|
News
Latest addition: Saturday 13 February 2010.
New feature:
Created a new U.S.A map for our geography activity
Completed the Windows port.
Now use the cute GCompris cursor.
Fixed SDL audio back-end
Fixed bugs:
Fixed geography activities. Many dot where missing,
hidden by the background.
Fixed drawn case in the chess activity, it was ending in an
infinite loop.
Improved a little bit the layout in the penalty activity.
Replaced the yellow by white the text color of the score.
Now the text dialog is centered in the height.
Added an API entry to get the current cursor. This allow
the help dialog to get the previous cursor, set the default
one and change again to the caller one in the end.
In erase activity, the sponge cursor is setback when
exiting the pause state. This allow the about box to set the
default cursor which is more suitable.
In the menu, the display of the description is now centered.
Minor change, better layout.
In python, now import sqlite3 instead of pysqlite2 For
backyard compatibility, there is a fall back to sill import
pysqlite2.
Added a missing background to the simple color activity It is
based on the artwork of Mathieu Ignacio (from the target
activity.)
Fixed algebra activity to report the level properly.
Better error checking in case the database cannot be loaded
or created. Before that patch, a failure was exiting the
startup sequence without warning the user Now, in case we
cannot load the database of cannot created it we follow the
procedure:
- rename the database under the name gcompris_db.broken
- recreate it from scratch
- we failed again, fall back in no database mode.
Translation:
Updated Arabic translation by Khaled Hosny
Updated Greek translation by Yannis Kaskamanidis
Updated Greek translation by Yannis Kaskamanidis
Updated Hungarian translation updated by Gabor Kelemen
Updated Brazilian Portuguese translation by Frederico Goncalves
Guimaraes
Updated Russian translation by Андрей Черепанов
Updated Swedish translation by Daniel Nylander
In short, this release is a bug fix release of the 9.0. It is mandatory for all packager to use this one due to the large number of problems we fixed.
You get the tarball at the usual place on Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gco... 490cc6ee81847e4441a878dc6e16f301 gcompris-9.1.tar.gz
If you prefer, on the git side, this comes from the ’gcomprixogoo’ branch.
If full, the change log is:
Core fixes:
Added support of Sugar look&feel by Aleksey Lim
Now the group menus are ordered based on an embedded difficulty
level so that they appear in the same order.
Fixes to compile with GTK 2.19 by Johan Cwiklinski
Removed unused import rsvg in watercycle and penalty.
PACKAGERS: This mean we no more need on python-rsvg.
Activity fixes:
scale
Added a sign on the scale
The scale activity is sometimes annoying because you cannot easiliy
see which side the scale goes. I added a sign < > or = on it to ease
the task.
photo hunter
Major rework of he photo hunter activity that can now detect the
image difference automagically. This makes it easy to contribute new
data set to this activity, just provide it 2 images having some
differences. BTW, I added some more content to it.
Photo hunter has been fixed to work in full screen and now has an
explanation string when started
erase
Fixed events on the canvas that where not taken in account.
Now clicking beside the fish does speed them like it was before.
reversecount
Fixed reversecount, it was not restarting on loose case.
Now when the children loose he restarts the same level.
follow line
Adapted the follow line to work on touch screen.
This was reported by Ronny Standtke.
Now not only the motion events are catched but also click events.
animation activity
Added tooltip in the animation activity.
smallnumber
Fixed a crash case in smallnumber activity.
This has also been improved to avoid overlaps of dices.
Fixed smallnumber2 activity regarding dice pair not close enough.
electricity
Fixed electricity activity, image was referenced badly.
geography
Added translation on tooltips in the geography activity.
missingletter
Fixed missingletter crash uppon changing its locale.
erase double click
Reintroduced the erase double click activity.
memory word number
Fixed memory word number activity. It was broken related to
translations.
smallnumber
No more display the sublevel 11/10.
ball catch
Added the manual in the first start of ballcatch.
traffic
Simplified level for traffic.
A contribution from a French teacher Sylvain Dechy who teaches in
Hérimoncourt. This introduces a set of simplified level in the traffic
activity best suited for children.
tuxpaint
Fixed tuxpaint activity. Was completely broken.
memory sound
Now in memory_sound activity the intro is heard.
melody
Added an OK button to start the melody activity.
This avoids the intro voice to be skipped.
Translation updates:
Updated Ukrainian translation by Ivan Onyshchuk
Updated French translation by Bruno Coudoin
Updated Hungarian translation by Gabor Kelemen
Updated Czech translation by Marek Černocký
Updated Simplified Chinese translation by Ray Wang
Updated Arabic translation by Khaled Hosny
Updated Afrikaans translation by Friedel Wolff
Updated Portuguese translation by Duarte Loreto
Updated Czech translation by Marek Cernocky
Updated Bulgarian translation by Alexander Shopov
Updated Brazilian Portuguese by Frederico Goncalves Guimaraes
Voice pack:
Several voices where not played due to name mismatch
Added a new Chinese voice set read out by Feng Jie and others,
translated and post processed by littlebat at
http://www.learndiary.com/
After two years of work, the GCompris development team is happy to share with you the release of the version 9.0.
GCompris is almost 10 years old and it required some deep code restructuring. This release brings many mandatory changes to make it easier to enhance, maintain and distribute.
The first major change has been driven by the Sugar community. On the XO there was a need to distribute the activities individually. Since the early days of GCompris, we had properly separated the core engine and the activities but the laters were shared in a single folder. Now each activity in GCompris have a single directory. This includes its code and its data (menu, icon, images, sounds, data set).
