User:SamuelRiv

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I acquired my XO-1.0 from craigslist at the end of 2009, have been using it as an e-reader for academic papers since, and am now beginning to do mods and development.

I will update development notes and fixes as time goes on.


Sugar

Activity installation notes

Midori

The easy method of yum install midori works perfectly to get the last update v0.2.2-1.fc11 of midori for Fedora Core 11, the current (04/2011) distro on which the OS is based. However, the next (06/2011) update of the XO will use Fedora Core 14, for which the latest version of Midori is v0.2.9-4.fc14, and we will see if yum can keep up. Otherwise, I will post instructions.

Note also that Midori requires WebKit. It seems yum handles the dependency fine, but for reference the latest version WebKit-1.1.1-1.fc11 is compatible with Fedora Core 11 and above. I'm not sure if it's advantageous to run out and get the latest version, and as of writing this I'm not sure how to check what version is currently running.


UPDATE 07/29/2011: With a clean install of 11.2.0, typing yum install midori correctly downloads 0.2.9-4.fc14 correctly from xo1 repository. (Installation source is commented out in source below).


Sugarizing

References on this site to previous directions on how to get the Sugar activity display from the Sugarizing script from CatMoran now link to the Internet Archive's copy of his page (where he oddly about losing hosting from Sugarlabs, even though the total data hosted is less than 1Mb). The Archive still hosts his original scripts, but the scripts themselves use outdated directions and had to be modified, after which it works in a very user-friendly manner. I will reproduce his page as best as I can, with corrections, in User:SamuelRiv/Sugarization.

Activity bug notes

  • We need a monochrome svg for GCompris-Geography
  • We need a Sugar color-adopting svg for Deducto
  • Can't do IRC or anything with Chat
  • No syntax documentation for Calculate - the plot() function follows no conventions I know of


UI complaints to fix

  • From day one, I have hated the wireless network display because there is no correlation of the placement of nodes to any measured feature of the given network. I understand that direction is not (easily) achievable, but by randomizing the node placement, it gives this illusion very powerfully. Furthermore, in a city apartment, the screen is bogged down by home networks that are of little relevance.


Gnome default

In-GUI customizations

  • Default fonts are taken from DejaVu 7 to Droid 8, principally because of its performance on my font distinguishability test:
iIl1!| o0O()Q8B rnm ""`` ^/\/VWvwu a2d 6bpqg9 ({[ ]}) :;,.
  • File opening is single-click, not double-click. I suppose kids need to learn how to double-click to deal with the stupid world, but for now I need this to make my iPad friends jealous.
  • For general aesthetics, I ten to concentrate on the panel. I will post changes and screenshots eventually.

gconf customization

For more detailed customization, particularly for speeding up the GUI and fine-tuning one's OCD tendencies, use gconftool-2 in Terminal. To browse the configuration file, start with 

gconftool-2 --all-dirs /

and then continue through the subfolders, replacing the / with /desktop/panels and so on. Eventually one reaches a folder with no subfolder, at which point there are changeable keys, which one can view by the --all-entries option as in 

gconftool-2 --all-entries /desktop/gnome/interface

More-subtle customizations

In my desire for amore streamlined panel for the small screen, I am hindered by the lettering size of the "Applications /Places / System" menu. Customization of this is not in gconf or any other readily-available customization source -- instead, one must go to the language file itself, which kinda-sorta -maybe makes sense. Finding this solution online was difficult (free registration required), and I reproduce (with 11.4.0 pathname) qurgh's instructions:

  • Make a new text file which has something like this in it:
msgid ""
msgstr ""
"Project-Id-Version: gnome-panel trunk\n"
"Report-Msgid-Bugs-To: \n"
"POT-Creation-Date: 2008-05-26 00:59+0000\n"
"PO-Revision-Date: 2008-05-26 00:59+0000\n"
"Last-Translator: YOUR NAME\n"
"Language-Team: None\n"
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n"
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
"Plural-Forms: nplurals=1; plural=0;\n"
"X-Launchpad-Export-Date: 2008-04-16 01:47+0000\n"
"X-Generator: Launchpad (build Unknown)\n"

msgid "Applications"
msgstr "YOUR NAME FOR APPLICATIONS"

msgid "Places"
msgstr "YOUR NAME FOR PLACES"

msgid "System"
msgstr "YOUR NAME FOR SYSTEM"
  1. In a terminal run msgfmt THE-FILENAME-OF-THE-TEXT-FILE
  2. Then run sudo mv messages.mo /usr/share/locale/en_US/LC_MESSAGES/gnome-panel-2.0.mo ** (Note this is a new file that will not overwrite anything. Check for location of actual language files first, typically using ls /usr/share/local* .)
  3. Then run pkill gnome-panel and it'll work.

