EToys on the OLPC

Bert Freudenberg is talking to us (and showing us) the OLPC device this morning. I've been skeptical of the machine, but it is an interesting device. They've done a number of interesting things to keep the price of the screen down, and yet still give you something that's visible in daylight (as opposed to this Thinkpad I'm typing on :) ).

The system is using Linux (somewhat stripped down RedHat), X11, GTK+, Cairo, and D-Bus (messaging framework for inter-application comms). The UI is "Sugar", written in Python. There's an AbiWord based editor, and a Firefox based browser. There are also two educational apps:

• TamTam (music)
• EToys (Squeak)

EToys is a media-rich authoring environment (I've used it in a software class I did for 4th and 5th graders a few years ago). EToys was influenced by the original Smalltalk-80 work at PARC, by LOGO, by Apple's HyperCard, and by Self (comes out in Morphic).

EToys is based on Morphic. You have Players, Costumes, and Uni-classes. Scripting is implemented by having classes created on the fly for you, and making the environment be instance based.

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