API reference

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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. This reference is primarily intended for Software Developers.

Platform Requirements

  • 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

GUI Libraries

Libraries for creating standard Windows-Icon-Menu-Pointer (WIMP) GUI applications.

High-Level Widgets

GUI (GTK) controls which expose the functionality of entire complex applications for use by other projects.

  • Abiword -- GTK widget embedding the Abiword Word-Processor
  • HulaHop -- embeds a Gecko 1.9 (Firefox 3.0 ocore) rendering widget XXX confirm that's what it really is
  • Evince -- PDF (and similar) document viewer as a GTK widget

Multimedia Libraries

Libraries that deal with multimedia and gaming functionality.

  • GStreamer (PyDoc) -- multimedia streaming library
  • CSound -- the CSound audio-generation library
  • OLPC Games -- PyGame wrapper that makes working within the OLPC-XO environment relatively straightforward (Strongly recommended for PyGame usage on the XO!)
  • PyGame -- GUI library suitable for Sprite-based 2D game development

Communications and Networking

Libraries for connecting to other processes, either on the local machine or across the network

  • D-BUS (PyDoc) -- desktop messaging (Remote Procedure Call (RPC) and Asynchronous Signalling) engine
  • Telepathy -- buddy and connection management including cross-machine RPC over D-BUS
  • PyXPCOM -- Library for controlling XPCOM applications (currently just XULRunner on the XO) XXX Should be available, but doesn't appear to be (that is, import xpcom doesn't work)

Support Libraries

Libraries which aren't neither GUI nor multi-media

  • SECore -- search engine implementation
  • JSON -- Javascript Object Notation parser/linearisation library
  • UrlGrabber -- url downloading library
  • OLPC -- the data-store implementation
  • Unicode -- the laptop must provide internationalized software, as a result you will need to use Python's Unicode support

Extraneous Libraries

Libraries which are present in the current builds, but not particularly "part" of the Sugar environment and which may be removed eventually.

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

Smalltalk Libraries

C Libraries

D-BUS Services

System Services/Hardware

  • Forth Lessons -- Series of tutorial-style lessons on the Forth language and the Open Firmware bios-replacement system on the laptop
  • DCON -- the display controller ASIC and its interface (note that normally you would use the HardwareManager D-BUS interface to manipulate the DCON)
  • Geode -- the Geode CPU (assembly-language optimization guide, links to data-sheets)