How to add new cursors in OOo4Kids (Windows, Linux,Mac OS X)
Added a new entry in
the OOo4Kids wiki:
How to add a new cursor in OOo4Kids (basically the same as adding one in
OpenOffice.org of course ;-)
Everything comes from notes I took during the implementation, and the translation in other locales will follow soon.
Any help and contribution is welcome : feel free to add information, and help us to improve ! """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) OOo4Kids Many thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the EducOOo Logo
Libellés : devel, development, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
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 :-)
Libellés : fun, High Tech, Impress, improve OOo, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice
OOo4Kids 0.9.5 adds Arabic localization
The localization is not completely finished, but thanks a lot to
Anas for his work !
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Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) OOo4Kids Many thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the EducOOo Logo
Libellés : Education, EducOOo, hacks, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
Preparing OOo4Kids 0.9.5
ENGLISH version(FRENCH below) :
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 !!Libellés : Education Project, EducOOo, hacks, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
Password protected preferences in OOo4Kids 0.9
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.
Libellés : Education, Education Project, EducOOo, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
OOo4Kids 0.9 on gdium
Completed the build on gdium (Linux mipsel), and
OOo4Kids 0.9 builds and works well on this machine, based on loongson mipsel processor.
The .rpm install fine too. Thanks to
Julien Forgeat for the Mandriva generic installation instructions you'll find
there.
The build was made on an 32 GB USB key, and the next step, is to install the Debian Lenny on the gdium.
For the one interested :
the Debian Installation instructions on gdium linkLibellés : Education Project, EducOOo, gdium, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
OOo4Kids 0.9 is available for download
EducOOo and the
OpenOffice.org Education Project are proud to announce
OOo4Kids 0.9 is out.
Click the link to download OOo4Kids 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.
Libellés : Debian, development, High Tech, Mandriva, OOo4Kids, OpenGL, OpenOffice, Portable OOo4Kids, Teaching OpenSource
OOo4Kids now builds as .rpm
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 :)
Libellés : High Tech, Mandriva, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, rpm UTBM, Teaching OpenSource
Time to release OOo4Kids 0.9
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.
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Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) OOo4Kids Many thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the EducOOo Logo
Libellés : Education Project, EducOOo, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, Portable OOo4Kids, Teaching OpenSource
OOo4Kids 0.8
The current version of
OOo4Kids is 0.8If you want to help us, to find resource and contribute back to improve OpenOffice.org, via the
OpenOffice.org Education Project, donations are welcome at
this URL 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.orgPlease 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
For further information, please read
the changelog Last but not least, don't forget that we propose a
portable version for WindowsLibellés : Education Project, EducOOo, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, Portable OOo4Kids
Reminder : Education Project objectives and Mission
Just back from holidays, I thought it could be a good idea to make a point about what is
Education Project, as reminder, and to avoid confusion with what we can read sometimes ...
Back to the point: the objectives of the Education Projects are extremely precise, and well defined on the OpenOffice.org wiki.
This is written since at least two years, means since I'm Education Project Lead ...
Let's verify ... reading the
OpenOffice.org Wiki page :
The Education Project aims to create a bridge between Educational World and OpenOffice.org Project More precisely, the OpenOffice.org Education Project mission is explained there :
Education Project MissionShortly, our Mission in 3 points :
-
Provide a place for OpenOffice.org users, in Education context: discuss about adapt OpenOffice.org to your pedagogy, your needs ..etc (all levels of Education are concerned )
-
Provide and promote tools adapted to pedagogical use, around OpenOffice.org-
Write code together : we can teach you everything about OpenOffice.org code and how add your: just go ahead
Any help is welcome, and
Alexandro Colorado (Education Project Co-Lead) and me, will be glad to welcome you :)
As conclusion : please do not trust everything people wrote about the Education Project, and if you have some doubts, feel free to ask me directly ;-) (e.g. join #education.openoffice.org on irc.freenode.net server if you want to discuss with me directly)
Libellés : Education Project, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
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.
The great news, is that
this new project will start the third year of cooperation between
OpenOffice.org Education Project and
ECN.
