INTRODUCTION

Using the Chat Activity, you can send messages to your friends about things like your journey to school or your favorite animal. You need at least two computers to use the Chat Activity - your own and the one that your friend uses.

Chatting can be fun, and you can communicate with more than just one other person.

Starting Chat

Chat is a collaborative Activity that lets you hold a text-based conversation with others. Chat must be shared to be useful - without sharing, it does nothing.

If there is an existing chat session you want to join, see JOIN CHAT. Otherwise, start Chat as described below, and either invite others to join, or share it publicly with the neighborhood.

You can start the Chat Activity from one of two places - the Home View and the List View. Look at the Home View first to see if it is in the ring of favorites:

Your Home View may look quite different. You can look for the image that the arrow is pointing to above. It is the Chat Activity icon. Click this icon to start the Chat Activity.

If you do not see the Chat Activity icon, go to the top right of the screen in the Home View and click this icon, which is for the List View:

When you see a list of Activities, scroll down the list until you see the Chat Activity icon:

Click the Chat icon to start the Activity.

Or you may want to add the Chat Activity to your Home View, to make it easier to get to. (The Home View is the screen you see when you start the computer.)

To add it, click the star on the left side of the icon. Now you can return to the Home View and start Chat from there.

To return to the Home View: 

Go to the top of your screen and click this icon.

Now you can start Chat by clicking the Chat icon in Home View.

Sharing Chat

You can either share Chat publicly, for any other XO to join, or keep it private but invite specific people to join.

Sharing Chat publicly

In the Chat toolbar, you see "Share with: Private". Click Private and select "My Neighborhood".

Chat is now shared publicly for others to join. All other XOs that you see in your Neighborhood View should be able to see your shared Chat, and join it.

Sharing Chat privately

In the Chat toolbar, you see "Share with: Private". Leave that as private, but with Chat as your current Activity, switch to Neighborhood View, and find a friend that you want to invite to a private Chat. Hold the pointer on their icon, and in the popup menu, select "Invite to". A Chat icon appears in the menu.

They then get an invitation to Chat appearing on their frame, as well as your Chat icon appearing in their Neighborhood View.

You can invite as many other XOs to your Chat as you like, creating a private group discussion.

Anyone else who joins can invite others.

Join a Chat

You can join a Sugar Chat that has already been started.

Two or more XO computers from One Laptop Per Child can speak to each other directly without an Internet connection. This is a direct connection. You can also chat with people on the Internet who use Sugar. This section describes joining a chat between two or more XO computers from One Laptop Per Child.

First, look at the Neighborhood View to see if there is an existing Chat you want to join.

CHAT SAFELY: Only chat with someone you know. If a someone invites you to chat, don't chat with them unless you know them.

If you see a XO icon with a little speech bubble icon next to it, that person is in a shared Chat. Several people may be around the Chat icon, showing a group Chat.

Click the little speech icon and select the Join option.

Then the Chat Activity starts, connected to the shared Chat. You see the other people in the Chat, on the Frame.

Chatting

Once you are in the Chat Activity, you can begin typing to send a message and chat with the other person. After you type a message you can press the enter key to send it.

To enter messages type them in the box at the bottom of the Chat Activity. Always press enter at the end of the message. Once you press enter your message appears on your friend's computer.

Accept an invitation to chat

You may be invited to chat. An invitation appears as a little speech icon in the upper-left of the screen in every view. (The invitation also appears on the Frame.) The colors of the icon match the colors of the friend who sent the invitation.

You accept the invitation by hovering over the icon and selecting Join. You decline the invitation by selecting Decline.

Things to Do with Chat

Chat is a great for sending messages back and forth with a friend, socializing, and working together on projects.

Remember that being polite on a computer is just as important as being polite when you're speaking with someone. 

Be polite. Try not to interrupt.

Read through what people are saying before you say something.

Don't type in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. This style is considered rude as it is like shouting at someone.

