computing community as a whole,
and I'm certainly not suggesting that Sugar lacks anything to offer for embedded
applications.  I just want to make sure that while your new team is busy getting
Sugar to work on beagleboard, they're also thinking about how to package its
"sell" to the larger embedded audience.  Do that right, and you'll never have to
struggle for critical mass again.  Do that poorly, however, and all the effort
goes nowhere.

Case in point.  I happen to think Forth is cool for embedded work, but it hasn't
caught on.  The problem isn't that Forth lacks advocacy, it's that Forth lacks
advocacy by those who can credibly "sell" it as a solution that embedded
developers need.  So we remain stuck with uBoot.  :)

So, sell Sugar to me!

b.g.
--

-- 
Bill Gatliff
bgat at billgatliff.com

(Continue reading)

David Farning | 20 Aug 22:27

[sugar] [beagleboard] Why Embedded Sugar?

On Tue, 2008-08-19 at 21:29 -0500, Bill Gatliff wrote:
> David Farning wrote:
> > It has been a bit of a plug but it looks like we have reach critical
> > mass for a self sustaining embedded Sugar community.
> 
> I love the idea of getting a critical mass around something, but I don't yet
> "get it" regarding Sugar for embedded work.

<snipped>

> So, sell Sugar to me!

I am sorry if I have in any way misrepresented myself.  I am not
interested in selling sugar.

On the other hand, I am interested in locating and fostering communities
which share common goals with Sugar and Sugar Labs.

Why Sugar?  I do not believe that Sugar is the one true desktop.  I
won't even go so far as to say that Sugar is the one true educational
environment.  What I do believe is that the open source development
model can be used to create an educational stack which is socially
beneficial and commercially viable.  Sugar can be an important part of
that stack.

Why Sugar Labs?  Currently, Sugar Lab's primary mission is to support
the One Laptop Per Child project.  Nearly all of our developers are
working to support OLPC either by directly supporting the current Sugar
release or planning future releases.

(Continue reading)

Greg Dekoenigsberg | 20 Aug 22:40

[sugar] [IAEP] [beagleboard] Why Embedded Sugar?

On Wed, 20 Aug 2008, David Farning wrote:

> On Tue, 2008-08-19 at 21:29 -0500, Bill Gatliff wrote:
>> David Farning wrote:
>>> It has been a bit of a plug but it looks like we have reach critical
>>> mass for a self sustaining embedded Sugar community.
>>
>> I love the idea of getting a critical mass around something, but I don't yet
>> "get it" regarding Sugar for embedded work.
>
> <snipped>
>
>> So, sell Sugar to me!
>
> I am sorry if I have in any way misrepresented myself.  I am not
> interested in selling Sugar.

Then let me give it a try.  :)

The most interesting initial design goal of Sugar, to me, could be 
encapsulated in three words:

Sharing By Default.

A desktop that allows you to see all of your friends?  Interact with them 
in real-time in any activity you wanted, be it music, drawing, 
storytelling, games, programming?  That, to me, was a compelling idea.

Sugar is still a-ways away from achieving that vision.  But from where I

(Continue reading)

Edward Cherlin | 20 Aug 23:41

[sugar] Why Embedded Sugar?

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 7:29 PM, Bill Gatliff <bgat at billgatliff.com> wrote:
> David Farning wrote:
>> It has been a bit of a plug but it looks like we have reach critical
>> mass for a self sustaining embedded Sugar community.
>
> I love the idea of getting a critical mass around something, but I don't yet
> "get it" regarding Sugar for embedded work.  The problem is most likely that I'm
> not thinking out-of-the-box, but if you present Sugar at ESC then you're going
> to have to really know--- and show--- the embedded itches that Sugar can scratch
> to a room full of people like me.  A demo of a pretty UI on non-PC hardware
> isn't enough.
>
> I'm not discarding Sugar's contribution to the computing community as a whole,
> and I'm certainly not suggesting that Sugar lacks anything to offer for embedded
> applications.  I just want to make sure that while your new team is busy getting
> Sugar to work on beagleboard, they're also thinking about how to package its
> "sell" to the larger embedded audience.  Do that right, and you'll never have to
> struggle for critical mass again.  Do that poorly, however, and all the effort
> goes nowhere.
>
> Case in point.  I happen to think Forth is cool for embedded work, but it hasn't
> caught on.