Beside allowing per activity distribution, it is also makes it easier to contribute to GCompris, there is even an activity called pythontemplate that can be used as a starting point to create your own.
The second major change has been to replace the old, unmaintained gnome-canvas toolkit by the more modern, Cairo based toolkit named goocanvas. This makes the rendering of GCompris much better, we now have an alpha channel and the antialiasing.
The third change is our skin format that is now fully SVG based and uses the elements IDs. This way creating a skin can be done by editing a single file instead of 70 files.
The last change is the image ratio (width versus height). In the old version we were using 800x600 (4/3) and could only do fullscreen by changing the screen resolution. Now, to accomodate newer monitors, we are using the 800x520 resolution which is wider. But GCompris playing area is not smaller because we managed to replace the big button bar to something more integrated. The full screen is done by rescaling ourself, you can even rescale GCompris in window mode.
A good side effect is that GCompris can be used on big monitor and on smaller devices.
Beside the major changes, there has been a lot of minor changes all around, it would take too many time to report all of them.
At least, I have to mention:
The new graphism from Stephane Cabaraux for the canal lock and water cycle activities.
The new photo hunter activity by Marc Le Douarain
More famous paintings by Marc Levivier.
A full rewrite of the animation activity that allows now editing previous frames at will with a time line.
A new mode for our scale activity where the children now learn the weight units gram and kilo by Wolfram Sang.
I you can see, we make a lot of work and now we need your help to report us bugs or send patches to stabilize it.
Thanks to all the contributors and supporters of all kinds who provide help to GCompris.
Windows users, please be patient, I will work on it as soon as the 9.0 is stabilized.
Bruno.
I would like first to apologise towards the Portuguese children and teachers who have faced the translation issue.
A special thanks to our Gnome Portuguese translation team, Duarte Loreto and António Lima. They spent the week-end working on a rework of the translation under the pressure of the bad press we have been facing in some Portugal’s news paper.
GCompris supports over 50 languages and its a community based effort. Yes in some case we may ship incomplete or incorrect translations. We have always considered that we need to start somewhere and that an incomplete translation is better than no translation at all. This has worked pretty well so far because once people sees that the translation is not correct they join the project to improve it.
Over the years, the Gnome Translation team gets stronger but for historical reason I kept the bad custom to release po files myself. I now understand how wrong I was. I call again the Gnome translation team to take over the languages I still commit myself. You can find which in the po/ChangeLog file.
So this is pretty unusual for us to be in the headline. I hope this will calm down so we can go back to what we like to do, help the children learning.
Now the release notes for the 8.4.9:
Fixes to compile on Ubuntu 8.10
Improved robustness, fixed potential crash cases
Miguel DE Izarra implemented a word selector. Now the teacher
can easily put their own words in the reading and falling word
activities.
Integrated several patches from Vitali Perchonok related to
Right to Left languages support.
Matieu Ignacio: New original background for the target activity.
Vitali Perchonok provided several images from OpenClipart to
replace ours.
Miguel De Izarra added support for a network mode to let teachers
centralise their customisations.
This save custom data in user_dir and make a content.txt
(a md5sum like file) listing custom files. Simply put this files
in a web server to diffuse in classroom.
GCompris clients are launched with —server
Miquel De Izarra Added support for editing the content of the
missing letter activity.
Fixed the empty date field in the admin section on Windows.
Now properly points use images in My GCompris/Images
In the animation activity, the image selector will display
all images from this directory.
gnet library is now enabled by default at compile time.
Voices in Punjabi by Ankit Sahai
Translation updates:
Major:
src/boards/smallnumbers.c: (key_press), (player_win):
fixed a major crash case. The crash happens when there
are 2 or more dice at the sublevel 9. The first die
complete the game and the next die is processed but
already deleted.
Minor:
boards/skins/babytoy/skin.xml: selected a better text
color in clockgame text
Translation:
New Panjabi voice set by Ankit Sahai
Several translations have been updated
Improvements:
Added more levels to the babyshape activity. This levels are based on famous paintings, the children must drag missing part of the paintings back to their proper places. This is a contribution of Marc Levivier.
Zohra Coudoin recorded most activities introduction in French
and English. Now when you enter an activity a voice explains it.
Translator willing to help on this task can follow the instructions there (before recording we need to review and complete the introductions):
Bugs fixed:
clickgame.c: (clickgame_next_level): Fixed the zoom level that was too low at level 2.
shapegame.c: Now when the level is won the red point are hidden to let the children appreciate the art work.
Translations:
Rerecoded Somalian costa_rica.ogg by Mohamed I. Mursal
Added support for Ukrainian by Ivan Onyshchuk.
click_on_letter.ogg: rerecorded by original author Marina Snaaijer
Created Hebrew words by Jorge Mariano, updated the translation.
New in 8.4.4:
This is a major bugfixes release.
The color mosaic activity crashes when a target button is clicked.
New in 8.4.3:
This is a minor bugfixes release.
Fixed many potential crash of GCompris in the key_press activity callback.
Fixed fallback directory for english locale
Ed Montgomery created the canada region map for the geography country activity.
Voices: Now package voices files above 10, they are used by the algebra activity. Thanks Mariusz for noticing this.
Chess: The left lower corner square (a1 in algebraic notation) is now in the dark color
Translations:
Anand Kulkarni added support for Urdu including voices.
Added bulgarian voices made by Iassen Kertov
