brief olpc call notes

On 12/7/06, Ivan Krstić <krstic@solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> wrote:

[...]

> Thanks for the call today, folks. Martin -- sorry you couldn't make it;
> Marc and Robert said they'd bring you up to date.

Here are some very condensed notes, I'm adding questions that occurred
to me while typing, signed with `?' and notes signed with `->':

Intro
-----

Ivan starting explaining the limited hardware resources of the target
device. Clock speed may seem fast but when taking into account limited
caches (small L1, no L2) and slow flash memory overall performance
comparable to first generation pentium at 75-90MHz.

Ivan enthusiastic about the commitment and stuff we've been showing
off recently. Quote (hopefully recalling correctly):

    ``I was pursuing the javascript based editor because it seemed like
    the only possibility, but with your quick turnaround times on recent
    stuff like the widget or firefox embedding you guys have really
    convinced me [...]''

-> AbiWord is now officially part of the master plan.

Apparently the browser-embedded editor was planned from the beginning.
Seemed to be a communication problem from the very beginning
(abiword/olpc SoC) that a standalone word processor was being worked
on.
  ? Maybe take another look at the idea of a standalone editor/viewer
     for `proprietary' formats like odt, doc later.

Editor
------

Plan is to get the embedded editor ready for prime time. Ivan will
provide detailed UI spec.
* Only `chrome' will probably be a small floating toolbar with a
handful buttons like B/I/U/...
  ? Not sure if toolbar is always visible or only when a text
    selection is made.
* Selections automatically expand to word boundary. There is no
sub-word styling in crossmark (the primary document format).
* Editor should automatically parse crossmark input, e.g. turning
input of `*foo*' into boldfaced appearance [1].
* We should look into implementing a clickable margin at the left of
the embedded widget. A click there would select the corresponding
paragraph on the right.
* The javascript-based editor is being worked on in parallel, so the
whole notebook infrastructure can be used without abiword.
  -> From what I have gathered running the notebook on a regular
machine would still
    require download and installation of the python-based webserver,
so it's not a
    browser-only solution anyways.

Crossmark
---------

* Draft version 5 out soon with many improvements. A standardised
parse tree will be introduced as intermediary format between parser
and `rendering' backends for html, pdf, docbook ...
* A parser reference implementation is being worked on by Eric
`EPAstor', written in python.
* Marc and Rob have been starting to look into crossmark support for
AbiWord, this might result in a c++ parser implementation (probably
not that much overhead over writing a parse-tree I/O filter)[1].

Collaboration
-------------

* In sugar all apps are by default collaborative.
* A new metaphor for shared documents is being worked on, not too
different from collaborate.abisource.com
* Marc is doing the first collab sessions after the rewrite, the
AbiCollab code is flexible enough so a sugar backend could be plugged
into.
* We'll try to focus on the standalone editor for now so there is time
to further hash out collab stuff on sugar and abi side.

Organisation
------------

* Ivan: We'll try to have something to show off in 5-6 weeks.
* Rob: Should try to form some sort of team, organise interested abi
hackers and new contributors. Do we need to name a coordinator or will
we just point interested people to abiword-dev and whoever gets to it
replies to emails and stuff?
* Justin is working full time on improving sugar now, in addition to
being interested in- and ready to contribute.

Where to go from here? The main tasks now are:
* crossmark support in abiword [1]
* getting the abiword editor widget ready, e.g. floating toolbar,
crossmark input with automatic conversion, clickable left margin,
reducing disk footprint, improving performance if needed
* interfacing between the browser and abiword
* abicollab

Feel free to expand and/or add stuff.

[1] I'll expand on that in a future email.

Best,
Rob
Received on Thu Dec 7 06:35:08 2006