Todo for OLPC

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GCompris running on the OLPC XO

OLPC links

GCompris without integration

I just received and OLPC XO. I have been able to run GCompris by installing it through the Fedora YUM package installer. Once installed, in Sugar, using the Alt+= key, you can run GCompris and it will be displayed in the Sugar area if nothing was started in before.

I can already report the problems:

  • Default GCompris screen size is too small, we can improve the situation by using our 1024x768 setup.
  • Texts are displayed too big.
  • The background sound takes 30% of the CPU
  • In activities with animation, it runs but so slow that it's unusable. We could easily make animations with a bigger step to improve the situation.

Requirements for an XO version

Sugar and the XO brings some new requirements we had not previously in GCompris.

  • (DONE) Sugar requires that each activities must be in a single bundle. GCompris code base has to be deeply re-aranged so that each activities are in their own directory.
  • (DONE) Screen size independence. GCompris should not resize the screen with xvidmode but use all the user screen size.
  • Dynamic screen size change. On the OLPC, it's possible to rotate the screen, we should support that. On PC in window mode, we should similarly be able to resize the window dynamically.
  • The two first requirements means that using SVG is a must. Sadly, even is we use SVG, the gnomecanvas just keep the pixmap created out of them. It means that when resizing (zooming) is requested, it does not re-render the svg but just scale the pixmaps like for png and jpg files. There is some changes to do in the gnomecanvas to let it know it's an svg and re-render it at the requested size properly.
  • We should be able to run all activities without the mouse, more specifically, with a gamepad. This allow it to be used with the OLPC in tablet mode but also with alternate peripherals or alternate platforms with no mouses.
  • Sugar bundle interoperability. GCompris activity should be packaged as sugar bundles and can be used on the OLPC. On the other way, sugar activities should be playable under GCompris.
  • (DONE) No more use SDL_Mixer and use gstreamer instead.
  • (DONE) Added X Properties. Now the gcompris binary accept the params --sugarBundleId and --sugarActivityId. It sets the X Properties accordingly.
  • (DONE) DBUS support for the set_active() method.

Testing the GCompriXO branch

The GCompriXO branch is the development branch focussed on Sugar integration. It is kept in sync with our trunk (GCompris 8.4). When complete, GCompriXO will be the new trunk (GCompris 8.5).

You can test this branch using: 

svn co svn+ssh://bcoudoin@svn.gnome.org/svn/gcompris/branches/gcomprixo
svn co http://svn.gnome.org/svn/gcompris/branches/gcomprixo
cd gcomprixo
sh autogen.sh --disable-sqlite --enable-dbus && make

To test one activity: 

cd src/crane-activity/
./runit.sh

To create an independent 'bundle' (not at the sugar standard yet) 

cd src
./bundleit.sh crane-activity

You have now a binary tarball crane-activity.tar.bz2 that contains only this activity with the resource it needs.

If you want translations, you can run a make install to have them installed in /usr/local/share/locale and then in an activity directory do: 

ln -s /usr/local/share/locale/ .
./runit.sh (and it's translated)

Or you can run the bundleit.sh script to get a localized binary tarball.

Installing the bundle on the XO

There is a script for that that comes with sugar but it did not worked for me. To install the GCompris bundle, transfer the .xo file on the XO. Then on the XO run: 

cd /usr/share/activities
unzip /home/olpc/crane-activity.xo

Then restart sugar, the GCompris icon will appear in sugar at the bottom of the screen.

What's left to do

  • [DONE] Need to add the proper links in the resources directory to get the audio files.
  • Add support for Sugar's Journal.
  • [DONE] Add the auto creation of the activity.info menu file as Sugar requirements. It's easy to create it from our own activity menu.
  • [DONE] Add a wrappers to start GCompris activity properly as Sugar requirements. By the way, I never saw the GCompris dbus code working, there is probably a little issue there.
  • [DONE] Add the locale translation with the GCompris bundle.
  • Add sugar compliant svg icon for each activity.
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