Links: see
the blog entry about the previous project just finished and
screenshots about "Tablet PC and OpenOffice.org (french, sorry).
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
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Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) OOo4Kids ProjectMany thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the
EducOOo logo, dedicated to the OpenOffice.org Education Project
...
Libellés : Centrale Nantes, ECN, Education, Education Project, EducOOo, free software, FSOSS, fun, High Tech, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
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.
Work in progress. Stay tuned.
Libellés : donations, Education Project, EducOOo, High Tech, OpenOffice
Education Project mailing list reactivation
Below, the mail I sent to several mailing lists.
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
Libellés : Education, Education Project, EducOOo, High Tech, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
OpenOffice.org Education Project and Epitech Paris students
The great story between
Epitech Paris and OpenOffice.org, for instance
OpenOffice.org Education Project, representing OpenOffice.org Proejct, of course, continued this year.
What happened ?
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.
In fact, that's exactly what we did with
Ecole Centrale Nantes, and
UTBM .
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.
any candidate(s) ?Libellés : Centrale Nantes, Education Project, EducOOo, Epitech Paris, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice
Ecole Centrale Nantes and OpenOffice.org Education project
The
OpenOffice.org Education Project continues
the Effort.
Ecole Centrale Nantes is a regular contributor, and below, the story.
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 JacquesAnd the professor who followed that is
Morgan Magnin.
Many thanks to all of them !!For the one interested, the final report is available online :
ECN Tablet, final report (2009)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 ;)
Libellés : Centrale Nantes, ECN, Education Project, EducOOo, High Tech, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
OOo4Kids. Recent news (25th nov2009)
Last changes for the coming 0.6 :
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-USDebian port in progress. Thanks to
Rene Engelhard ( Debian OpenOffice.org maintainer )
Still waiting my write access at Freedesktop ...
Libellés : High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, Portable OOo4Kids, Sugar, Teaching OpenSource, XO
Education Project ClassRoom : log available
Yesterday, was
IRC ClassRoom , and we were extremely pleased to receive
Heiner RechtienAs usual, the log is available on the
OpenOffice.org wikiLibellés : ClassRoom, Education Project, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
ClassRoom today : OpenOffice.org Migration to Mercurial
This is a reminder of the Education Project ClassRoom agenda :
today, starting 17:00 CET (Paris Hamburg hour)and we are proud to receive
Heiner Rechtien, Release Engineer à Sun Microsystems who will present us the
OpenOffice.org migration to MercurialThis is an IRC ClassRoom Channel is #education.openoffice.org Server is irc.freenode.netEverybody interested is welcome. For the newcomers, we use to let the speaker explain everything and keep the second part for questions.
See you !! Libellés : ClassRoom, Education Project, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
#ooo4Kids IRC channel is born
If you want to discuss and know more what we do, the
#ooo4Kids (notice the upper case) IRC channel has been created
Channel : #ooo4Kids Server : irc.freenode.netSee you !
... and welcome to
Marina Latini who started the
OOo4Kids wiki translation in
Italien ! Libellés : Education Project, EducOOo, High Tech, IRC, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
OOo4Kids - recent news
OOoCon 2009
Alexandro Colorado will replace me during
OOoCon 2009, both for the Education Project presentation and
OOo4Kids presentation. Thanks to him!
(what follows is extracted from the
changelogs)
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 FontenayFirst 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)
Libellés : Education Project, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OOoCon, OpenOffice, Sugar
Portable OOo4Kids
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.
Stay tuned ;-)Libellés : Education Project, EducOOo, fun, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, Portable OOo4Kids
Recent OOo4Kids progress
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.
To be continued."""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) OOo4Kids ProjectMany thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the
EducOOo logo, dedicated to the OpenOffice.org Education Project
...
Libellés : development, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, Sugar, XO
OOo4Kids 0.5.1 available for download
A big THANK YOU to Ben Bois for his help and everything (building, website and more ...) => the link for the downloadChangelog : 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)
Libellés : annoucement, EducOOo, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
Probably no OOoCon 2009 for Education Project
Looking at the
current donations , an estimating the need to 600 euros (not to become rich, but just to pay travel + accomodations),
I will very probably not attend the OOoCon 2009. Final decision to come soon.