One will find that the XO does not have msgfmt, which is part of the gettext language-barrier-breaking project (may be interesting?). Msgfmt is necessary, however, to turn a plaintext .po file into the langpack's binary .mo format.

Rather than install a large and costly package, Martin v. Löwis provides a python-ready po/mo converter msgfmt alternative. Download wherever, make sure your plaintext file is save with a .po extension, then run 

sudo python /DOWNLOAD-LOCATION/msgfmt.py YOUR-FILENAME.po

This creates an identically-named .mo file. Move (mv) it into the LC_MESSAGES folder as above and restart the panel.

Speed-ups

Start simple by putting metacity into its pre-designated "reduced resources" mode: 

gconftool-2 --toggle /apps/metacity/general/reduced-resources

Consider disabling responsiveness-hogs similarly in panel. Of course, the best way to speed things up would be to disable the panel entirely, but where's the fun in that? 

gconftool-2 --toggle /apps/panel/global/tooltips-enabled
gconftool-2 --toggle /apps/panel/global/enable_animations
gconftool-2 --toggle /apps/panel/global/keep_menus_in_memory
gconftool-2 --toggle /apps/panel/global/tooltips_enabled
gconftool-2 --toggle /apps/panel/global/highlight_launchers_on_mouseover

And there are also some things that can help slightly with nautilus: 

gconftool-2 --toggle /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop
gconftool-2 -s /apps/nautilus/preferences/thumbnail_limit --type=int 100

Keybindings

Two help pages from the same site: unusual keys and loadkeys/xmodmap. Begin with finding out our keycodes already recognized in X by command 

xev

This records information on each input event, keyboard and (within corner box) mouse.

(Instructions valid for build 11.4.0 on August 2011)( My interest is in the mapping of the top row for now. The various escape keys are in the bottom and left, with function keys in the top row. I want to map the following:

  • The black squares (top 2nd-from-right) to F11, as in "Fullscreen", which I see as frequently useful in this environment.
    keycode 224 (keysym 0x1008ff8e, XF86Messenger)
  • Instead of remapping this key to F11, I can change the binding for metacity windows in gconf.
gconftool-2 -s /apps/metacity/window_keybindings/toggle_fullscreen --type=string XF86Messenger

Default font aliases

In furthering my preference for the Droid Sans family of fonts, I have become increasingly frustrated at the continued I-l ambiguity on the internet, largely blamed on the font aliased to the default family "sans". This is not directly changeable on the access level of one's web browser without local scripting. However, these aliases can be changed in Gnome.

While there seem to be few good references for how these aliases are defined, this OpenSUSE help thread runs through the issue nicely.

Basically we edit /etc/fonts/local.conf and put in a chunk of code:

For more details on linux font globals (or less, depending on how you view over-generalized information), see perhaps the Gentoo X.Org/Fonts page.

Possible issues

  • I can't seem to find Bitstream Vera on my list of display font options now, though Droid remains...

Bugs

  • System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuse action listings are all in Spanish.

Alternative OS

I am in the process of testing Android and Joli OS on an external laptop.

05/2011: Android is really for touchscreens. However, its trackpad-scroll interface may be useful to play with for the resistive tablet. Joli OS is a windowless rehash of Ubuntu Gnome Desktop without any advantages of size or speed. I also tried Plan 9, which while fun is an inappropriate UI. I still feel that the Gnome used on the current OS should have easy fullscreen compatibility. I mapped the black-window key, one over from the Frame Key on the top right of the keyboard, to F11, which is suitable for fullscreening most apps.

Hardware compatibility

I will update here the cheap Chinese crap that is undocumented otherwise that appears to work out-of-the-box with Sugar.

Resistive tablet pad

Still working on this.

Wireless networks

This section lists various semi-private wireless networks and how to connect:

Universities

  • Syracuse University AirOrangeX: As per Android instructions, set to Private EAP (PEAP) and MSCHAPv2. Username and password are as per SU.
  • Northwestern University: no luck yet with guest accounts...
  • Case Western Reserve University:
  • University of Chicago:

Airports

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