[olpc-software] AbiWord, HIG

[Robert Staudinger]

On 3/15/06, Alan Kay <alan.kay at squeakland.org> wrote:
> Just curious ...  why is a lot of real estate still being taken for
> non-content items?

Please explain, what do you mean by "non-content items"? That the
toolbar is too big?

> There are very likely more compact solutions that start out with everything
> being visible, but as the user learns can move to more subtle and smaller
> cues and access. Also, the chip set can do alpha blending, and we've
> experimented with using that to overlay some of the UI, etc.

Sure, this stuff is just quickly thrown together. Of course a balance
has to be found between optimal utilisation of available space and
"usability". Also I've been told in #olpc that colour and b/w screen
resolutions are different, prolly that should be taken into account as
well (maybe also a fullscreen/viewer mode for reading). All these
factors multiply to a considerable number of "modes" which i'm not
very happy about (in terms of development effort and UI complexity).
I'd be very interested learning more about the graphics capabilities
of the machine. Maybe some UI parts could be implemented in a scalable
way using librsvg (if that will be available, it drags in cairo which
was avoided for the n770).

I've also written the first few lines of a gtk engine with the goal of
implementing something like
http://ramnet.se/~nisse/diverse/temp/kidsthememock2.png - might be
appealing for kids too. Unfortunately cairo based engines are quite
slow ATM.

> Good start ... I encourage you to continue with more and different
> experiments ...
>
> P.S. Can AbiWord take plugins (like a LOGO) that could manipulate its media?

AbiWord's plugin system exports pretty much the whole internal API.
Missing stuff can be hooked up without much effort.

Best,
Rob