Two présentations were scheduled (see
Conference Schedule) :
- Present the Education Project
- OOo4Kids
Thanks anyway to all one who donated an maybe see you another time :)Libellés : development, OOo4Kids, OOoCon, OpenOffice
Education Project meeting: log available
Was IRC meeting today, for the
Education Project. We mostly welcomed new students, and made a point about the work in progress. I have seen some new nicknames on the channel :-)
Next week, we'll try to propose a list of ClassRooms.As usual the log is available on the wiki : the logNext meeting is scheduled the 22nd October, same hour. See you !!"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) OOo4Kids ProjectMany thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the
EducOOo logo, dedicated to the OpenOffice.org Education Project
...
Libellés : devel, development, Education Project, High-Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
Education Project meeting: log available
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 logNext meeting is scheduled the 15th October, same hour. See you !!"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) OOo4Kids ProjectMany thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the
EducOOo logo, dedicated to the OpenOffice.org Education Project
...
Libellés : Centrale Nantes, Education Project, effort, Epitech Paris, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
Next Education Project IRC meeting
The next
Education Project IRC meeting will occur tomorrow, thursday 8th of October, 16:00 ( UTC), or 18:00 ( CEST hour, i.e. Paris Hamburg hour)
Everybody interested is welcome, and the first part will be dedicated to welcome students.
The channel is #education.openoffice.org , server : irc.freenode.netFor further information, please have a look at the agenda :
the agenda.
See you !!"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) OOo4Kids ProjectMany thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the
EducOOo logo, dedicated to the OpenOffice.org Education Project
...
Libellés : E, High Tech, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
OOo4Kids call for donation
You appreciate OOo4Kids or any action the Education project does ?
So now, you have no excuse to not help us :)For that,
Ben Bois did yet another great thing, and added a
donate link on the
download websiteOther nice feature ... look at the thermometer on left ;) 
The money will help us to found other actions, and more, to really create a bridge between
OpenOffice.org Project and the Education
Thanks a lot to all the donators !! """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) OOo4Kids ProjectMany thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the
EducOOo logo, dedicated to the OpenOffice.org Education Project
...
Libellés : development, Education Project, experimental, fun, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice
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.orgPlease 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 : High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, test
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 progressLibellés : disaster, High Tech, lost contributions, OOo4Kids, OpenGL, OpenOffice
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 : development, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
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 ExpertAs 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.
Libellés : development, Education Project, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice
3 XO's for OOo4Kids and the Education Project
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.
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) OOo4Kids ProjectMany thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the
EducOOo logo, dedicated to the OpenOffice.org Education Project
...
Libellés : Education Project, Epitech Paris, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, Sugar, Teaching OpenSource
More about the public release of OOo4Kids
To make things clear, after we announced we'll use the GPL V2, we finaly changed for the LGPL v3.
Below, the content of the mails sent to the Project Leads mailing list (copy of the mail), just the URL for download has been hidden)
""""""""""""""""""""" Quote """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Hi,
Our new server is close to be ready for a public development version, but before to announce, I'd like to be sure nothing is wrong (of course, we'll will correct it asap if so)
I know Sun trademarked a lot of things, and we'd like whether there is something wrong with the current versions of OOo4Kids.
The license we finally choosen for the code is the LGPL v3, respecting Martin Hollmichel suggestion. The repository is not created, but will probably be soon : still waiting for Martin answer, to create a dedicated branch, but without the need to use the SCA ( OOo4Kids is not Sun trademarked, but EducOOo, a non profit association )
Additionaly to our own information, we will add, at a visible place, on the download page :
- OpenOffice.org website and a link for download OpenOffice.org source code
- a word explaining this is a development version, intended to work with students around OpenOffice.org, for pedagogical reasons, and who has not all the features OpenOffice.org has
- an invitation to use OpenOffice.org for the one who want to use Base or anything using Java
For the one interested to test, I have put versions of OOo4Kids 0.5pre on the following server : http://wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww/ ( openoffice -> OOo4Kids ). Please note this server will be deprecated soon.
