Re: brief olpc call notes

Some brief comments inline.

Robert Staudinger wrote:
> 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.

Actually, not a first generation Pentium, but a Pentium 4 Mobile running
at roughly 50-90 MHz. I was giving a number scaled to the processor a
lot of people have in their normal laptops today for comparison, but the
number is *extremely* unscientific (rough approximation from Python
benchmarks) and meant only to give people an idea of what we're up against.

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

Indeed.

> ? Maybe take another look at the idea of a standalone editor/viewer
> for `proprietary' formats like odt, doc later.

The work on making an activity hasn't gone to waste. We certainly want
to support viewing ODT/doc, and possibly leave in editing now that the
activity's already been written. Such a viewer/editor would then
primarily be used for viewing and editing existing documents as opposed
to writing new ones.

> ? Not sure if toolbar is always visible or only when a text
> selection is made.

Only when a text selection is made. I'll see if we can get Eben to come
up with a mockup.

> -> 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.

That's correct. It'll be easy to package up for Linux distros, and
Windows users will be able to grab it as a single .exe with no
installation required.

> * Ivan: We'll try to have something to show off in 5-6 weeks.

Realistically, that's 3-4 weeks, with perhaps another week of a freeze.

I look forward to working with all of you. Cheers,

-- 
Ivan Krstić <krstic@solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D