Production Notes for the Lubuto Library Bemba Letter Board

V.1 December 2010 Mike Lee, Sugar Labs DC, mikelee@laptop.org , curiouslee@gmail.com The production workflow and specific steps used to produce version 0.9 of the Lubuto Library Bemba Letter Board in Etoys will be described below. A version of the file was posted to the Squeakland Foundation Showcase: http://squeakland.org/showcase/project.jsp?id=10275 The file has also been delivered to the Lubuto Library team in D.C. and Lusaka, Zambia. The descriptions of the authoring steps assume basic knowledge of Audacity 1.3 (for both sound recording and editing) and Etoys 4 based on the built-in help files and tutorials as well as the OLPC Sugar interface. Both Audacity and Etoys are open source cross platform tools that run on Mac, Windows and Linux. However, Audacity is not officially packaged as a Sugar Activity. NOTE: A major update (signed build 10.1.3) of the OLPC XO Sugar operating system is due at the end of December 2010. The Etoys authoring steps will need to be tested again in the new build. This new update may finally fix the broken sound recorder in Etoys for Sugar and the Lubuto Team may want to do the upgrade in 2011 to take advantage of that fix. The overall workflow involved recording spoken Bemba sounds and words with a USB microphone and Audacity 1.3 running on an Acer Aspire One netbook running Windows 7. The sound files were reviewed and the desired phonetic letters sounds were labeled in Audacity and exported individually as AIFF audio files. The audio files were placed on a USB flash drive and transferred to an OLPC XO-1.5. From within Etoys, each of the sound files was imported into the Sound Library of the Etoys project. Artwork for the letter board was created in Adobe Illustrator and exported as an 825 x 1200px JPEG file. The JPEG was also loaded onto a USB flash drive, but had to be copied to the onboard memory of the XO in the Journal in order to import into Etoys without generating a program error. From within the Etoys project, the JPEG was placed, sent to the background and locked down to avoid being knocked out of place. Transparent rectangles, each dragged out of the supplies flap, were set up over each letter in the JPEG background image. Each transparent rectangle was assigned the proper sound from the Etoys Sound Library and scripted to play on mouseDown.

The project was saved and as a self-contained Etoys .pr file that was copied to USB drive for back-up to the Windows 7 netbook and uploading to the Squeakland Foundation Showcase. The Letter Board file played on Windows and Macintosh computers exactly as it did on the OLPC XO. To begin authoring the next letter board, it is recommended that a copy of the version 0.9 Bemba letter board be used as a starting template. All of the existing Bemba sounds can be cleared out of the Sound Library and the Bemba Letter Board artwork unlocked and deleted. The slimmed-down file can be saved under a different file name. The file will retain a bit of scripting code provided by the Etoys Team that eliminated the sound echo bug. Sugar Labs DC can help create new letter board artwork when the character sets have been determined. Artwork can also be created in any software that can handle setting large alphabet letters and export an 825 x 1200 px color JPEG.

Editing recorded sound in Audacity

Fig. 1: The Audacity 1.3 interface with a Bemba sound recording placed and labeled. Creating a new project in Audacity will present an empty workspace ready to display the tracks of an imported sound recording. Before working with a sound recording, go to Tracks > Add New > Label Track and a new blank Label Track will appear at the bottom. Be sure to name and save the project. Opening the sound recording will display the waveform of the left and right stereo channels if a stereo microphone was used. The entire waveform will be compressed into the width of the project window. Select View > Zoom In (or use the key command) to 2

zoom in on the beginning of the waveform. Move the horizontal slider under the waveform to pan left and right across the zoomed view. Use the play button to play the entire sound recording for review. Or drag across either of the waveforms to select a portion of the waveform to play back. The Effect menu has an extensive array of audio processing filters. The most useful for the letter board can amplify the volume and remove noise. The portions of the waveform containing the desired letter or word sounds need to be highlighted and labeled. Drag across a segment of the waveform to highlight it and select Tracks > Add label at selection. An editable label will appear for the highlighted segment in the Label Track. Type the label text into the label field (see Fig. 1). Once all the waveform segments are highlighted and labeled, go back to each one of the labels in turn and click on the text of each label to highlight. Select File > Export selection and export as AIFF format. For better access later in the Sound Library of Etoys, start the name of each saved selection with a two digit number 01, 02, 03 10, 11, etc. followed by an underscore and name of the sound. Starting the exported AIFF file name with a number will force the imported sound to appear at the top of the Etoys Sound Library list. Keep the file name short. Save the Audacity project often!