Available :
- Windows,
- Mac OS X (Intel and Power PC)
- Linux Intel (Mips -gdium version- and PowerPC will come soon)
Thanks in advance to confirm nothing is wrong, or to explain us what we still have to modify, to respect OpenOffice.org Project.
Eric Bachard
Lead,
OpenOffice.org Education Project
""""""""""""""""" End Quotel """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
--
Education Project: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Education_Project
Projet OOo4Kids : http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/Main_Page
L'association EducOOo : http://www.educoo.org
Blog : http://eric.bachard.free.fr/news
Libellés : development, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice
Preparing a public version of OOo4Kids
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..."""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) OOo4Kids ProjectMany thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the
EducOOo logo, dedicated to the OpenOffice.org Education Project
...
Libellés : High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
OOo4Kids proposed as part of OpenOffice.org Project
Today, I proposed
OOo4Kids to become a part of OpenOffice.org Project.
Below, the content of the proposal, where you'll retrieve the important points :
""""""""""""" Quote """"""""""
Hi all,
Proposal :
The
OpenOffice.org Education Project proposes to drive the following experimentation :
-
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"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) OOo4Kids ProjectMany thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the
EducOOo logo, dedicated to the OpenOffice.org Education Project
...
Libellés : EducOOo, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
Back from RMLL 2009 (Nantes, France)
Back from
RMLL 2009 . In fact I was 4 days in Paris with my family, and I'm just back at home, until ... tomorrow for 2 weeks.
What a fest :) Thanks to
Mathieu Lalanne, Pierre Pasteau for their great work, and their presence. Thanks to
Remi Boulle for the super tshirts we have. We were surprised to sale most of them (next time, we'll take more). Thanks to all the people who made this event what it was.
Nice to have seen
OOo4Kids running correctly on a Celeron 500 + 128MB or RAM. Really impressive :)
Thanks to the Nantais,
Morgan Magnin, Olivier Girardot, Aude Quintana, Jonathan Winandy who contributed to the presentations we did. Nice to see we'll continue to work together :)
Nice to meet
Cédric Mathieu and Isabelle too !
Last but not least, all the slides we did are available
there.
OOOops .. already time to stop
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) OOo4Kids ProjectMany thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the
EducOOo logo, dedicated to the OpenOffice.org Education Project
...
Libellés : ECN, Education, Education Project, EducOOo, High-Tech, OpenOffice, RMLL, Teaching OpenSource
Education Project now counts 100 members !
The Education Project is now over the symbolic wall of 100 first members (
the membership )Thanks !!
Libellés : Education, Education Project, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
eraser01: final report (english version) available
This report is the fruit of the collaboration between
Ecole Centrale Nantes(aka
ECN) and
OpenOffice.org Education Project.
Thanks to
Olivier Girardot and
Aude Quintana, students at ECN who sent me the english version of
The Eraser.
* Link for downloading the
.odt en-US version* Link for downloading the
.pdf en-US version * Link for downloading the
.pdf fr versionAnother report "
the Saving Machine", who was made for save the annotations made with the Impress feature is available.
* Link for downloading the
french version of the Saving MachineMany 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 ;-)
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) OOo4Kids ProjectMany thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the
EducOOo logo, dedicated to the OpenOffice.org Education Project
...
Libellés : Centrale Nantes, community, Education Project, experimental, High Tech, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
New Application Icon for OOo4Kids :)
My children like it already :)
Thanks (again !) to Ben Bois, doing most of the new Design for OOo4Kids=> Further information on
OOo4Kids wikiTo be continued ...Libellés : BenBois, Design, devel, development, Education Project, EducOOo, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice
New Start Center for OOo4Kids (work in progress)
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=> Further information on
OOo4Kids wikiTo be continued ...Libellés : Education Project, EducOOo, experimental, High Tech, OpenOffice, screenshots, splashscreen, Teaching OpenSource
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 ...
