20 Graduates from PyXO

Couple of weeks ago, Mohammad Nawahda started a dynamic team to make sure PaleXOers get the proper training about Python to ensure they have what it takes to start developing some great local activities and customizing others. We called it PyXO.

Hanna Kreitem managed to book a room in BZU CCE at Al Masa Building in Ramallah. There, we had 5 three-hours sessions, in which we explored, played with, practiced and hacked around python, GTK and Sugar.

Attendees were around 20 on average. Mostly are PaleXO members, some open source lovers, others joined PaleXO when they learned about what we do. I was amazed of how excited the guys were about Python and enthusiastic about starting building their very first activity and games.

The Python-effect was shown on the guys that came back everyday to learn more and more about it. They simply loved it. Sundous Hussien even started to brainstorm about games and activities that they want to start developing. Simply the idea was to capture and develop kids creativity by creating their future using a game, Sundous calls, Future Time Machine.

Started by introducing Python and it's inline interpreter. Playing around with Numbers, Strings then moving to more advanced structures, Lists, Dictionaries and Tuples. The following picture shows one of my favirote examples, which is calculating big numbers on the fly!

We also moved with learning how to build a Graphical User Interface (GUI) using GTK+ and PyGTK. We also moved on with a real life example by rebuilding Translate Activity that we built sometime ago. Starting with a standalone (non-sugar) program and then move on with how to make it run on Sugar, packaging it and installing it on Sugar.

Now that we are done with the basic training, we hope that software development will be moving much faster in the community and we hope we would come up with some great activities that would help kids learn better.

We will be having some small meetups to play around more with Python and Sugar and to start actually working and implementing some Activities. Meanwhile, we'll start to brainstorm about ideas that can be implemented.

At the end, we really would like to thank BZU CCE, Marwan, Nehad and Hanna Kreitem for helping us getting a place where we can gather and give the sessions.

Want to help? Have Ideas for Activities? Leave us a comment.

Writing In Arabic in Sugar

To get Arabic Language working on OLPC Sugar OS, follow the following steps:
(For more information please refer to this link).

First of all you have to be a root to use 'yum' package manager, so follow these commands:

$ su
# yum update
# yum install fonts-arabic
....
# yum install scim scim-gtk
...
# yum install scim-m17n scim-tables
...
# yum install m17n-db-arabic.noarch

After doing this, you need now to activate scim at the start of Sugar (the interface of XO laptop), to do so you need to copy this file ~olpc/.xsession-example to ~olpc/.xsession and then configuring it to add some line of code as follow:

# cp ~olpc/.xsession-example ~olpc/.xsession
# vi ~olpc/.xsession

Then add the following lines to the file:

export XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM
export GTK_IM_MODULE=scim
export USE_XOPENIM=t
scim -d

Now you need to reboot you XO laptop, just type:

# reboot

After booting, Open Browse Activity put the cursor on the text field then hit the HOT KEY for SCIM which is (CTRL+SPACE) a little pop-up window on the right bottom of the screen will show, just change the language to Arabic and start typing, Wohoo, it's writing Arabic characters.

There's one main Problem I am still facing typing in Arabic:

1. There's some letters don't come in the correct format, for example if you typed "m" Arabic letter followed by "n" Arabic Letter, it won't attach them to each other, instead they will be like separated letters! (See Picture)

This is a good start in Arabizing OLPC. However it still needs a lot of work.

If you have problems in writing Arabic in OLPC, please send us a note we will try our best to help you.

Arabizing Sugar Interface

To Change your Sugar Interface Language to Arabic you can follow these steps,

7.60-8.20
If you are running Build 7.60 (8.20), then it's your lucky day, you can simply roll over your oX in the center of the circle, and Choose Control Panel (As in the Picture). Then go to Languages and choose Arabic. That's All! You need to restart your XO to apply these settings.


After Rebooting you will notice that it is translated in Arabic as in the Following Image:
Older Versions than 7.60-8.20
If you have older version (Normal Case) then you won't find the Control Panel under the main list of your XO. But, you still can use some commands to do the job. So, Open a Terminal Activity, and type:

# sugar-control-panel -s language Arabic/Lebanon
# reboot

This will change your interface language and will restart your XO.

P.S.
To see a list of available languages, type:

# sugar-control-panel -h language