[sword-devel] OLPC interest still?

[Pierre Amadio]

Hi there.

On Mon, Jan 21, 2008 at 11:12:03AM -0500, Zachary M. Oglesby wrote:
> I have done a little reading on this and would recommend that people read
> the following. Also I think a good starting point would be to adapt the
> Rapier code and see if we can get it to work with Sugar. In the long run I
> think it would be great if we could get this to work in the ebook mode that
> the XO has to save battery life, but one step at a time.

I have zero experience in project management, but still, i think the
first step to take would be to check out what's already existing, just
in case there's already something cool, or not, and to get in touch with
all project, or at least most of them, in order to try to have as many
people as possible in a single project.

A quick search show:

http://xobible.com/
plan to use bibletime as a base and to add some mp3 feature on top of
that. 
Sounds interesting to me, i just don't get why they pick a qt project
and not a gtk one (if i recall correctly, the olpc is mainly gtk based).

http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1425.msg11011
Other people also wanting to make a bible based activity.

http://bibledit.sourceforge.net/
Changelog states it runs on olpc.

I'm sure there are others. Anybody know what is the main olpc community
mailing list/web forum ? It would be a good idea to check there.

Then, i think we should have a clear idea of what is planned. Is it a
nice bible study tool that would run on an olpc, or is it a nice olpc
activity that will take advantage of what the olpc offer ?

I think if the first goal is targeted, using an already featurfull
program is the way to go (and i would think gnome sword is the best
candidate here as it's gtk based. I do not know if libgnome is available
on olpc though. Not being able to compile it without libgnome was what
drove me to start rapier).

If the second goal is targeted, then creating something from scratch in
python (so the "read the source" feature of the olpc would be possible)
seems the way to go. I would advise not to start with rapier itself, as the
code is really not that good:

- It  does not use libglade that should be available in the olpc 
  (it is sort of available in maemo, but i choosed not to used it anyway 
  because i intended to make something really simple and wanted to wait 
  untill gazpacho was ready for hildon stuff before playing with glade
  file).

- Internationalisation is nearly not existing, and it's more easy to get
  that correctly when prepared from the beginning.

- The download/manage module is awfull. (Why is there no python wrapper
  for the InstallMgr class ? :-) ).

If there is a clear description of what is needed, a rewrite of an
rapier like olpc activity starting from scratch is just a matter of a couple
of weeks and would save time later on if started on solid ground.

So, is there anybody who feels like gathering the existing, find the most
appropriate place to get in touch with the olpc community and make a
summary of what he found to us and all similar project ?