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
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 Mission
Shortly, 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)
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
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
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.
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 Mercurial
This is an IRC ClassRoom
Channel is #education.openoffice.org Server is irc.freenode.net
Everybody interested is welcome. For the newcomers, we use to let the speaker explain everything and keep the second part for questions.
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. 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 log
Next meeting is scheduled the 22nd October, same hour. See you !!
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 !!
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).
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
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Below, the link of the announcement ( dev@openoffice.org mailing list) : archived proposal
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.
More precisely, Mathieu Lalanne, Pierre Pasteau, (to be confirmed) Nicolas Jeudy, and myself will welcome you, and try to answer your questions about everything.
Means answer all actions, including OOo4Kids Project we do to create a strong bridge between Educational world and the OpenOffice.org Project
Mathieu Lalanne(who will replace Remi Boulle, unavailable), will present the Education Project and EducOOo, the non profit association in the dedicated day of the french "pôle de compétences logiciels libres" of the SCEREN.
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 ;-)
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 ...
Thomas Fontenay, Abdelkader Bellabes will work on a forked version of OpenOffice.org, named OOo4Kids for performance improvement on powerless machines, like XO or gdium.
Of course, this study will include backport to OpenOffice.org for the most interesting solutions (if possible and accepted), and will include profiling too, plus at least one User Interface Improvement
Developers : Pierre Pasteau, Eric Bachard Managed by Julien Ballet for Epitech Paris, Eric Bachard for Education Project.
Important: the choice to present git has been made by Jeremie (nobody else), and is orthogonal to the choice made by OpenOffice.org Project to use mercurial. Last, would be great to have a ClassRoom about mercurial. Heiner, do you read me ? ;-)
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 ;-)
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).
Frédéric Diaz, Nicolas Jeudy and myself will be glad to meet you. See you !!
Next week, I'll attend Les Rencontres de l'Orme , Marseille, France, 24th to 26th March, where we will work with Sesamath, and I'll present EducOOo, the current actions in progress, and how to join and contribute to the Education Project, or another OpenOffice.org Project, of course.
By the 25th evening, there will be a second event in Marseille, since I'm invited at the Equitable Cafe. I'm impatient to meet all these guys, who mostly work for non profit associations (like EducOOo), and silently contribute to Free software use.
Yet the same week, the 27th March exactly, I'll travel until Nantes to meet the students and the professor from Ecole Centrale Nantes, for the final presentation of the tasks the students did with us. Thanks to Morgan Magnin, their professor who has invited me.
In the list of the feature the students worked for, we have : - colored pen - change the pen size, shape and so on - eraser - keep the changes
Once I'll have found more time, I'll say some words about the next events I'll attend. Will be InterTice and Solutions Linux, both in Paris, France
The bad thing in all of that, is I'll miss Sonny Piers, who is invited to present the Mozilla Project in my own school, means at UTBM. Too bad :-/ (I hope I'll meet him soon though)
But that's not all : more than 10 students recently applied for projects. The first one was Pierre Pasteau( from Epitech Paris), and since some times, there is an intensive work in progress. Recently 4 students from Seneca College applied for subjects we proposed. In particular, they will for on:
- imagine, and why not implement new 3D OpenGL transition(s) ( Jerry Tak-Wah-Pau); - python26 migration in OOo sources ( Ladan Zahiroleslam; - make Impress Master copyable (Bartosz Barcicki ) - Understand the Impress Application ( Wang Frederick)
Other students in the class may choose other projects through the one we propose (see the lists below).
As you can see, we have oriented several projects we proposed on Impress Improvement
Thorsten Behrens, Graphics and Impress expert, and whom I publically say one more time a big thank you, was so kind to be present very often on the #education.openoffice.org channel. His skills are extremely helpfull for us, and the students appreciate him a lot.
It would be great to see other devs, from e.g. other OOo applications (Calc e.g. ) join the channel, and answer/help the students.
Here is the Fun with Open Source: everybody learns form each other, and all progress. I must admit, since I'm helping students, I did a lot of progress with OOo source code understanding.
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
