tux-droid-user

[tuxdroid-user] Wiki update

[David B. <da...@ja...>]

Hi all,

I'm back at work since yesterday :-)

I updated mediawiki to version 1.9.3.
I moved it to another server as it was still on my old PII. Now I need to  
install some automatic backup for it. I also slightly (very slightly)  
updated the skin to better match the main portal. We still have to improve  
the logo as it doesn't show well on the dark background. Finally I added a  
link in the developer corner.
But all I wanted to say is that the address has been changed to  
http://wiki.tuxisalive.com

Any suggestions are welcome.

Cheers,
David

Re: [tuxdroid-user] Wiki update

[David B. <da...@ja...>]

I continued updating the wiki and reorganized it a bit.

I'm starting working on the firmware and I wanted to share the development  
with you so I added a firmware page where I'll try to put all information  
I have. Right now there's only the main topics I'm going to get into, with  
empty pages but that's a start ;-)

- Standalone behavior - description of the standalone behavior that should  
be integrated into Tux.
- Remote mode - control your tux with the remote only, no computer here.
- Light sensor - schema, measurement and linearization of the light  
measurement.
- Tux ID - adding an identification code in tux firmware.
- Sleep mode - adding a sleep mode in tux to increase battery life.

I'll keep you updated when I'll really start dealing with that.

On the other hand, we got a nice release of tuxsetup last week and it  
seems to be quite stable and good. Thanks to Philippe and Damien for their  
last commits, and all the others that reported bug, feedback and  
suggestions at different places. Now I think we should really try to get  
something that uses it. And the marketing team needs something badly so  
they decided to get Rémi working on Tux Widgets from this week on. Widgets  
are fun, it's a hot word,  it's great for marketing but is it somehow  
useful for us? Well, I got a meeting with Rémi yesterday and I learned  
about that. Actually it's pretty close to our discussion a while ago about  
a manager application with a plugin framework  
(http://wiki.tuxisalive.com/index.php/New_software_architecture), just  
%s/plugin/widget/g :-)

So at the end that's a pretty good thing because it will be easy to make a  
widget out of a small script and the widget manager will handle priorities  
and conflicts. I added all I know on this topic on the wiki, there's also  
a list of all the widgets that are going to be developed first, have a  
look by yourself at http://wiki.tuxisalive.com/index.php/Tux's_Widgets.  
All comments are welcome, I'll try to be the relay between the ML/wiki/IRC  
and Rémi. It's only a description as I don't have the code and don't know  
exactly what Rémi is going to change along the way.

Cheers,
david

ps. I need to work on the hardware but right now I rather feel like  
getting my NSLU2 out of the box and installing gentoo on it :-)

Re: [tuxdroid-user] Wiki update

[Florent T. <ft...@gm...>]

About the widgets, it's a great idea ! But the choice of app will be important:

There's screenlets, which looks very promising:
http://hendrik.kaju.pri.ee/screenlets/

" Screenlets are small owner-drawn applications (written in Python, a
very simple object-oriented programming-language) that can be
described as "the virtual representation of things lying/standing
around on your desk". Sticknotes, clocks, rulers, the possibilities
are endless. The goal of the Screenlets base-class is to simplify the
creation of fully themeable mini-apps that each solve basic
desktop-work-related needs and generally improve the usability and
eye-candy of the modern Linux desktop. "

* it looks nice
* it has meteo, clocks, etc... <---- who said text to speech?
* it uses python and gnome
* beryl hackers just introduced screenlets support
(http://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/viewtopic.php?pid=714671), an OSX
Dashboard like.

Let's just hope they will eventually support osx's widget format one day...

What do you think? Should we build widgets using screenlets?

