API reference

Developer's API References

The OLPC platform includes a large number of libraries and services. This page attempts to gather links to reference works which can be used when programming the XO laptops.

Platform Requirements

• Human interaction guidelines (HIG) for Sugar activities
• Activity Bundles describes the packaging structure
• Understanding sugar code provides an overview of how Sugar interacts with activities, including startup and shutdown, useful to understand the environment in which your activity will run
• Bitfrost summary (full spec) the security system which will control activities and their interaction with the system and other users

• Software components is a somewhat old document describing the various pieces of software and libraries involved in the system.

Python Libraries

Where official reference documentation isn't available, PyDoc-generated documentation is provided. You can generate local copies of the PyDoc-generated documentation from a running official image. Script is available via bzr branch http://www.vrplumber.com/bzr/autodoc

• Sugar Sugar Architecture -- core UI libraries
• OLPC -- currently just the data-store implementation
• Abiword -- GTK widget embedding the Abiword Word-Processor
• CSound -- the CSound audio-generation library
• D-BUS (PyDoc) -- desktop messaging (RPC and Signalling) engine
• GStreamer (PyDoc) -- multimedia streaming library
• Telepathy -- buddy and connection management including cross-machine RPC over D-BUS
• SECore -- search engine implementation
• HulaHop
• JSON -- Javascript Object Notation parser/linearisation library
• UrlGrabber -- url downloading library
• Evince -- PDF and similar document viewer as a GTK widget
• Gtk, (PyDoc) -- GUI library underlying the Sugar UI
• GObject, (PyDoc) -- Core (non-GUI) library of the GTK system
• Hippo -- canvas mechanism used by the Sugar.graphics libraries
• Cairo -- Low-level vector graphics rendering library
• RSVG -- Library for rendering SVG text from files/strings onto Cairo Canvases

• Yum -- package manager for RPM-based distributions
• RPM -- RPM manipulation library