Be able to see any Image in Writer, as a slideshow ... (idea of 21st april)
Just a wild idea (don't know whether this is realistic or not), but after I watched Google Chrome video, I was thinking to myself : what about be able to see any image as a slideshow ?
(Sort of) scenario :
Imagine you are reading a Writer /Draw or whatever document, and in this document, a nice image.
-> click one dedicated shortcut : et hop ! the image appears in fullscreen, including possible annotations -> move the mouse : a front like menu appears, and you can stop, or display the next image found in the document, maybe do more ..
Ok, was just an idea ... back to the real work :-)
After some times debugging, I found what was not working, and now we have a new feature in Impress, in annotations mode:
- in eraser mode, or when you change the eraser size, the cursor is an eraser - in pen mode, the cursor is a pen - when changing the color, the cursor is an arrow
Verified on Linux and Mac OS X (remains Windows, never like the other ...)
This work is a follow up of the big project we have with Ecole Centrale Nantes, more precisely : improve Impress adding a canvas in overlay.
Other changes for 0.9.5 :
- added Arabic (yet some missing strings, and needs more attention, due to RTL behavior, and a second translator needed) - added Norwegian (Bokmal) - added Traditional Chinese - added some important fixes from the coming OOO_321
Todo before to release 0.9.5 :
- verify the cursor is ok on Windows too (check the hotspot e.g.) - cleanup in menus, toolbars (removing useless entrie) - cleanup in prefs (remove tabs) - change version number for 0.9.5 and create the new .DS_Store on Mac OS X
This is the last step before 1.0beta :)
FRENCH version : Apres quelques temps passes a debuguer Impress, j'ai trouve ce qui ne marchait pas et maintenant nous avons une nouvelle fonctionnalité dans Impress, en mode annotations :
- en mode "gomme", ou lorsqu'on change la taille de la gomme, le curseur devient une gomme - en mode stylo, le curseur est un stylo - lorsqu'on change la couleur du stylo, le curseur est une fleche (plus grosse sous Mac OS X)
Fonctionnement verifie sous Linux et Mac OS X (reste Windows, ou rien n'est comme ailleurs ...)
Ce travail est la suite du grand projet que nous avons avec l' Ecole Centrale Nantes, en particulier, ameliorer Impress avec un canvas en overlay, en mode presentation.
Autres changements pour la future version 0.9.5 :
- ajoute l'Arabe (encore quelques chaines manquantes, demande de l'attention, a cause de la prise en charge de droite a gauche de l'ecriture, et du fait qu'il manque un second traducteur) - ajoute le Norvegien (Bokmal) - ajoute le Chinois Traditionnel - ajoute quelques correctifs importants de la version 3.2.1 a venir
A faire avant la release 0.9.5 :
- verifier que le curseur est ok sous Windows (verifier le hotspot par exemple) - continuer a nettoyer les menus, et barres d'outils (en otant les entrees inutiles) - nettoyage dans les preferences (supprimer d'autres onglets) - modifier le numero de version pour 0.9.5 et creer le nouveau .DS_Store sous Mac OS X
C'est la derniere etape avant la version 1.0beta !!
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)
---------------------
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).
---------------------
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.
Yesterday, I finally figured out what was wrong with the upstream packaging, and the .deb we build install fine and can be deinstalled fine too. Just follow the instructions
The problem is, the upstream way of .deb is not the right one, and Jose Luis Redrejo who kindly helped me, suggested to return to the right Debian way.
One big issue, e.g., is that if you want to install Writer only, this is unclear with the current dependencies scheme, and needs to be seriously improved. Other issue, is there are not "Section" and "Priority" sections in the existing control file.
So, this must be changed, and we agreed to use the upstream way until 1.0 output, and then change for the real Debianization just after 1.0 is out (current milestone in progress is 0.9)
Experimental packages can be provided on demand. Either ask us the info by email, or (better) ask on IRC.
