Sugar lacks OLPC's dynamic content library

[skierpage]

In bug #1, cwhii laments expected "OLPC Library" with a list of libraries to pick from.

That bug somehow turned into "Add support to Browse for distro-customised start page" and was upstreamed to Ubuntu. But whether or not Ubuntu has a start page, and whether or not Browse can be configured to show it (BTW Browse's webactivity.py hardcodes it to _LIBRARY_PATH = '/usr/share/library-common/index.html'), that won't bring back the OLPC Library functionality of an expanding directory of local content that you've installed. My Rawhide-XO 20090316 build is also missing this functionality.

The "OLPC Library" home page relies on running scripts that rebuild a web page whenever you download and run a ​.xol collection bundle. That's what gives you a "library page" that gives you an expanding directory of local content that you've installed.

That library machinery lived in /usr/share/library-common in OLPC release 8.2.0. It is missing or broken in Sugar 0.84.0 on Rawhide-XO. I think it resided in the RPM package olpc-library-common, source in ​http://dev.laptop.org/git/library/library-activity/tree/ library-common subdirectory.

This machinery builds a new home page out of templates (using the Jinja templating engine) and at the same time generates the expandable library sidebar in the home page. ​http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Library#How_it_works documents it in more detail. Ubuntu or any distribution could customize this package to create a different home page. Or you could imagine refining the machinery to only update a library section of a home page created by some other step.

[FGrose]

Some related discussion in ​http://www.mail-archive.com/sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org/msg03208.html

[erikos]

What needs to happen here? Is this still valid? I don't think this is a sugar bug and is better discussed on the mailing list how to move forward here. Feel free to reopen if you think otherwise.