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Overview
This book will tell you how to create Activities for Sugar, the revolutionary user interface developed by Sugar Labs for the One Laptop Per Child project. You'll learn everything from how to create a simple Activity using the Python language to advanced topics like making Activities that can be shared by more than one computer and adding Text to Speech to your Activity. You'll also learn about using Git to store and share your code, using Pootle to get your Activity translated into other languages, how to debug your Activities, and more.
The book is suitable for those just starting out in programming but experienced developers will want to read it too. If you want to develop educational software for all the world's children, reading this book is a great place to start!
Table Of Contents:
Sugar Activities
Introduction
What Is Sugar?
What Is A Sugar Activity?
What Do I Need To Know To Write A Sugar Activity?
Programming
Setting Up A Development Environment
Creating Your First Activity
A Standalone Python Program For Reading ETexts
Inherit From sugar.activity.Activity
Package The Activity
Add Refinements
Add Your Activity Code To Version Control
Going International With Pootle
Distribute Your Activity
Debugging Sugar Activities
Advanced Topics
Making Shared Activities
Adding Text To Speech
Fun With The Journal
Making Activities Using Pygame
Making New Style Toolbars
Appendix
Where To Go From Here?
About The Authors
Credits
From The Introduction:
"This book is a record of a pleasure trip. If it were a record of a solemn scientific expedition, it would have about it that gravity, that profundity, and that impressive incomprehensibility which are so proper to works of that kind, and withal so attractive."
From the Preface to The Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain
The purpose of this book is to teach you what you need to know to write Activities for Sugar, the operating environment developed for the One Laptop Per Child project. This book does not assume that you know how to program a computer, although those who do will find useful information in it. My primary goal in writing it is to encourage non programmers, including children and their teachers, to create their own Sugar Activities. Because of this goal I will include some details that other books would leave out and leave out things that others would include. Impressive incomprehensibility will be kept to a minimum.
If you just want to learn how to write computer programs Sugar provides many Activities to help you do that: Etoys, Turtle Art, Scratch, and Pippy. None of these are really suitable for creating Activities so I won't cover them in this book, but they're a great way to learn about programming. If you decide after playing with these that you'd like to try writing an Activity after all you'll have a good foundation of knowledge to build on.
When you have done some programming then you'll know how satisfying it can be to use a program that you made yourself, one that does exactly what you want it to do. Creating a Sugar Activity takes that enjoyment to the next level. A useful Sugar Activity can be translated by volunteers into every language, be downloaded hundreds of times a week and used every day by students all over the world.
The book is suitable for those just starting out in programming but experienced developers will want to read it too. If you want to develop educational software for all the world's children, reading this book is a great place to start!
Table Of Contents:
Sugar Activities
Introduction
What Is Sugar?
What Is A Sugar Activity?
What Do I Need To Know To Write A Sugar Activity?
Programming
Setting Up A Development Environment
Creating Your First Activity
A Standalone Python Program For Reading ETexts
Inherit From sugar.activity.Activity
Package The Activity
Add Refinements
Add Your Activity Code To Version Control
Going International With Pootle
Distribute Your Activity
Debugging Sugar Activities
Advanced Topics
Making Shared Activities
Adding Text To Speech
Fun With The Journal
Making Activities Using Pygame
Making New Style Toolbars
Appendix
Where To Go From Here?
About The Authors
Credits
From The Introduction:
"This book is a record of a pleasure trip. If it were a record of a solemn scientific expedition, it would have about it that gravity, that profundity, and that impressive incomprehensibility which are so proper to works of that kind, and withal so attractive."
From the Preface to The Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain
The purpose of this book is to teach you what you need to know to write Activities for Sugar, the operating environment developed for the One Laptop Per Child project. This book does not assume that you know how to program a computer, although those who do will find useful information in it. My primary goal in writing it is to encourage non programmers, including children and their teachers, to create their own Sugar Activities. Because of this goal I will include some details that other books would leave out and leave out things that others would include. Impressive incomprehensibility will be kept to a minimum.
If you just want to learn how to write computer programs Sugar provides many Activities to help you do that: Etoys, Turtle Art, Scratch, and Pippy. None of these are really suitable for creating Activities so I won't cover them in this book, but they're a great way to learn about programming. If you decide after playing with these that you'd like to try writing an Activity after all you'll have a good foundation of knowledge to build on.
When you have done some programming then you'll know how satisfying it can be to use a program that you made yourself, one that does exactly what you want it to do. Creating a Sugar Activity takes that enjoyment to the next level. A useful Sugar Activity can be translated by volunteers into every language, be downloaded hundreds of times a week and used every day by students all over the world.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940013799301 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | James Simmons |
| Publication date: | 12/31/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 251 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
James Simmons has programmed professionally since 1978. Back then computer programs were made using a special machine that punched holes into cards, reels of tape were the most common data storage medium, and hard disks were so expensive and exotic that the hard disk inventory of a Fortune 500 company would today be considered barely large enough to hold a nice picture of Jessica Alba.
The industry has come a long way since then, and to a lesser extent so has James.
James learned to program at Oakton Community College in Morton Grove, Illinois and Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois. Times were hard back then and a young man's best chance of being employed after graduation was to become an Accountant or a Computer Programmer. It was while he attended OCC that James saw a Monty Python sketch about an Accountant who wished to become a Lion Tamer. This convinced James that he should become a Computer Programmer.
James' studies at WIU got off to a rough start when he signed up for Basic Assembly Language as his first real computer class, erroneously thinking that the word "Basic" meant "for beginners". From the computer's point of view it was basic, but for students not so much. He barely passed the course with a "D" but in the process learned that he enjoyed programming computers. He decided to continue his computer studies and graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Information Science.
James was born in 1956, the year before Sputnik went up. He was a nerdy kid. At various times he fooled around with Erector sets, chemistry sets, microscopes, dissecting kits, model cars, model planes, model rockets, amateur radio, film making, and writing science fiction stories. He achieved no real success with any of these activities.
James participated in the first Give One Get One promotion of the One Laptop Per Child project and started developing Activities for the Sugar platform soon after. He has written the Activities Read Etexts, View Slides, Sugar Commander and Get Internet Archive Books.
The industry has come a long way since then, and to a lesser extent so has James.
James learned to program at Oakton Community College in Morton Grove, Illinois and Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois. Times were hard back then and a young man's best chance of being employed after graduation was to become an Accountant or a Computer Programmer. It was while he attended OCC that James saw a Monty Python sketch about an Accountant who wished to become a Lion Tamer. This convinced James that he should become a Computer Programmer.
James' studies at WIU got off to a rough start when he signed up for Basic Assembly Language as his first real computer class, erroneously thinking that the word "Basic" meant "for beginners". From the computer's point of view it was basic, but for students not so much. He barely passed the course with a "D" but in the process learned that he enjoyed programming computers. He decided to continue his computer studies and graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Information Science.
James was born in 1956, the year before Sputnik went up. He was a nerdy kid. At various times he fooled around with Erector sets, chemistry sets, microscopes, dissecting kits, model cars, model planes, model rockets, amateur radio, film making, and writing science fiction stories. He achieved no real success with any of these activities.
James participated in the first Give One Get One promotion of the One Laptop Per Child project and started developing Activities for the Sugar platform soon after. He has written the Activities Read Etexts, View Slides, Sugar Commander and Get Internet Archive Books.
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