Last but not least : .rpm will follow soon if we find a volunteer.
Channel : #education.openoffice.org Server : irc.freenode.net
OOo4Kids is made for Educational purpose, has been thought to work with students, making them discover OpenOfice.org source code, without constraints, but just code, and having Fun. The promise is, when the code is good enough, it is proposed for integration into OpenOffice.org.
OOo4Kids is a 7-12 years children Office suite, based on 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.
The latest essential changes since 0.6 are
- New Start center (new design by Ben Bois) - Ooo4Kids is now based on OOO320_m11 OpenOffice.org source code (m12 for trunk) - default user interface scale is now 115% by default (better adaptated for children) - modified toolbar with 3 new buttons added (Writer, expert mode)
The latest biggest bugfixes since 0.6 are :
- several crashes when launching Ooo4Kids in command line are fixed - Windows : directly launch any application is now supported (no more crash) - Fixed the crash, when clicking on the icon, while OOo4Kids is already launched - mismatch with color/security tabs in preferences issue is fixed - Mac OS X : the new Apple remote (metallic, 2009 model) works
One more time, thanks to Ben Bois who created a new great background for the future version (0.8) of OOo4Kids :
The shapes of the buttons are no longer apparent, and when you roll over one of them, a help balloon explains you which application will open. Of course, things are not perfect, and we still have some bugs to fix, but this is very promising !! (and my children love it ;-)
IMPORTANT : the version proposed for download (0.6) below does NOT have the feature yet. The new splashscreen should be integrated in the version : 0.8, not before.
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.
Welcome to new students joining the OpenOffice.org Education Project
Morgan Magnin just advertised me today : two students from Ecole Centrale Nantes(aka ECN) will continue the effort this semester (january to june 2010) :-)
Welcome to Cyril le Mat and Arthur Bonnet!
It is planned to continue to improve the HP Tablet PC use with Impress.
Are you student in computing, and want to learn code (mostly C++), fight with well defined and mentored projects ? or simply contribute to OpenOffice.org, instead of doing dumb internal projects ? Just find a teacher, as correspondant, and join the OpenOffice.org Education Project :-)
Contact : IRC Channel : #education.openoffice.org Server : irc.freenode.net
EducOOo reversing money to the OpenOffice.org Project
The EducOOo non profit association is not really rich ( see : the Donations Thermometer for example ), but after I proposed the idea to the EducOOo Administration Council,it has been accepted.
The exact level is being discussed, and can be revised, but it should be between 10% and 15% of the money we receive (donations or partners).
As example : imagine we receive 3000 euros from some partner, or as donation : 450 euros will be directly reserved for direct help, like fund a developer (student prefered, but other cases will be studied) who cannot attend an event, or participate to buy hardware or whatever other action.
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 OpenOfice.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.
The latest changes since 0.5.1 are:
* (experimental) Portable OOo4Kids for Windows the following locales are provided : - en-US, fr, de, es, nl, it, pt - zh-CN is provided too - thanks to Julien Forgeat for the translation - but not tested (can be unusable) Please use them with caution, and report us any bug you found.
* New layout ( thanks to Ben Bois for the icons, and Vincent Ruffiot for the screenshot) : - fixed the white effect on right - fixed the look
* New toolbars behavior : now, the toolbars content depend on the User's Level ( can be changed in the prefs). See : Toolbars and User Level for further information.
* New locales are provided : - Italian, - Chinese (simplified), - Dutch (previous existing locales : English-US, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish)
* New XO port : OOo4Kids has been "Sugarized", means it does respect Sugar tree, and the .xo archive installs like any other activity.
* More OOo4Kids icons
* Linux : .deb and .rpm buildable (yet some bugs) * Linux : language packs buildable (will be used for XO port)
* Experimental : modified the UI in the prefs, adding the "password" feature, to protect the prefs (avoiding children doing wrong actions). * Will be implemented in 0.7. It is scheduled that the password will be enabled by default.
