[olpc-software] AbiWord, HIG

[Robert Staudinger]

On 3/19/06, Alan Kay <alan.kay at squeakland.org> wrote:
> Hi Robert --
>
> At 09:30 AM 3/19/2006, Robert Staudinger wrote:
> >On 3/18/06, Alan Kay <alan.kay at squeakland.org> wrote:
> > > You might try icons that have been painted by the child's paint tool. Then
> > > the child could add some.
> >
> >Are you referring to the Etoys paint tool or is there a tool / list of
> >candidates for the laptop already?
>
> As I mentioned, I'm not trying to push our system here, except as a set of
> examples (and as an integrated example).
>
> But it would be nice if the children's UI was actually made in the child's
> system -- this would allow the children to have a deeper view of how things
> are made, and also all them to add new facilities, etc..

Sure, it's just that i'm not overly convinced about my design skills
(read: i suck). So i decided not to design at all.
About the etoys approach i'm really excited ...

> > > To bring you up to date on what we've been doing with children the last 10
> > > years or so, here are two white papers about Squeak Etoys that you can go
> > > to directly: http://www.squeakland.org/pdf/etoys_n_learning.pdf ,
> > > http://www.squeakland.org/pdf/etoys_n_authoring.pdf .
> >
> >I have been skimming these documents and the ideas are certainly very
> >appealing.
> >Do you have any experience with productivity software following that approach?
>
> Good question. Of course, much of the productivity SW of today is based on
> the predecessors of these ideas that we did at Xerox PARC. So there is some
> experience there.
>
> But what we are trying to do here is more subtle. For constructivist
> learning, we want to have the end-users learn by making most things. On the
> other hand we want to be as handy as most productivity tools (where there
> are usually a lot more prefabbed parts). We thought that something
> influenced by Hypercard but with much deeper objects and scriptable all the
> way down would serve both as a learning environment and as a productivity tool.

... but it also brings up more questions.
Since this is "marketed" as a community project I'm wondering
- What if scripting was done in python? Is this matter decided
already? Might be easier to get the OSS community involved in building
new tools.

> Since it is "Children first" on this project, we think the constructivist
> parts should predominate.
>
> Naturally, we'd hope to improve where we've gotten so far by the time HDLT
> ships.

- What stage is the project in? How much time is left?
- What portion of the whole system is the community supposed to
contribute or do volunteers come into play as "ISVs" once the platform
is ready?

Best,
Rob