User:CScott

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C. Scott Ananian

Projects: Olpc-update, Firmware Security, Pippy, Olpcfs, Network Principles, Theft deterrence protocol, Customization key, Mini-conferences, Debian, Lease management server, Activation and developer keys, Boot animation, Early boot, partitioning, filesystems

I pick up stuff I find on the ground and make it work.

C. Scott Ananian is a software developer working at OLPC in Cambridge, MA. His home page is http://cscott.net.

Desiderata for 9.1.0

• Better "legacy app" compatibility; this should allow us to run existing apps like firefox, pidgin, and gimp in a reasonable manner:
  • Replace matchbox window manager with XMonad, Metacity, awesome, etc. Should provide both 'full screen' mode and traditional 'tiled' mode.
  • Switch to standard freedesktop.org startup notification mechanism: <trac>5271</trac>
  • Implement freedesktop.org notifications mechanism for alerts (low battery, low disk space, available software update)
  • Refactor home/friends/mesh view as operations on root window, so they make sense in a multiwindow setup. (It's been suggested that looking at the xpenguins code is instructive for understanding how nautilus,etc arrange their root window.)
  • App launching & mimetypes via XDG mechanisms (thanks, erikg)
• Improved antitheft mechanisms:
  • ECO fix and EC improvements
  • Security control panel, with "am I stolen" and lease renewal buttons: <trac>1502</trac>, <trac>6428</trac>
  • olpcrd work: <trac>7397</trac>
  • Revoke root capabilities when booted with security enabled: <trac>7562</trac>
• Improved update mechanisms
  • Real COW for pristine versions, allowing... <trac>3581</trac>
  • ...binary-diff updates over http (avoiding rsync in many cases) <trac>4259</trac>, etc
  • Integration of core OS updates with software update control panel: <trac>7618</trac>
  • Integration of software updates with notification system
  • Incremental updates of activity bundles (only changed files)
  • Send back statistical data when checking for updates (batmon, etc) <trac>4594</trac>, <trac>6447</trac>
• Security/isolation work
  • Implementation of P_SF_CORE, P_SF_RUN
  • Mechanism to validate updates to loopholed activities & allow user to manage exceptions
  • Persistent activity storage
  • NSS modules for rainbow users and for olpc/root users
  • Rainbow
• Journal improvements
  • Proper display of 'new versions' of activities
  • Tagging system to allow folder-like management for advanced users
  • Datastore rework
  • Direct execution of activities from datastore (avoid installation step) <trac>7713</trac>
  • Ability to have multiple versions of an activity installed concurrently. (API work necessary: <trac>7713</trac>)
• Translation improvements
  • "multiple languages, multiple places": translation system should look in local, then activity, then system translation tables, then repeat for each in a set of fallback languages (eg, quechua, spanish, english)
  • separable translation packs
  • "click-to-translate": wiki-like editing of translatable labels in the UI
• "Asynchronous internet"
  • Integration of wwwoffle with small local cache
  • Content bundles to seed that cache
  • Mechanism to request downloads later
• Library improvements
  • The current API is a mess, doesn't match the documentation on the wiki, is inconsistent with the activity.info format, etc.
  • Merging content and activities -- a bundle ought to be able to have *both* a library.info *and* an activity.info
  • Using a content format which is consistent with "offline internet" content -- more or less consider installing content files as pushing stuff into an offline cache
  • Dynamic generation of the top-level "home" page so we don't need to run the indexer after installing content bundles.
• Fedora integration
  • tools to manage forked packages better. To start with: a notification tool to let us know if a new upstream release has occurred for a package we have forked.
• Printing support
  • Print postscript (or pdf, or whatever, just pick *one*) to school server via CUP (IPP?), and install a "decent selection" of printer drivers on the school server. Control panel for 'default printer name', fixed to 'XS' by default.
  • Add basic printing support to Write, Read, and Browse; set PRINTER env variable.
  • for future, add support to Paint, Record, etc.