* Next step : - choose the definitive toolbars content, per level, and following the teachers recommandations - fix more issues with .deb and .rpm - more bugfixes - implement the password feature
After two years of an intense activity of the french part of the education.openoffice.org project, we are ready to reactivate this international list : this is one of our objectives for 2010 !!
To subscribe, just send a mail at : users-subscribe@education.openoffice.org confirm, and that's all : you can start contributing to the Education Project !!
To become a member, please follow the instructions provided there : http://education.openoffice.org/servlets/ProjectMemberList
Education Project aims to create a bridge between Educational World and OpenOffice.org Project, following 3 axes :
- create a network of teachers, using OpenOffice.org - provide a sharing area - provide new developers, and spread OpenOffice.org source code (teach OOo source code and coding guidelines, UNO, an so on)
Currently, this project counts around 110 members, but everybody is welcome, and there is so much to do, that any contribution is wamrly welcome too !!
Everybody is welcome : teachers, students, just curious :)
For the one willing to help us, we need people able to help us for the website, translate, manage the wiki, but not only (the list is not limited).
Other need is to compare, work together (collaborative work), and concatenate informations providing from several educational systems, and of course, share our knowledge.
Be welcome, and Seasonal Greatings to all of you !!
Eric Bachard Lead, OpenOffice.org Education Project
Last year, was Pierre Pasteau, who contributed to the moz2seamonkey migration. Thanks to Frank Schonheit who helped us a lot btw.
This year, we had two other students, Thomas Fontenay and Abelkader Belabbes, who did a great work too. The work they did, was to port OOo4Kids to the XO
Note: port OpenOffice.org directly is not an option, because an XO machine does only have 1GB of Hard disk, and 256 MB or RAM only, while OOo set is already 400MB :-)
Some will say this is not a directly visible result, but in fact, this is an extremely important result : Realize this XO port connected OpenOffice.org Community directly with XO / OLPC Community !! (like provide gdium suppport connected us to the OLPH community too)
Indeed, from one side, the .odf is essential, and from another, it must be considered that the students learned a lot of OpenOffice.org source code, in a short time. Learn the code first, is essential to my eyes. If they had to dive into QA, specs (what basically does mostly concern Sun employees), six month would have been too short. The other good effect, is that the OpenOffice.org Project yet built a strong link with an engineer school.
The difficulty is that create such bridges with schools is extremely long, needs a lot of energy, but, in return, creates a very positive image of the project, and can really help to find developers (remember, the code is the blood of a free software, not "politics ").
Just a bit of patience, and the future will be better !
Last but not least, we received several machines, exactly 3 XO-1.5 for the next coming students. The plan is to profile and try to improve Impress performances (the request is very high for the netbooks), and propose a backport in OpenOffice.org, if the code desserves it.
Those machines are reserved to the two first students (from France prefered), able to find a prof (mandatory) to make the link with the school.
How was it this year ? Well, change from svn to hg was a bit tricky (headhache caused by the rebase), but at the end, we did it. Jonathan Winandy, mercurial expert created its own repository, and we used it until the end. At the end, I pushed, with Thorsten Behrens and Rene Engelhard precious advices, all the changes into eraser01 cws.
Another part of the work is at issue 97972, but not only. The wiki too does contain a lot of information.
The students who contributed this year, are :
* Nelle Varoquaux * Jonathan Winandy * Leo Collet * Remy Dumas * Christian Jacques
And the professor who followed that is Morgan Magnin.
The feature is really great (specifications have been proposed last year) and we are preparing the cws, for the QA. It will be proposed for integration. There will not be a big change, because the option will not be active by defaut. The plan is to add other features in the next semesters.
I'll retain, like the previous time, it was a pleasure to work online with students, and to help them, to discover the OpenOffice.org source code, and more. Other important thing, is that you can work on the core, when you are enough close to the students, to mentor them, and hear carefully their problems. IRC ( channel : #education.openoffice.org , server : irc.freenode.net ) is really great for that.
