lundi, septembre 14, 2009

Download and test OOo4Kids

For the one who would like to test OOo4Kids,0.5, just download it at the following URL :

Click here to download and test OOo4Kids 0.5 (development version)

This site is gracefully provided by TuxServices, and maintained by Nicolas Jeudy and Ben Bois. If you appreciate our work, please think to help us (donations and/or participation) via the non profit assiciation, 1901 law, EducOOo ( http://www.educoo.org ), who supports OOo4Kids.

OOo4Kids, (pronounce "OpenOffice for Kids") is a software (in development) designed for 7-12 children, based on OpenOffice.org source code, but simplified.

This means OpenOffice.org has some features OOo4Kids has not (like Base and Java). And if you need those features, please use OpenOffice.org, that you can download at : Download OpenOffice.org


Please do not forget OOo4Kids is thought for pedagogical purpose, and before to use OOo4Kids, you must make a backup of your documents. Last, you must NOT use OOo4Kids in production.

Libellés : , , ,

dimanche, septembre 13, 2009

Examples of external contributions lost for OpenOffice.org

Approximatively one year ago, I worked on 3D transitions in Impress implementation, for Mac OSX (work was started by Stephan Schaefer)

Since, I never received any help, nor sign of interest from the - so called - "Community".

And today, I saw there is an issue open ( see Issue 105023 ), asking for seach feature (not exactly the same;, but I'd say similar. From my side, this is too late, really : I simply gave up with the idea to fight QA and other horrors to integrate that in OpenOffice.org.

More, all this time and energy lost lead me to think : how are external OpenOffice.org contributions, means "not Corporate interest", considered in the project at the end ?

Nevertheless, this work will not be lost for all : it is LGPL, and I'll integrate it in OOo4Kids. I even have some new ideas ... stay tuned ;-)



References :

* Open GL 3D transitions in Impress
* Blog entries about the work in progress

Libellés : , , , , ,

jeudi, septembre 03, 2009

User Level in prefs : completed :)

Glad to say that the feature is now fully implemented, and works (uff). Means there is an UserLevel field in the Common.cxu, initialized to "Beginner" and we can change that. The changes are immediate, and will conditionnate the behavior of some features ( in fact, looks like the possibilities are enormous, and I'll write a list of what can be changed with that :)

What is good, is I had to learn a lot of things, to implement this tiny feature, but the best piece was the config manager... ufff .. not trivial.

The code is documented on the User Level wiki page. Feel free to contact me if you are interested to use it ;-)

Just wondering : does it worth to present a ClassRoom about that ? Please contact me if you think it does worth it

Last but not least, I'd like to say thank you to Eike Rathke, Thorsten Behrens and Cedric Bosdonnat who helped me (either advices or links, or even suggestions).

Libellés : , , , ,

mardi, septembre 01, 2009

User Level in the preferences (OOo4Kids, experimental)

I started to work on the "User Level" today (that's not finished yet). That's just a little feature, who will complete the password protected preferences, to avoid children doing something they do not understand.

The scenario is extremely simple :

* the prof enters the password (not yet implemented)
* once validated, he can access to the prefs, and change the settings.
* 3 possibilities : Beginner, Average or Expert

As shown in the screenshot below :

OOo4Kids : disk image mounted on Mac OS X

Once the user's level defined (default will be beginner), the behavior of OOo4Kids will be defined too. The idea is to have a consistent behavior when one level is choosen.

e.g. on Calc, the number of the functions who appear in the list, depend on the level. Say : 8 functions for beginner, 40 for average, and all ( more than 100) for expert.

We can imagine a lot of other features who could depend on that, to allow more soupleness with OOo4Kids.

Last but not least, thank you to Eike Rathke, who provided me precious advices with Calc.

Libellés : , , , ,