Design of the OOo4Kids logo : Ben Bois"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) Many thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the
EducOOo logo, dedicated to the OpenOffice.org Education Project
Libellés : Epitech Paris, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource, UTBM
Use a .png for the SplashScreen (i.e. no longer use .bmp)
A bit less than two month ago, I modified OOo source code, to be able to load a .png splashscreen (same story for the about too). I received a nice help from
Thorsten Behrens,
Philipp Lohmann and
Herbert Duerr, who explained me what do (the most clean way to do), how to remove the transparent places and more.
After fixing a bug on Linux (the renderer not correctly initialized), it works nicely on both Mac OS X and Windows since end of April, and on Linux (all ports) since early May (because of the bug).
Design of the OOo4Kids logo : Ben BoisAs you can see, I added the possibility to play with transparency. One other reason to choose .png was that the .png are lighter than .bmp. Finally
the gain was around 360 kB, compared to the .bmp
This is not perfect (some little white pixels due to rounding in the corners ), but gives IMHO a better User Experience, and opens the door to Funky Splashscreens :)
Of course, if one ask me, I'd be glad to backport that into OpenOffice.org source code (not sure because one told me there was something else in progress ... so, I don't know).
Important: we do not distribute anything publically, and will replace the OpenOffice.org application icon in the dock (and provide our own) asap .
To be continued ...Libellés : EducOOo, experimental, fun, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice
Students, OpenOffice.org and Java
Today, I was glad to see
Cedric Bosdonnat (Novell) join the IRC channel
#education.openoffice.org (server is irc.freenode.net). We often have questions from students about Java, but we had not the skills to answer.
Cedric will help a lot with that.
Of course, there are
#dev.openoffice.org and
#go-oo IRC channels (and some other), but the idea is to use a dedicated channel, to avoid boring developers with simple and often-the-same questions.
Something ideal could be to have dedicated hours where students could find the developers they need. e.g. defining a list, or sort of agenda on the wiki. Shouldn't be too difficult, but we need volunteers ...
...btw, Python specialists are accepted and welcome too ;-)See you :-)Libellés : Education, effort, High Tech, java, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
Education Project at Linux Days 2009 (Geneva, Switzerland)
I'm glad to announce you the
OpenOffice.org Education Project is invited at
Linux Days, Geneva, where I'll do a
presentation about the what we do, and our projects .
I'll be present myself on
thursday 4th of June, and I hope to meet
Raphael Bircher , who already told me he'll attend the event.
One important part of the presentation will be about the 7-12 years adaptation of OpenOffice.org I'll present, already ported on Windows (XP and Seven), Mac OS X (Intel and PowerPC, Tiger and superior), Linux (Intel MIPS and PowerPC).
Works on XO too :)
See you !!"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) Many thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the
EducOOo logo, dedicated to the OpenOffice.org Education Project
Libellés : Education Project, EducOOo, events, High Tech, OOo4Kids, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
Google SoC again ...
OpenOffice.org does not belong to the list this year again.
One told me someone from OOo was in charge of that, but after I asked one trusted people from Google, looks like OpenOffice.org did not apply.
I know
Alexandro Colorado applied though, but I don't know what happened. (any further information welcome)
Now, if you click on "Projects by year" on the
following link, you have the full story. Nothing in 2008, nothing in 2009.
I was mentor twice already, and anyway, I got a little chance to be one more time (FYI, there are other devs than Sun or other companies devs contributing to Ooo) . But this time will not be for OpenOffice.org Project directly. After I asked a trusted people from Google, it does appear OpenOffice.org Project did not apply. So it appears this is mostly the fault of OpenOffice.org Project (but I still do not understand what happened with Alexandro request).
So, what is the point ? Some times ago, I blogged *a lot* about sane ways to find new developers.
One of them, the Education Project is searching to attract new devs, and
has results. The Google Summer of Code is another one, ... and so on ... like the FOSDEM is another one too.
But I'm not discouraged, and I'll soon publish where we are with students projects.
