Talk:Wikimania

Jam prep

• update to most recent build
• chinese input on xos
• installs
  • measure
  • pygame wrapper + tubes
  • test things to demo, in general (esp. mesh)
• frontpage - collab w/ lauren in "easy projects to do" list

Things to demo

Please help us figure out what to demo on the laptops during Wikimania, and how. We will have a number of them around, so mesh network stuff would be excellent to show off.

Questions

Listed in order of priority.

• How do I access activities that are on the XO, but not immediately visible in the bottom sidebar?
  • Open the developer console (alt + =) and run 'sugar-activity <activity>' ie. sugar-activity Write
• How do I make the computer work in Mandarin? In order of priority:
  • Camino should render Mandarin characters as it browses
  • Would like to be able to type in Mandarin in various applications - Write, for instance
• How do I associate two activities in my Journal with each other?
• How do I change the name/color of my XO avatar?

Overall notes

• alt + = -> developers' console
• Ctrl + alt + erase -> restart sugar
• alt + c -> force quit (yes, it works here too)
• "su -" gets you into root, no password needed

To install a new activity

• put it on a thumb drive
• mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
• cp -r /mnt/Whatever.activity/ /usr/share/activities
• umount /dev/sda1
• restart sugar

Measure (ready)

• logs stored as flat text files
• whistling a good demo for fft
• no mesh

Write (ready)

• functional test passes
• collaboration via mesh works! but all text shows up in b&w, times new roman, 12pt in the other person's screen, even if you change size/color/font
• pictures don't show up via collaboration either
• no indication of collaborators in journal
• no indication when collaborator connections are started, interrupted
• hard to figure out clipboard.

Chat (ready)

• Is there a way to encourage meshing between two computers? Not all computers seem to see all others.

Journal (ready, Mel not)

• Functional test passes
• can't figure out how to associate activities to same project, another XO

Connect4 (ready)

• had to restart a few times, trial & error, to get a working game. but cool.

Camera (ready)

• would be nice for eben or someone to show the "proper" way to do a videochat; I think I'm getting there but it's a slow process

Library

• Mini-wikipedia
• How to make a package
• Chinese-language packages

Mesh networking

As of build 536, laptops should automatically join a MESH network (without internet connectivity, however). Once the laptop is powered up, it takes a few minutes to configure itself, but eventually olpcA and olpcB should be able to see eachother.

Generic MESH application sharing instructions: Have two laptops connected to MESH. Start the application on olpcA, and share it by changing the "share with:" drop down in the top right corner from private to my neighborhood. Shortly after, olpcB should be able to see the write application shared from the neighborhood view.

• Connect4 - This game works over MESH, however scores aren't recorded or kept.
• Write - This application works over MESH. Users can simultaneously edit the same document.
• Chat - Works over MESH.

• what games can we play to demo this? memorize?
• Lincoln's docs on tubes in pygame

Games

• 3d pong, if I can get it working
• Kuku
• Rule?
• Connect4

Hardware coolness

• display
• ruggedness
• lightweight
• pressure/capac. touchpads
• tablet mode
• wifi antennas/locks/dust covers

Info/links for main page

• Info abt trial countries — Category:Pilot site
• 15 minute projects — Category:Minutes - Category:Tasks by time Category:Tasks
• Link to wikipedia entry/projects
• Other wiki-related projects — Band of Wikis (dead, could be resurrected or reformulated)

Event ideas

• Hacking days, software hacking: Build wiki infrastructure for OLPC projects. Specific needs: form input to Mediawiki (immediate users would be Review squad and Summer of Content applicants), matchmaking aids for Summer of Content that can parse wikipages and categories of which interns are interested in what companies and automatically suggest match-ups).

• Hacking days, content hacking: Run a Jam in Taipei!

• Open space: Hold a Review squad session and advertise for local children to come and join.

• Brainstoring session: Come up with projects for Summer of Content 2007 - also good for recruiting mentors, interns, mentor orgs.

Swag ideas

• "make your own OLPC t-shirts" booth - fabric paint, rubber stamps in the shape of the "1" "laptop" "->" "XO" icons, and t-shirts.

Mediawiki feature requests

1. Provide a way to reliably render wikitext to html. Priority high.

Right now, we set up a bogus edit session for some random page, and scrape the html from Preview. But Preview is returning truncated page html for >1% of our pages.

Some options include:

• Debug Preview
• Create a new Special:RenderWikitext. This would also avoid the need for a bogus edit session.

2. Special:ExpandTemplates [1] Priority medium.

• defect: Doesn't expand some templates

  eg a <ref>{{cite journal in http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Animal&oldid=146110739 .

  http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Patrick reports nothing inside <ref> is expanded. [2]

3. Greater control over indirect template use. Priority low, speculative.

Currently, one only has control over templates which are physically present in the wikitext itself. By removing them before expansion. One has no control over the templates used by those templates. Wiki snapshot projects tend to create their own mediawikis, to get such control. There has to be a better way.

Some random ideas on what might be part of a solution include:

• A version of Special:ExpandTemplates which only does a single expansion step. Then you could see which templates are directly used by the top level templates. And by asking again and again, you could incrementally get the entire call tree.
• A new Special:ListAllTemplatesUsed which lists all templates used in a particular expansion. Ideally as a call tree.
• Perhaps a Special:ExpandTemplates which takes a blacklist of templates to remain unexpanded?