Last but not least, I got a movie presenting the feature, made by Nelle Varoquaux, but I can't propose a link from there at the moment. Please click again later ;)
OOo4Kids is now localized in : - Italian - French - German - Spanish - Chinese (simplified) - Dutch - english-US (default)
Note: Japanese is postponed (no demand)
A big thank you to :
* Leo Moons (nl version), * Volker Merschmann and Florian Effenberger (German version), * Marina Latini and the Italian Team (Italian version), * Julien Forgeat (simplified chinese version)
On the way :
- Portuguese (missing strings in the MS Intaller)
New versions:
* XO Intel version (both XO-1 and XO-1.5) in spanish, and english (other on demand) * Portable versions (Windows) in fr, de, es, pt, en-US
Debian port in progress. Thanks to Rene Engelhard ( Debian OpenOffice.org maintainer )
On XO machines, when using Sugar, an application must respect some criterias, to appear listed as activity. We had in the scope to provide OOo4Kids as activity on Sugar.
...and the first step is done !!
Until yesterday evening (late in the night), Thomas Fontenay and me, worked hard to fix a silly issue we had with the first .xo archive of OOo4Kids. In fact, symlink are prohibited in the activity tree, and we had to modify it. + we had to include the changes in the OOo4Kids build process, similar to the OpenOffice.org one.
For the moment, we only provide en-US, but other locales are possible, like italien, spanish, french, german, and portuguese.
The lucky XO owners can download the archive there
Next steps :
* improve the set, and make its build more robust * improve performance (simplify, simplify, remove dead code .. ) * work on the Journal implementation * Study the sharing mechanism, like allow several children to work on the same document, though the network * improve the python support As you can see, there is place for a lot of students applications !!
Last but not least, I repeat my thank you to Thomas Fontenay, Abdelkader Belabbes, students at Epitch Paris for their good work.
OOoCon 2009 Alexandro Colorado will replace me during OOoCon 2009, both for the Education Project presentation and OOo4Kids presentation. Thanks to him!
30th October - me * Replaced 82 Sun copyrighted icons in default_images ( 16, 24, 32 and 48 pixels), with the one Ben Bois provided in Applications and Documents icons page. This is achieved using a shell script, and this script will probably help to replace other icons, progressively.
Thanks to Stephan Bergmann who provided Thomas, Abdelkader and me important information for the OOo4Kids sugarization, mostly what do to cleanly modify the OOo4Kids tree, to match with Sugar specs.
(less recent, but so glad to see when other devs contribute :) ) 26th October - Thomas Fontenay First step done for the Sugarization of OOo4Kids: setting additional X window properties for Sugar * New sources file SugarProperties.cxx in vcl/unx/source/window/ * New header file sugarxproperties.hxx in vcl/unx/inc * Modified configure.in and set_soenv.in. configure now supports --with-xo-intel=yes (specified for a XO build). * Many files modified, calling the new function SetSugarXProperties(Display*, window)
Since I finally figured out what was wrong, we have Portable OOo4Kids on Windows XP (SP3 mini). To understand more, I started from the version Pierre-Yves Gosset a friend of mine from Framasoft did, but I had to do a lot of modifications, I did some cleanup, and created new files, to obtain something clean.
As a beginning, I started with a french version, but that's very easy to create other locales.
Reading the OOo4Kids recent changelogs, I see Thomas and Abdel did serious progress with the OOo4Kids Sugarization !
Glad to see serious and brillant students contributing !! For the one who did not understand, OOo4Kids is a product of the Education Project: everything we implement in OOo4Kids is something we can teach, and explain to the students. As you can see, more time goes and more we can change things, and this brings a real motivation to them.
From my side, I continued to work at the new Writer assistant for OOo4Kids. Last thing I did was to define a value for the SID_NEW_SW slot ID. Better read the cookbook.