Working on that, and more ... Stay tuned ;-) Update: After some private search, it appears that OpenOffice.org, applied seriously one time, even probably twice (I'm sure Alexandro did). So the problem is very probably Google. Something like -sort of- a private bash between Google and Sun. In short, it is impossible to know the exact reason, and the official -politicaly correct- version is "all projects cannot be selected"
:-/
Libellés : Education Project, Google SoC, number of OOo devs OpenOffice, OpenOffice
Feedback needed with Impress 3D OpenGL transitions on Mac OS X
With the recent changes
Thorsten Behrens did (he fixed the bad color space with the cairo canvas helper),
the 3D OpenGL transitions are now working correctly with OpenOffice.org on Mac OS X. Of course, there is probably some additional work before to consider the implementation as "ok", but at least people can test them.
For the adventurous, there is an archive available(Mac Intel only, you use it at your own risks) there (search for INTEL -> DEV300_m42_ogltrans4mac -> en-US)
Please read
this mail for further information, and don't forget to provide feedback and/or file issues assigned to me if ever you find problems.
UPDATE : anybody interested to help me can have a look on the wiki page I created for the occasion.
=>
Mac OS X Porting & OpenGL transitions with ImpressLast but not least, a big thank you to
Mox Soini(cairo implementation),
Radek Dulik (most of the OpenGL thing'ry on OpenOffice.org for Linux) and
Thorsten Behrens(Impress Expert) for his help.
To be continued ... (I hope students working on new 3D transitions will be happy :) )
Libellés : aqua, High Tech, Impress, Mac OS X, OpenGL, OpenOffice
Bad user experience and old issues never fixed in OOo
In some places, there are inconsistent dialog boxes in OpenOffice.org. Some of them have been shown by users since years, but never fixed, for -say- dark reasons.
We shouldn't underconsider such issues, because they are causing a slow acceptance of OpenOffice.org, and, more obvious, provide a bad user experience.
Just one example : Formula and Formula Shortly, the problem with this issue, is when you want to customize the menus, and you want to add the possibility to insert a Math Formula, you got a twice "Formula" choice => confusing, and not good for user experience.
Worse: if we think more deeply, this is even a design issue.
But not everything is bad in this story : reading the issue content, some people proposed an intelligent compromise (developers time is precious), like replace Formula Formula with "Formula Math" and "Formula Calc". This proposal is a good compromise, because waiting the issue to be fixed for true (mandatory), the change will avoid confusion.
I'd like to understand why, instead of simply fix this temporarly (this does not avoid to concentrate on something better), we see systematical, and administrative obstruction. If we add the language barrier, we have the current situation ...
For further information, see
issue 40747 , created : January 2005 !! ), duplicated in
issue 99333.
I hope this will progress asap ...
Libellés : High Tech, issues, OpenOffice, user experience
Discovering OpenSolaris and OOo build on it :)
Working with Frank Schoenheit and Pierre Pasteau on the moz2seamonkey01 cws, we had no proof our changes are ok on Solaris. The best I could do was to install OpenSolaris on a AMD XP4000+ / 3BG of RAM machine. After some garbage (I'm discovering this strange OS), I finally understood how to install -sort of- development environment.
And after some little changes I'll commit soon, I was even able to build seamonkey.1.1.13 zipped archives on OpenSolaris :-)
No hack, just trying to fix issue after issue, and I'm done.
The wiki is down, but I created a new task for students: build OOo on OpenSolaris. I think this is a difficult task, and it worth a try and a serious effort. I contacted
Christian Lins, who started the effort some times ago, but if you are interested or want to give me some advice, feel free to contact me :)
To be continued (after FOSDEM ) P.S. : the wiki is down, but I put some stuff
thereLibellés : development, High Tech, OpenOffice, OpenSolaris, Teaching OpenSource
I'm going to the FOSDEM 2009
I'm going to FOSDEM '09, the Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting. This will be my third participation ( see the previous one there :
FOSDEM 2007 and
FOSDEM 2008)
My contribution will be a little travel in OpenOffice.org source code, under a Workshop form. It is scheduled for Sunday, February 7, at 09:00 in the
OpenOffice.org Developer Room AW1.105, and will give an overview of the
Apple Remote feature I implemented on Mac OS X, and some other changes, like removing some menu entries, or even how I did the Impress 3D transitions using OpenGL (if time allows). The workshop will mostly be Mac OS X oriented, but the content will interested all ports. The idea is to explain the logical behind the changes, and to show how things are organized.
