Requested Features

Implemented or Resolved

Human readable log

At the moment, the log of activity looks like that :

mer 31 aoû 10:57:38 CEST 2005;host;user;gcompris;colors;1;0;PASSED;2;;

Teachers and parents could access the log file more easily if it was presented in a table (with proper columns titles) or another more convenient way.

There could be a button to click on as well, to open the visualization of the log file.

* Answer: Yes, we agree on this and we made many changes in the 7.0 Release to allow us to provide a such feature in a next release.

Timer

Could you add an option to activate a countdown on some activities to make those that children already master more fun ?

* Answer: We already have this feature in place for the math table revision activity. In the GCompris configuration dialog, you can select if the timer must be disable, slow or fast. We could pretty easily implement the timer in more activities. However, It is not a priority for us. If you want to implement this, join the mailing list, we can provide detailed instructions and support for you.

Built-in user select

For those who have a limited number of accounts on their computer, could you add a built-in account selector with minimal user admin (new user, open user) Del user could be done by just removing a file in console mode, which is safe enough in many cases.

* Answer: GCompris 7.0 includes an administrative mode that let you create users. To activate it, simply create users and classes and then add them to the Default profile.

Image Dock (Puzzle & Chronos)

• Problems:
  • After using up the first few pieces, you have to change pages to find more. My daughter found the "page" concept tricky and was frustrated.
  • When pieces get "dropped" or knocked out, they go back to "their" spot, which may be off-screen. If you don't know about "pages" (because you're 3) they seem to just vanish.

• Proposed Solution: make the dock a spring-loaded queue, so pieces move up to fill voids. Then you could finish the puzzle without "paging". Dropped pieces would always be at the end. But with most of the puzzle completed, that would be the front!

• Answer: This behaviour has been fixed in GCompris 8.3.

Puzzle: hard to know when it's safe to place pieces

• Problem: It's easy to "drop" pieces because they weren't exactly over the drop spot. And it's not always obvious what counts as the drop spot. This is especially true of Chile and the Bahamas!

• Proposed Solutions:
  • Flash the dot/region
  • Show the piece in-place, as it would be. (I like this one.)

• Answer: Show the piece in-place with transparency effect (Shadow piece).

Puzzle: Size Problems with some pieces

• Problems:
  • Chile & Antarctica are too small in the dock to pick up!
  • Suriname etc. are blocky in the dock, because they are too big there.

• Proposed Solutions:
  • As you hover over a piece, it zooms to be grabbable (like OSX dock). Let the piece be it's natural size, or something closer. Therefore:
  • Large countries could take more than one slot, or have a handle.

• Answer: little hand to help pick up shape.

Puzzle pieces fall behind the mouse

Sometimes the puzzle piece loses track of the mouse for a few cycles, and then is displaced from the mouse cursor. I haven't checked the code, but it's probably keeping track of it's own XY changes. Couldn't it just "slave" the XY coords to the current mouse coords?

• Answer: Fix with new drag and drop functions.