All versions: * Fixed the silly Start Center bug with the white rectangle on right. * Did more code cleanup in backingwindow.cxx (removed useless entries, and so on) * The new Writer Assistant skeleton is in place. Missing: final implementation. * Fixed a crash with Calc. Was due to the missing addins functions. * Fixed a silly bug with addins : now, the Calc functions wizard no longer displays all the addins in "beginner" or "average" mode
Windows only: * Fixed the sound issues in Impress: build are now made using the DirectX 9 SDK. Need feedback for the videos : usable ? * Fixed the crash when the computer comes back from sleep. Added Thorsten Behrens patch from the [http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=103464 issue 103464].
Linux only: * new customizable look for the User Interface (generic plugin is now used, for performance reasons)
Was IRC meeting today, for the Education Project, and it was really a great moment.
We need to improve what we did last year, mostly improve the wiki presentation, the organization, and cleanup the website.
This year, we are more to welcome the students, and to be able to help and mentor them. As developers able to to that, I'd like to mention Thorsten Behrens, Cedric Bosdonnat (both from Novell), and as developer (representing Epitech Paris) Pierre Pasteau ( + me )
On the prof side, we were happy to receive Fardad Soleimanloo (from Seneca College, Toronto) and at the end) Morgan Magnin (from Ecole Centrale Nantes ... me from UTBM (both as prof and dev in fact).
On the students side, the list is long, an we were extremely happy to welcome 4 students from Sri Lanka ( University of Moratuwa ), one from Seneca College one from UTBM, several from Ecole Centrale Nantes ( a group of 5). Sadly, the students from ECN had a connectivity problem, and some were not able to join.
BTW, next week, I'll attend the JDLL, for a presentation I'll do about OOo4Kids, and I'll probably meet students from INSA Lyon but I'll write another entry about that soon.
As usual the log is available on the wiki : the log
Next meeting is scheduled the 15th October, same hour. See you !!
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.
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 ;-)
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).
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 :
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.
This blog entry aims to say thank you the the OLPC / Sugar project.
Indeed, some time ago, Thomas Fontenay and Abdelkader Bellabes applied for the OLPC Contributor Program, and we recently had to defend our project (I was invited too on the IRC channel), to explain what we aim to do, our plan, and so on.
To complete the project description, Pierre Pasteau, and Julien Ballet (Labfree) are our contacts at Epitech.
The result is, Abdelkader and Thomas will receive 3 machines : 2 XO's and one XO 1.5 (next XO generation) early september. The plan is to sugarize OOo4Kids, and help to improve performance. Last, in the case the code is good enough, we'll ask for backporting it in OpenOffice.org.
Another good news: Bastien Guerry, from OLPC-France, has been designed as contact and mentor, and we'll work together on this project. The idea is to connect both the OLPC project people, and the OpenOffice.org one, and see what this synergy can bring.
A presentation, where we'll invite other students, will be scheduled at Epitech Paris (organized by the Labfree) somewhere in October 2009.
Next step for the students will be to propose a planning, and start tasks based on the most important performance issues OpenOffice.org has. Things will be very progressive, and we'll start firstly with what is concerned (which part of the code), what it the associated tool to be used, and how to proceed to verify what happens. e.g. at cold startup, and so on.
If you want to follow the progress, and what they exactly do, everything is on the OpenOffice.org wiki.
Since two days we entered in the milestone 0.5 and in parallel, Nicolas Jeudy started the server setup, means a developpement version will be proposed for download. Ben Bois will help for the http part.
And as I promised, we'll provide a public version of OOo4Kids.
Many thanks to both, and stay tuned ;-)
+ I started to describe a new feature today, and I decided to describe everything on our wiki. See a new Writer wizard (previous entry was License dialog.
Feel free to contribute, and or contact and help us !!
Note on the license : once the new branch (OOo4Kids) will be created in the OpenOffice.org repository, we'll use the LGPL v3 License, but waiting we'll protect everything using the GPL V2.