Last but not least, I'd be glad to meet all of you !
Libellés : Bruxelles, events, FOSDEM, High Tech, OpenOffice, workshop
Campaign for OpenOffice.org in French schools
Was not that easy, but with several french non profit associations (
April,
EducOOo,
Aful,
Adulact, and
Scideralle ), we made a poster, originally created by
Christian Driga, to present OpenOffice.org to the people working inside french Educational institutions ( but not only).
French (only) links :
Original link (french) :
Promotion pour OpenOffice.org To know the name of the people who contributed, and more, look at
EducOOo blog---------------------------------------
Many thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the Education Project Logo
Donate to Education Project Education Project on the wikiLibellés : EducOOo, events, free software, High Tech, OpenOffice, School, Teaching OpenSource
IRC meeting "The Hybrid Model of Teaching OpenSource" : log available
Lot of people yesterday on the Education Project channel, and the meeting was extremely informative. Aristotle University model is close to the Education Project one (see the log for differences), and
Andreas Meiszner provided extremely interesting links, like the one about
P. I. model. Several experiences similar to the
Aristotle University and / or
OpenOffice.org Education Project. We can consider we are a the begining of something extremely important to come, and we have to take care to work together, to create synergy.
As usual, the log is available on the wiki :
click meThanks a lot, to Andreas Meiszner and to all the attendees, and see you soon on the #education.openoffice.org channel !!---------------------------------------
Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) Many thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the Education Project Logo
Donate to Education Project---------------------------------------
Libellés : Aristotle University, Education, Education Project, events, High Tech, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource
.. my 3 last days
Very positive contact, with computing department director from UTBM. He appreciated a lot our effort with students. This department does concern students in 3rd to 5th year in our school. Stay tuned.
Was sick from saturday noon to ... today :/
4 students from UTBM will work with me all the week. the objective is to discover the OpenOffice.org Project, through the Education Project. I'll present them soon. We started the usual "build". I started a build on Ubuntu, and I wrote a complete log for Fardad. We should do the same on Mandriva, and on Windows too.
The second idea is to learn how work the OpenGL transitions, and imagine new one. Means we'll have to learn basegfx first.
Thanks to
Florian Heckl,
Stephan Bergmann, and
Robert Vojta for their contributions on the cws we did together. Hope it will be in 3.1 too.
We finally progressed with the poster. Soon more information :)
This evening, I was glad to see
Frederic Gelot, alias fredus create his first cws (Impress and Tablet PC)
Libellés : Centrale Nantes, High Tech, Impress, OpenOffice, Teaching OpenSource, various
Colored tabs implementation in Calc
... or howto help a new contributor joining the
OpenOffice.org Project.
Many thanks to
Daniel Watson, who wrote this new feature, and I would like to mention the great support from
Kohei Yoshida, another OpenOffice.org developer from Novell, who is a Calc expert.
From my side, I welcomed Daniel . Since two days, we work together, (
mostly on the #education.openoffice.org IRC channel ), to avoid bothering other devs, with basic questions, like explaining the build process, how to debug, rebuild including symbols, how to improve the code (like respect the coding guidelines .. and son on), and I fixed some builds issues with him ( + I started the code review ). The biggest issue we encountered was a dark visibility issue, but SC_DLLPUBIC macro helped to solve that.
To illustrate the great work Daniel did (mostly alone !!), better use screenshots :-)
Please note, I used Mac OS X Aqua version for the screenshots, but it should work the same way on all portsThe first one describes how we can set the color of the tabs :
The next illustrates the result :
Yet another example :
Now what ?Of course, the road is long before integration, but Daniel created a
wiki page, to start with specifications, and
if you want to help him, feel free to contact him ! At the end, I just would like to say this is fantastic to welcome new developpers like Daniel, the message to the other who hesitate, is : please don't !!---------------------------------------
Donate to Education Project---------------------------------------
Libellés : aqua, developpement, Education, High Tech, OpenOffice