Except at Sun, Apple, and OLPC in the form of Open Firmware, and in a
few other such places where the casual observer wouldn't know about
it.

> The problem isn't that Forth lacks advocacy, it's that Forth lacks
> advocacy by those who can credibly "sell" it as a solution that embedded
> developers need.

(Continue reading)

Tomeu Vizoso | 21 Aug 10:34

[sugar] Why Embedded Sugar?

On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 4:29 AM, Bill Gatliff <bgat at billgatliff.com> wrote:
> David Farning wrote:
>> It has been a bit of a plug but it looks like we have reach critical
>> mass for a self sustaining embedded Sugar community.
>
> I love the idea of getting a critical mass around something, but I don't yet
> "get it" regarding Sugar for embedded work.  The problem is most likely that I'm
> not thinking out-of-the-box, but if you present Sugar at ESC then you're going
> to have to really know--- and show--- the embedded itches that Sugar can scratch
> to a room full of people like me.  A demo of a pretty UI on non-PC hardware
> isn't enough.
>
> I'm not discarding Sugar's contribution to the computing community as a whole,
> and I'm certainly not suggesting that Sugar lacks anything to offer for embedded
> applications.  I just want to make sure that while your new team is busy getting
> Sugar to work on beagleboard, they're also thinking about how to package its
> "sell" to the larger embedded audience.  Do that right, and you'll never have to
> struggle for critical mass again.  Do that poorly, however, and all the effort
> goes nowhere.

Two reasons I can think of:

- Learning using technology will get much more common in the near
future (or at least we're trying) and learners won't accept (or be
able to) having to access a "real" computer to do so. Embedded systems
and Sugar can play together an important role in this.

- More and more embedded systems are now using screens (because of
lower prices of flat screens?) and its designers will want to provide
richer interfaces to their users than beeps and leds can provide. The

(Continue reading)

Holger Levsen | 21 Aug 22:49

[sugar] [IAEP] Embedded Sugar

Hi,

sugar has been ported to OpenWRT as well... (as of August 2nd). 

I think it's just a normal package in kamikaze, I'm not fully sure though, so 
I'll ask on IRC and correct myself here, _if_ that's wrong.

regards,
	Holger
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Walter Bender | 22 Aug 15:51

[sugar] [IAEP] Embedded Sugar

Could you please document this on the
http://sugarlabs.org/go/Supported_systems page? Thanks.

-walter

On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 4:49 PM, Holger Levsen <holger at layer-acht.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> sugar has been ported to OpenWRT as well... (as of August 2nd).
>
> I think it's just a normal package in kamikaze, I'm not fully sure though, so
> I'll ask on IRC and correct myself here, _if_ that's wrong.
>
>
> regards,
>        Holger
>
> _______________________________________________
> Sugar mailing list
> Sugar at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
>
>

Holger Levsen | 3 Oct 16:28

[sugar] [IAEP] Embedded Sugar

Hi,

On Friday 22 August 2008 15:51, Walter Bender wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 4:49 PM, Holger Levsen <holger at layer-acht.org>
> > sugar has been ported to OpenWRT as well... (as of August 2nd). 
> Could you please document this on the
> http://sugarlabs.org/go/Supported_systems page? Thanks.

AFAIK the openwrt sugar still is not polished enough that they consider 
publishing the details. I've cc:ed Lars, the openwrt sugar maintainer, on 
this mail, so he can comment on this himself.

http://wiki.olpc-deutschland.de/wiki/OpenWRT has some info (in german) how to 
build OpenWRT XO images, but there is also nothing on sugar _yet_.

regards,
	Holger
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