If you do not speak the same language as another person it may be difficult to communicate with Chat. Be patient. If you have an Internet connection, you can try going to www.google.com/translate and type in a phrase that you want to say in another language so you can be friendly online. 

Fun

It can be fun to make words shorter when typing in a Chat Activity because it is faster, like texting (sending messages) on a mobile phone. For example instead of typing in "how are you?", you can type in "how r u?"

  The following are some ways you might like to try using Chat:

Arrange a time to meet friends to play.

Organize a community gathering.

Bring friends together to talk about doing a group project.

Brainstorm ideas (either "fast and furious" or by taking turns).

Ask your teacher questions about your homework.

Use Chat and write a story with friends online using the Write Activity.

Use Chat to practice writing in a foreign language (see if you can find a native speaker to chat with).

Organize other Sugar or XO users to meet and learn from each other.

Use Chat to communicate with a grandparent or other family member.

Interview an expert using the Chat Activity as if they were in the classroom, especially an expert who wouldn’t otherwise be able to visit.

Take group discussion notes.

Play a word-association game such as typing the first word that comes to mind when your friend types red.

Play a role-playing game (for example, have a friend pretend to be a character from a book you are reading, and chat with the role-playing friend).

Use emoticons in Chat

There are ways to tell friends how you feel just by using letters - they can let someone know if you are happy, sad, or having fun. When you make letters look like a face, they are called emoticons.

Some are written so that you read them sideways.

This is a happy face:

:)  

This is a sad face:

:( 

This is a wink:

;)

See if you can find the keys on the keyboard to make the faces

The two dots are the colon key : and the semicolon key ;

The mouth are the parentheses keys ()

You can also make faces that go across:

Happy

(^_^)

Sad

(<_>)

Winking (^_~)

What other emoticons can you create with text in the Chat Activity?

Can you draw pictures using only the text symbols on your keyboard? This combination of a symbol and a number looks like a sideways heart <3. "I <3 my XO" means, "I love my XO."

ASCII art

See if you can make an XO Computer:

 \___/
 |___|  
 \___\ 

or a bicycle:

   __o
 _ \<,_
()/ ()

What else can you make?

Make Friends

When you are in the Neighborhood View, if you move the pointer over someone, you can see their name, and click Make Friends. When you Make Friends, your new friend appears in your Group View list.

The Group View list helps you keep a list of your friends online who you like chatting with. 

Read a past log of conversations

If you open the Journal Activity to open the Chat in the detail view, you can choose to open the Chat Activity with the Write Activity instead of the Chat Activity window.

Notes for parents and teachers

Chat presents a great opportunity engage children in reading and writing. The natural inclination for children to socialize and express themselves can be channeled in some of the exercises outlined above. (Some children who are by their nature shy and reserved, are more confident speaking up in a chat room.) Chat can be motivating and is an authentic use of language skills, however, preparation and supervision are recommended.

Prepare your children and students:

Remind them never to chat with someone they don't know.

Remind them to be courteous and never to use language they wouldn't be comfortable with in their oral communication (for example, it's OK to disagree, but not to be disagreeable).

Prepare your chat session:

Some teachers prepare questions in advance. They can paste these questions into the Chat session from the Clipboard or Write Activity—this helps them stay on task and keeps the pace of the session lively.

Limit the number of students participating in the Chat session; more that 10–12 participants makes a session chaotic.

Ask your students to prepare by posing questions in advance.

As in any classroom discussion, keep the conversation focused on just one or two topics. 

IT IS SOMETIME USEFUL TO USE ALL-CAPS TO GET EVERYONE'S ATTENTION.

Advanced features

Computers not running Sugar can initiate chat connections to a Sugar user by running a Jabber (XMPP) client, either with both computers registered on the same Jabber server or by running a link local XMPP account such as Empathy with salut or Pidgin with Bonjour.

Here's an example of a buddy list on another non-Sugar computer.

When you initiating the chat on a non-Sugar computer using a Jabber client, an invitation appears on the Sugar computer and the Sugar user can chat with you as usual except that the colors of the non-Sugar participant's response lines are gray as shown below.

