One of the OOo4Kids 0.9 new feature is the password protected preferences.
Principles :
Children love experiment. Most of them have good skills for that, but this is not what the teacher expects :-) So, the goal of this feature, is to implement, intelligently, a protection for the preferences, who : * avoids the children to modify something * but allow them to click, and see whatever they want (in read only mode)
Important : this feature is only a protection to avoid children hacking the OOo4Kids, but not a security (the password is readable in Common.xcu)
The Rules :
* The default password, if enabled, is : prof * By default, the preferences are unlocked * To activate the protection, one just need to click on the "Click to avoid modifications" Image button (the green padlock).
=> Be carefull : the protection will be validated once the dialog box will be closed, and this change is not reversible Means once activated, you'll need the password to disable that.
The views :
* A green padlock displayed on the bottom of the view, means : unlocked preferences
* A red padlock displayed on the bottom of the view, means : locked preferences
Disable the protection :
Change the password
Attention : the toolbars will stay customizable.
The feature was made on behalf of teachers, and in collaboration with them. Th code will be fully documented (I started already) at the Password protected preferences wiki page, and of course, if ever something can be reused in Openoffice.org, I'd be glad to provide patches (no idea whether it will interest anybody though)
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If you want to help us, to find resource and contribute back to improve OpenOffice.org, via the OpenOffice.org Education Project, donations are welcome
OOo4Kids is made for Educational purpose, has been thought to work with students, making them discover OpenOffice.org source code, without constraints, but just code, and having Fun. The promise is, when the code is good enough, it will be proposed for integration into OpenOffice.org.
You'll find the following versions (de, es, en-US, fi, fr, it, nl, pt, zh-CN):
* Windows XP ( SP3 or superior) * Mac OS 10.4 or superiior (PowerPC and Intel), * Linux 32 and 64 bits ( as archive containing .deb)
=> + Don't forget the Portable OOo4Kids for Windows !
- the changelog is continuously updated there : http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/Changelogs
To summarize, the The latest essential changes between 0.8 and 0.9 are :
English : * OOo4Kids is now localized in Finnish * Integrated sound and movies on Windows (DirectX), Mac(QuickTime) on Linux (gstreamer) with Impress. Thanks to Novell, Radek Doulik and Cedric Bosdonnat for the gstreamer part (Linux). * User's preferences are now password protected. (prof is the default password) * Impress Annotations mode during a presentation : color, and size of the pen can now be modified, backup'ed erased. Thanks to the students of Ecole Centrale Nantes and Thorsten Behrens for their work (eraser1 cws) * Impress 3D OpenGL transitions (Mac OS X only) * big size arrow cursor ( Mac OS X only) * Debian .deb archive on Linux (expérimental) * (Linux) OOo4Kids and all other applications do now appear in the main menu * New Open and save icons( thanks to Ben Bois) replaced old Crystal theme applications icons with the OOo4Kids one (some bugfixes .. )
In préparation : - big cursors on Windows and Linux, new eraser and pen cursors (bigger) with Impress, in annotations mode. - Puppy Linux version (very soon) - Linux Gdium version (build currently broken)
Note: we do not provide yet .rpm archive, but depending on the demand, we'll put one experimental .rpm archive online very soon ( Suse, RedHat and Mandriva compatible)
Anybody willing to prepare .rpm should be able to build OOo4Kids for those distributions witout any big probleme. Thanks to contact us for further information ( IRC : #ooo4kids , server : irc.freenode.net )
French : * OOo4Kids est maintenant proposé en Finlandais * Son intégré sous Windows (DirectX), Mac(QuickTime) et Linux (gstreamer) avec Impress. Merci à Novell, Radek Doulik and Cedric Bosdonnat pour le code relatif à gstreamer (Linux). * Préférences Utilisateur protégées par mot de passe. ( prof est le mot de passe par défaut ) * Annotations, couleur, taille stylo pouvant être modifiées, sauvegardées, gommées pendant une présentation (Impress) * Transitions 3D OpenGL (Impress, Mac OS X) * Curseur de grande taille ( Mac OS X seulement) * Archive .deb pour Debian sous Linux (expérimental) * (Linux) OOo4Kids et toutes les applications apparaissent dans le menu principal
En préparation : - gros curseurs sous Windows et Linux, nouveaux curseur gomme et stylo (plus gros ) avec Impress, en mode annotations - version Toutou Linux (prochainement) - version Linux Gdium (compilation actuellement cassée)
Note: nous ne fournissons pas encore d'archive de type .rpm faute de volontaires et de ressources, mais en fonction de la demande, nous mettrons une version experimentale en ligne prochainement. Toute personne souhaitant preparer des .rpm ( Mandriva, Red Hat ) devrait pouvoir créer ces archives sans problème.
Merci de nous contacter (IRC : #ooo4kids , serveur : irc.freenode.net).
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If you want to help us, to find resource and contribute back to improve OpenOffice.org, via the OpenOffice.org Education Project, donations are welcome
OOo4Kids is made for Educational purpose, has been thought to work with students, making them discover OpenOffice.org source code, without constraints, but just code, and having Fun. The promise is, when the code is good enough, it will be proposed for integration into OpenOffice.org.
OOo4Kids is a 7-12 years children Office suite, based on OpenOffice.org ( http://www.openoffice.org ) source code. 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 that the software is provided as it, and that you will use it at your own risks. Do not forget to do a backup either.
Yesterday, Matthieu Paret, student at UTBM, joined the channel and proposed to help us. So, I suggested to install a Mandriva, and try to build OOo4Kids. Once installed, we helped Matthieu to start the build, and spend yesterday evening, with some issues.
.. and this was finally successfull : we worked together today too, and finally fixed the old issue avoiding to build .rpm (mostly the desktop menus).
And we're done : it works, and OOo4Kids now installs as .rpm !!
For the moment, that's experimental, and needs some work, but we're glad :)
Un grand merci à Jean-Marie Lafon pour son super boulot.
Le contenu, qui concerne la future version 0.9 d'OOo4Kids est, comme vous pouvez le remarquer, en Français, mais si vous souhaitez traduire ces vidéos dans une autre langue, n'hésitez pas à nous contacter.
Note: this is french only
Thanks to Jean-Marie Lafon for his great work !!
The content is in French but easy to understand. Feel free to contact us is you want to translate.
After several days of tests, it's time to release OOo4Kids 0.9.
Stay tuned :-)
One of the next steps will be: document the changes, and start ClassRooms with the Education Project, describe about what has been done, and improve. The point is to demystify OpenOffice.org source code, and answer the questions, e.g. in discussions with student, explain what's inside an so on.
Professor at University of Technology of Belfort Montbéliard, France (http://www.utbm.fr)
Education project Lead, OpenOffice.org Domain Developer, Mac OS X porting project contributor and main OOo4Kids developer
