Talk:Creating a collection

Feedback, questions, comments, observations, thoughts, etc, are most welcome.

new creation

I've been trying to create a content bundle. The selecting content information was great, but I would find more specific information on the packaging very helpful. Here are some of the specific questions I have;

1. I've got a audiobook which has each chapter as a separate file. Is there anyway to display them all as just one book instead of adding titles, descriptions etc to each separate entry in the xml file and then having them display as separate items.

Yes, but it sounds as though you would have to select each of them separately to play them. If you want to play the book all the way through, the media player would have to read them in as a playlist, which doesn't currently happen automatically.

2. The entry url in the xml file. Do we just enter /file Or do we need to enter something along the lines of /home/olpc/library/yourfolderhere/file etc.

Use a relative url from the root of the bundle; the location of the bundle in the system may change.

3. It says that you can create new catagories but I assume you don't want too many of them. So it would be nice to have more guidelines on what you should name them and when you should create them

Please use one or the existing categories if appropriate, or select a new category that is a similarly general plural noun.

4. Should I use the same name in the .info file as the library name in the .xml file?

Yes. Note however that the xml file format is flexible. sj

Thanks for your help Crazybus 07:23, 28 July 2007 (EDT)

TurtleArt file format

TurtleArt samples should probably be content bundled. TurtleArt data files are a .ta file with associated .png image, usually with the same name. How should these be packaged so that TurtleArt can find the .png, if it exists? --Lincolnquirk

Packaging an activity as a collection

What are the semantics for this? Does a hybrid activity/content bundle get installed as both an activity and a content bundle (so it appears on the launcher, etc.)? --Lincolnquirk Sat Aug 25

For 9.1, hopefully yes. At the moment, you have to repackage the bundle and rename the extension, as mentioned on the page. --Sj talk

Library server?

"... and a second bundle of unlimited (but reasonable) size for inclusion on each school's library server." How does this work? Is it as if the bundle on the server is installed locally, or does it just link off to the server on an item-by-item basis like any other web page? If it acts like more "local" storage, can this mechanism be extended to include specially formatted SD cards? (And if not, I think that's a good idea that they should implement anyway. Just pop in a card and it's like your XO has a few extra gigs of general storage...) I ask because apparently content bundles are installed in internal flash, which could fill up quickly if any significant audio or video content is included that a student is expected to study off site.

At some point we may implement features that treat the schoolserver library directory specially, for purposes of caching and transparent URL redirecting. At the moment, however, any server-sized archive of materials is simply a directory that is accessible via the browser, either on the local filesystem or via a webserver. The larger bundles containg smaller bundles that can be individually downloaded; so a "books" server bundle would be a zipped set of many individual collections in the books category.

Content bundles have a lot of potential for organizing items that otherwise would just be random things scattered in the Journal. This year's textbooks can be published as PDF, a small HTML file can describe which PDF is what book, and the whole thing can be bundled together and installed easily. Name it (in the Browser) after the current grade and classroom etc. Whether to keep old book bundles for reference depends on flash space constraints and licensing agreements. Bouncey 10:54, 6 January 2008 (EST)

Precisely. Sj

Experiences trying to create a content bundle

I had issues with trying to create content bundles for my OLPC (a stock G1G1 laptop). To assist others who may be having similar problems I'm putting the list here for reference. I was following instructions found in this wiki: Creating a collection and Library grid. --Ericvh Tues Jan 8

Thank you, Eric. sj

Web server mime types

The first problem I had was that it didn't seem like when I downloaded the .xol file (or .xo files for that matter) from my web-server that the content (or activity) would be installed. This was because my web server didn't know about the OLPC mime types. You need to add the following to your web-server configuration (/etc/apache/mime.types or just /etc/mime.types on Ubuntu systems)

  application/vnd.olpc-sugar      xo
  application/vnd.olpc-content    xol

If you can't change the web-server configuration, you'll have to manually create a Library directory and unzip your content there

  mkdir /home/olpc/Library
  cd /home/olpc/Library
  unzip <path-to-xol-bundle>
  /usr/share/library-common/make_index.py

indexing content

I tried using the library/library.xml method to generate an index for the content. This did not work. I ended up sticking to just writing my own index.html file

relative paths

for a 660 or earlier build

It seemed from the various instructions that you could use relative paths to your content data files (in my case pdfs). However, when the index.html gets installed, it gets installed to /home/olpc/.library/<content-name>/bundle_index.html, but the rest of your content stays in /home/olpc/Library -- so relative paths don't work. I just changed the relative paths to prefix /home/olpc/Library/<bundle-name> and things seemed to work fine.

The bundle itself isn't modified, but a bundle_index page with navigation and your initial index page was being created, for the g1g1 builds, in that temporary .library directory. As of 69x, this is no longer the case, and you should be able to use relative urls; which also means you should be able to zip up a collection with an index page from anywhere and turn it into an xol bundle without editing html pages. (you will still need to create metadata for it, at the moment). sj

Library.info generation

Why does the link on the Creating_a_collection page for creating a library.info file http://crank.laptop.org/~lauren/libraryInfo/ end up redirecting you to this site http://bantha.org/~kraken/olpc/bundler/makeLibraryInfo.html? If this is truly intended for use, shouldn't it be brought onboard to the laptop.org domain? Cjl 17:41, 27 April 2008 (EDT)

File Formatting

File Formatting section does not list .css (Cascading Style Sheet) nor .xsl (Extensible Stylesheet Language for Transformations). Cwhii 30-May-2008