Here's what the non-Sugar computer sees on their Jabber client.

And here's the response as seen on the Sugar computer. 

CHAT SAFELY: Remember, only chat with someone you know. If someone invites you to chat, don't chat with them unless you know them. It's perfectly okay to refuse a chat request.

Note to parents and teachers

You can use this feature to chat with Sugar-enabled computers from non-Sugar-enabled computers; hence you can chat with your child or class from a conventional desktop or laptop computer.

Somebody Should Set The Title For This Chapter!

More Help

For more help with _ you can try these avenues:

VideoLan Documentation 

should first look at the very good documentation at the developers site:

link

Online Forums 

You can also try searching through the forums for information.  

link

The forums contain a lot of postings from users on many topics. You can use the search system to locate topics or just browse the categories. If you don't find what you want then try subscribing to the forums and posting your question to the relevant category. There are a few things to keep in mind when asking a question in a forum or to a mailing list. First, be as clear as you can with your question and provide any information that you might think would help some to try to help you. You might, for example, include information about the operating system you are using, or various specifics that relate to what you are trying to achieve. Additionally, it is always good practice to also post back to any forum or mailing list if you manage to solve your query and include clear information on how you solved the puzzle. This is so that someone else that may have the same issue can resolve it using what you have found out. If possible post back to the same thread (discussion topic) so that anyone searching through the forum can follow the discussion including the solution.

Web Search

Searching the web is always useful. If you are looking for problems arising from errors reported by the software then try entering the error text into the search engine. Be sure to edit out any information that doesn't look generic when doing this. Some search engines also enable you to try searches of mailing lists, online groups etc, this can also provide good results.

Mailing Lists

Mailing lists are good places to look through for answers to questions. The archives are located here :

link

You can browse the archives (although this can take a while). You can also subscribe to the mailing lists and ask a question:

link

Please note the suggestions about posting to forums and mailing lists in the above section.

IRC

IRC is a type of online chat. it is not the easiest to use if you are not familiar with it but it is a very good system. There are a variety of softwares for all operating systems that enable you to use IRC. The IRC channel is where a number of the developers are online and some 'superusers'. So logging into this channel can be useful but it is very important that you know exactly what you are trying to find out before trying this route. The protocol for using the channel is jus tot log in, and ask the question immediately. Don't try and be too chatty as you are probably going to be ignored. It is also preferable if you have done some research using the other methods above before trying the channel. The details for the IRC channel are:

IRC network: detail

Channel: #detail

Glossary

default chapter : put a glossary here or include one from the shared Glossaries

There will be info on how to do this soon.... 

License

All chapters copyright of the authors (see below). Unless otherwise stated all chapters in this manual licensed with GNU General Public License version 2

This documentation is free documentation; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This documentation is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this documentation; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.

Authors

AdvancedFeatures
© Walter Bender 2008
Modifications:
Anne Gentle 2008

ConnectingToGoogleChat
© adam hyde 2008
Modifications:
Walter Bender 2008

Credits
© adam hyde 2006, 2007, 2008
Modifications:
Todd Kelsey 2008

Glossary
© adam hyde 2006, 2007

Help
© adam hyde 2006, 2007

Introduction
© adam hyde 2006, 2007, 2008
Modifications:
Anne Gentle 2008
Brian Jordan 2008
Todd Kelsey 2008

JoinChat
© adam hyde 2008
Modifications:
Anne Gentle 2008
Morgan Collett 2008
Todd Kelsey 2008
Tom Boyle 2008
Walter Bender 2008

StartChat
© adam hyde 2008
Modifications:
Anne Gentle 2008
Morgan Collett 2008
Todd Kelsey 2008
Tom Boyle 2008

ThingsToDo
© adam hyde 2008
Modifications:
Anne Gentle 2008
Todd Kelsey 2008
Tom Boyle 2008
Walter Bender 2008

Free manuals for free software

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