Why is it so long to have a repository? Because I asked, as the uniq condition, to not force the contributors to sign the SCA. Indeed, OOo4Kids is trademarked by EducOOo, so use the SCA is non sense. Seems to cause some lags in the answer...
Since two days, I was working hard to implement a simple request: add a menu entry, to be able to check for the license content. The idea is to provide soon a public version. of OOo4Kids
For the one interested, I started to document everything I did in the code on an OOo4Kids wiki page. See License dialog page . This is work in progress, and currently, 25% of the changes is written, but I'll update asap.
Below, some screenshots :
The first screenshot is the new background for themounted image disk. We respected Christian Lohmaier (aka cloph) request, and Ben Bois did a great work (I really like this new one)
The second screenshot is the frame you see when installing :
The third screenshot is the implementation of the menu entry "License ...". This way, no need to ask the user to read or do whatever at install, but the license will be abailable from everywhere. Simple and efficient.
The fourth screenshot is what you see when you click on "Licence ...". This is simply the about box I reused for the new feature. As you can see, there is still a bug, because the title is not correct, but I expect to solve that soon (please contact me if you have an idea).
... last but not least, the last one is what you can read when you hit CTRL SDT (or CMD+SDT on Mac OS X : the list of the people who contributed or helped to the OOo4Kids code (partial list there, in alphabetical order). As you can see, some formating is mandatory (sentence too long). But that's the beginning :-)
All the recent changes are given on our wiki. Just see the changelogs)
In the list, there is a new background icon, for the mounted image disk, on Mac OS X. As Christian Lohmaier suggested, the butterflies showing where drop the application, are bigger than the application itself, and Ben Bois, who designed this background, will have a look asap.
But what is important to me, what that Abdelkader Bellabes and Thomas Fontenay (both from Epitech Paris) are now able to build (both OpenOffice.org and OOo4Kids), AND debug on both Windows and Linux, and (in the air) on Sugar now. For example, we traced with Thomas, and finally found a solution (not completely solved yet), together a possible crash with copy-paste.
So, now, we'll be able to start with profiling : Thomas on Linux, Abdelkader on Windows, and me an all possible OS's.
Our first plan, will be to play with the famous generic.ppt (does not work well, good stress for Impress), and analyze everything: first, to learn how Impress works, during presentations, and second, to search what happens, and what can cause slow downs, in some situations. Means pedagogical purpose first, but not only.
Work in progress: with Thorsten Behrens, we are making a point on the project with people from Ecole Centrale Nantes, to see what can be or not integrated. (to be continued)
- create a dedicated branch in the OOo source code repository (means hosted by OOo Project) for a 7-12 years software, derivated from OpenOffice.org, and made and maintained by OpenOffice.org project. Formally : create a new branch, completely independent of , including milestones, like OOo does - work with schools and students to improve the software - innovate about performances and cooperate with the performance project in this area - (add your idea)
Resources : to be defined, but the non profit association EducOOo) is already candidate to manage that (e.g.receive sponsoring for the software, machines for students, and so on).
Facts that brought us to work on this plan:
- OpenOffice.org is not well adapted to Educational world, nor to children (7-12 there) - OpenOffice.org has too much of features for children, and is too complicated for them - Performance issues : OpenOffice.org is slow on a lot of machines (mainly the one who have 512MB of ram or less, and procs 1,5GHZ or less we can find in most of schools) - Lot of schools, all around the world, are poor, and will have to wait several years before to buy new hardware - to fit the new emergent market (netbooks, eeepc like, gdium, future tablets (including the probable Apple one) .. and so on), OpenOffice.org needs to provide a light version, adapted to such machines ( poor in ram and powerless)
The ideas :
- simplify OOo and propose a light version of OOo, for example removing Base and providing a simplified Writer and Calc versions - experiment new features, new UI and so on, including experiment whatever - work with students to write the code, with the goal to integrate only the best features in OOo, - prepare children to use OpenOffice.org - adapt OOo for children will help to work on performance issues - use a name adapted to children : OOo4Kids, trademarked by one or several non profit association, to keep the project out of companies control - there is no risk for OOo, and avoids to disturb the OOo process
Thanks in advance for your opinion
Eric Bachard Lead, OpenOffice.org Education Project
"""""""""""""""" End Quote """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Below, the link of the announcement ( dev@openoffice.org mailing list) : archived proposal
Many many thanks to the students from Ecole Centrale Nantes for their great work, to Morgan Magnin, their professor, and to Thorsten Behrens for his enormous contribution.
