Todo for OLPC

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GCompris running on the OLPC XO

Links @OLPC.org

How do I report a bug?

We are very interested in bug reports. Please report bugs by sending email to "bruno.coudoin@free.fr". (Developers, for bugs related to the OLPC integration, please file bugs in the OLPC tracking system.)

We are also interested in your suggestions for enhancements in GCompris. Community input and collaboration is vital to the success of OLPC, it's the same for GCompris. Thank you for your participation.

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.
  • (DONE) Sugar bundle interoperability. GCompris activity should be packaged as sugar bundles and can be used on the OLPC.
  • (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 (needs testing).
  • (DONE in gcomprixogoo branch) 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.
  • (DONE in gcomprisxogoo branch) The two first requirements mean that using SVG is a must. Sadly, even if we use SVG, the gnomecanvas just keeps the pixmap created out of them. It means that when resizing (zooming) is requested, it does not re-render the svg, but just scales the pixmaps like for png and jpg files. There are some changes yet to make in the gnomecanvas to let it know that it's an svg and re-render it at the requested size properly. SOLUTION: in gcomprisxogoo we have an SVG item and by default it scales pixmaps up much better than the gnomecanvas.
  • We should be able to run all activities without the mouse, more specifically, with a gamepad. This allows it to be used with the OLPC in tablet mode, but also with alternate peripherals or alternate platforms without a mouse.

Testing the GCompriXO branch

The GCompriXO branch is the development branch focussed on Sugar integration. It is not keep in sync with our trunk (GCompris 8.4). There is another branch named gcomprixogoo that when complete, will be the new trunk (GCompris 8.5). The later branch included the splitting activity work of the gcomprixo branch and the switch from the gnomecanvas to the goocanvas.

You can test this branch using: 

git clone git://git.gnome.org/gcompris
cd gcompris
git checkout -b gcomprixo origin/gcomprixo
sh autogen.sh --disable-sqlite --enable-dbus && make

To test one activity: 

cd src
./runit.sh crane-activity

To create a Sugar bundle with an activity and a locale (for example here Brasilian Portuguese): 

cd src
./bundleit.sh crane-activity pt_BR

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

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.

Binary build (English)

If you just want to test a GCompris activity on the xo, you can download a pre-build version in English and Spanish.

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. See Icons_Sugarisation.
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