Florent

Re: [tuxdroid-user] Wiki update

[David B. <da...@ja...>]

On Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:34:31 +0200, Florent THIERY <ft...@gm...>  
wrote:

> About the widgets, it's a great idea ! But the choice of app will be  
> important:
>
> There's screenlets, which looks very promising:
> http://hendrik.kaju.pri.ee/screenlets/

Another source of inspiration could be:
http://adesklets.sourceforge.net/desklets.html

They're in python and some of them can be nice for Tux.

I think we could have a first version of the widget manager ready next  
week.

Re: [tuxdroid-user] Wiki update

[Philippe T. <ph...@te...>]

Hi,
> And the marketing team needs something badly so they decided to get 
> Rémi working on Tux Widgets 
Nothing surprizing, according to this article
http://seo-space.blogspot.com/2007/01/top-100-marketing-buzzwords-of-2007.html
"widget marketing" is number 36 in the Top 100 Marketing Buzzwords of 2007.
Not bad at all! ;-) your marketing team is really à-la-page!

That doesn't mean it's a bad idea.
Just pay attention to not be captured in a rigid framework (even if 
you're free within the framework).
I do not want to have to install Gnome libs on my NSLU2 ;-)
> I'll try to be the relay between the ML/wiki/IRC and Rémi. 
Why is Rémi so shy? :-)

Phil

Re: [tuxdroid-user] Wiki update

[David B. <da...@ja...>]

On Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:50:48 +0200, Philippe Teuwen <ph...@te...>  
wrote:

> Hi,
>> And the marketing team needs something badly so they decided to get
>> Rémi working on Tux Widgets
> Nothing surprizing, according to this article
> http://seo-space.blogspot.com/2007/01/top-100-marketing-buzzwords-of-2007.html
> "widget marketing" is number 36 in the Top 100 Marketing Buzzwords of  
> 2007.
> Not bad at all! ;-) your marketing team is really à-la-page!
>
> That doesn't mean it's a bad idea.
> Just pay attention to not be captured in a rigid framework (even if
> you're free within the framework).
> I do not want to have to install Gnome libs on my NSLU2 ;-)

me neither :-)

Actually widgets is just the name and corresponds to the idea of having a  
framework that accepts a lot of very light applications that evrybody can  
build. So the idea here is to have a manager for tux scripts, that's all.  
There's no plan for graphical interfaces yet for every widget, only the  
manager will have some basic GUI to handle the widgets. We more or less  
want to focus on the use of tux when the user is not in front of his  
computer, we don't need to compete with classic widgets, the clock will  
use tux to say the time, the alarm will make tux ring,... nothing on the  
computer side.

So really it's just a master application to handle multiple scripts and  
which uses the API to communicate with tux. The framework should not add  
any other dependency that the API/daemon currently have.

>> I'll try to be the relay between the ML/wiki/IRC and Rémi.
> Why is Rémi so shy? :-)

He's coming from the M$ world and has always been a solo developer so he's  
not used to the community way of life :-), but now his wife will give  
birth in the coming days and he relocated recently too and doesn't get  
internet access yet...

Re: [tuxdroid-user] Wiki update

[Florent T. <ft...@gm...>]

> I do not want to have to install Gnome libs on my NSLU2 ;-)

Our screenlets/widgets should be able to connect to a distant tuxdaemon :)

Re: [tuxdroid-user] Wiki update

[David B. <da...@ja...>]

On Fri, 27 Apr 2007 16:02:13 +0200, Florent THIERY <ft...@gm...>  
wrote:

>> I do not want to have to install Gnome libs on my NSLU2 ;-)
>
> Our screenlets/widgets should be able to connect to a distant tuxdaemon  
> :)

Yes that's true, though the widget manager should also run on the NSLU2 as  
for example the alarm clock will run there. The idea of the NSLU2 is to  
not have a computer running all the time for just a few things tux should  
be aware of permanently.

Actually that makes me think we should be able to handle 2 widgets  
managers from the daemon, one running on the NSLU2 and another one from a  
workstation for local events, if you want to get alerted that your  
compilation failed for example.