Importing AIFF sound files into the Etoys Sound Library

Fig. 2: Sequence of dialog boxes, starting with the Object Catalog dragged out of the Supplies Drawer, that need to be traversed to import AIFF audio files into the Sound Library of an Etoys Project. Collect all the saved AIFF files and the JPEG of the artwork for the letter board onto a USB flash drive and insert that into the OLPC XO. With a new blank project started in Etoys, click on the Supplies icon in the main men to open the Supplies Drawer. Drag the Object Catalog out of the drawer. It will expand to another panel full of objects (at left of fig. 2). Click on the Multimedia category button. Click and drag out the Sound Library. Click on the load button in the Sound Library. Navigate to media in the file hierarchy at the left of the Please select a file dialog. In the media directory, there will be a subdirectory representing the USB drive full of AIFF files. Double-click one of the files.

Fig. 3: File rename/accept dialog. Another dialog to rename the file will open (fig. 3). No need to rename the file. Click Accept. Repeat the file loading in the Sound Library until all your files are in the list (see lower right fig. 2).

Importing the JPEG artwork file into the Etoys project

Fig. 4: Find an entry in the Journal icon in the Etoys menu bar.

Switch from Etoys to the Journal and drag the JPEG from the USB drive into the internal memory of the XO. This is necessary because Etoys does not seem to recognize JOEGS on USB flash drives without throwing an error. In the main menu bar back in Etoys, click on the Find an entry in the Journal icon (fig. 4) and a dialog box showing the contents of the Journal will appear (fig. 5).

Fig. 5: Background artwork JPEG listed in the Journal. Be sure to select the JPEG that was copied into the XOs memory.

Fig 6: Background artwork JPEG placed in the Etoys project with Halo shown. The artwork will drop into the Etoys project with the Halo visible. Using the Move icon in the halo, make sure the artwork (825 x 1200 px) is centered and flush with the bottom of the screen as pictured in fig. 8.

Fig. 7: Menu button in the Halo. Click once on the Menu button in the halo (fig. 7) and select send to back (fig. 8).

Fig. 8: Halo menu button items. Select the menu button again to activate resist being deleted and again for resist being picked up.

Fig. 9: Etoys menu button to open the supplies drawer. Open the Supplies Drawer again (icon in fig. 9). And drag out an instance of the generic light blue rectangle object and place it over the first letter in the artwork (fig. 10).

Fig. 10: Generic rectangle object dragged out of the supplies drawer onto a letter in the artwork. Click and drag on the yellow icon lower left of the halo to resize the rectangle to cover the letter. If you lose the halo, just right click on the rectangle again. Use the Move (brown) icon as necessary.

Fig. 11: Configuring transparent fill in the rectangle from the Halo menu button. Again from the halo of the generic rectangle, click on the menu icon (fig. 7) > fill style > change color (fig. 11).

Fig. 12: Dragging the eye dropper right to left across the grey transparency bar. Set the transparency to zero by dragging the eye dropper to the left of the grey transparency bar (fig. 12). You will see the rectangle go from solid light blue to transparent with the black border remaining. You will set the border to transparent as well later.

Fig. 13: Halo icon to open the Watcher Panel.

Assigning a sound from the Sound Library and script action to the transparent rectangle

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Fig. 14: Defining a sound script in the Watcher Panel for the rectangle. To assign and sound and the mouse down action to the rectangle, click on the blue eye icon (fig. 13) to open the Watcher Panel for the rectangle (fig. 14). In the first horizontal green divider bar below the search field, click the drop down menu labeled basic (fig. 14) and select sound (fig. 15).

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Fig. 15: Selecting sound script type in the Watcher Panel for the rectangle.

Fig. 16: Drag the Rectangle | make sound tile out of the Watcher Panel to break out its own small panel. In the Watcher Panel, click on the label Rectangle | make sound and drag it out to the left clear of the Watcher Panel. The label will expand out to become its own small floating panel (fig. 15). Select the correct sound name from the tile with the two green triangles to the right of make sound.

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Fig. 17: Click on the normal button and select mouseDown. In same small floating palette (fig. 16), click on the normal action button to open another drop down menu. Select the mouseDown action. Click on the circle in the upper left of the panel to close close and return it to the Watcher Panel. You should see the correct sound name and mouseDown configured (fig. 18). Then close the Watcher Panel.

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Fig. 18: Close the Watcher Panel.

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Fig. 19: Set the border of the rectangle to transparent as well. Activate the halo of the rectangle again and as shown in fig. 19 and fig. 12, set the border to transparent as well. Once the halo is deactivated by clicking away from the rectangle, the halo can be brought back again any time just by right-clicking on the area occupied by the now-invisible rectangle With the halo deactivated, left clicking on the location of the invisible rectangle will cause the AIFF sound to play on mouse down. Repeat creating transparent rectangles and assigning sounds and scripts for each letter in the artwork. If at any time you needed to create then delete a rectangle, the purple trashcan may appear in the lower left of the workspace. Simply right-click on the trashcan to expose the halo and then delete the trashcan.

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