My conclusion of that, is I think it really worth to see more collaboration between OpenOffice.org Project and the Education world, and I'm proud to manage the Education Project, who exactly has the goal to create a strong bridge between both.
Last but not least, 2 presentations of this collaboration are scheduled at LSM 2009, but I'll say more about that very soon ;-)
1) Watch them all. They mostly are located in default_images/svx default_images/framework, setup_native/source/win32/nsis , default_images/res, and in sysui/source/desktop/icons and some other place I could have missed there.
2) localize them exactly, e.g. using The Gimp on Linux, Apercu on Mac , don't remember what tool I used on Windows, maybe it was automatic.
3) rename all the one who can cause issue with what you want to achieve
4) build OOo. e.g. trunk can be a good choice, if you want to test the new localization scheme
Note: trunk means the current milestone, means the to-be-DEV300_m51
5) Missing icons (i.e. renamed icons) will make the build break. This is normal, and every time the build breaks, you'll have to modify all the code calling the missing icons at buildtime (e.g. using ifdef YOUR_VARIABLE or whatever other hack), and to add your icon(s) with their new own icon names (the one you introduced in the code instead), all at the original place.
6) verify both old icons and the new one can live together at builtime, and that you can build both on all OS's
7) continue with all modules until the build ends. Think to take some coffee, this might be a long process.
And if you are serious, you'll have something correct at the end :-)
Nothing is perfect and you probably missed some at the begining. So, if you forgot some, repeat the process until you no longer see old application icons.
Be carefull, the image formats are different on every platform, and all builds are mandatory
Simple, isn't it ?
[Upgrade] : looks like we have lot of unused icons in OOo. Will remove them per see :)
The screenshot below is the most recent version of the start center we created for OOo4Kids (all ports).
As you can see, there are some remaining issues, like the white stripes on right, due to the length of the frames used for hte texts. e.g. , we could use COL_TRANSPARENT + some other hack, but anyway, this part will need more love. The other issue is the background: could be seriously improved too.
Thanks to Ben Bois, doing most of the new Design for the OOo4Kids StartCenter
UTBM as partner of OpenOffice.org Education Project
After the Epitech Paris working with OpenOffice.org Education Project, I'm proud to announce, my school, University of Technology of Belfort Montbeliard (aka UTBM) accepted to sponsor a pedagogical project based on 2 (maybe 4) students contributions.
Current status is : Proposal accepted, waiting for candidates (I'll present what I expect to the one who will apply asap).
Basically I'll teach those students how to build OpenOffice,org on several ports, and what I kwow about OpenOffice.org source code. Together, we'll work on OpenOffice.org profiling, on slow machines, like XO (under Sugar), or gdium machines.
It is scheduled to reverse the contents to the community (at least we'll propose ;-) ). Most of the work will be done to contribute to the Performance Project, who IMHO is very high priority at the moment.
From my side, I'll be paid for the time, and the time will be included in my service, or something similar. From the student perspective, they will have 3 tasks to achieve in several month.
The students will work on OOo4Kids source code, mostly for performance improvements, but not only : one of the task will be to propose at least one UI Improvement for OOo4Kids. If the code does worth it, we'll ask for OpenOffice.org integration afterwards. If accepted, but that's another story ...
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
