News

Hi,
To celebrate the 20 years of GCompris, we are pleased to announce the release of GCompris version 1.0.

This new version contains a new major feature: the addition of the Activity Settings menu with Dataset selection for more than 50 activities, allowing to choose more specifically what can be learned on the activities.

We also added 4 new activities:

The long awaited Analog Electricity activity which allows us to draw circuits and run their simulation.

Learn digits and two subactivities to learn additions and subtractions. The aim is to teach these concepts to younger children, with easy computations.

Baby keyboard where, when a character is typed on the keyboard, we display it on the screen and play the corresponding voice if it exists.

Gravity, which replaces the old Intro Gravity, explains better the concept and is more realistic.

You can find packages of this new version for GNU/Linux, Windows, MacOS and Raspberry Pi on the download page. This update will also be available soon in the Android Play store, the F-Droid repository and the Windows store. Note that the MacOS package is not notarized.

You can check on this page the voices status in your language: https://gcompris.net/voicestats/. You can help us by providing a nice recording of your voice for all the missing entries in your native language.

On the translation side, we have 22 languages fully supported: Basque, Breton, British English, Catalan, Catalan (Valencian), Chinese Traditional, Dutch, French, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Malayalam, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian.

We also have 4 languages partially supported: Belarusian (85%), Brazilian Portuguese (92%), German (89%), Lithuanian (84%).

As said in the previous news, we decided to only ship translations that are at least 80% completed to let the children have a better experience and not half translated software. Unfortunately, we had to drop the translation for: Estonian, Finnish, Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, Galician, Hindi, Macedonian, Norwegian Nynorsk, Russian, Slovak and Chinese Simplified.

If your language is in the partially supported list, or is no more or not yet supported at all, and you want to help, please contact us (support@gcompris.net) and we will give you instructions to get started translating.

Another way to help is to write some posts in your community about GCompris, and don't hesitate to give us some feedback.

Thank you all,
Timothée & Johnny

Hi,
We are pleased to announce that the full version of GCompris is now available at no cost for every supported platform!

The installers for Windows and macOS on our website have been updated to not require activation code anymore, and the full version on the Play store and Microsoft store are now gratis.

We hope that this move will make it easier for all the children in the world to get access to the best educational software.

Thank you all,
Timothée & Johnny

Hi,
We are pleased to announce the release of GCompris version 0.97.

This new version contains 2 new activities:

A programming maze: to learn the basics of programming with a few instructions

Baby tangram: to learn the basics of tangram (this activity corresponds to the lowest levels of previous tangram activity)

And a lot of new features:

new sub-categories to organize activities

new background music feature and audio tracks

new volume settings for audio effects

new speed setting in several activities (gletters, algebra, readingh, note_names)

new feature in chess activities to display captured pieces

new option to go to next level manually in drawletters and drawnumbers

new voices for en_US

new images for colors activity

new images for advanced_colors activity

new images for target activity

improve settings layout

improve share activity layout

improve categorisation activity layout

resource files are now stored in KDE server (https://cdn.kde.org/)

add a tutorial to even/odd numbers

add intro to piano_composition

add malayalam dataset to gletters

add breton dataset to wordsgame

fix voices not playing in geography

fix sounds not playing in mining

fix portrait mode in binary_bulb

fix high cpu load in menu

fix hint image size in photo_hunter

fix layout in color_mix

and lots of other small fixes...

You can find packages of this new version for GNU/Linux, Windows and MacOS on the download page. This update will also be available soon in the Android Play store and the Windows store. For Raspberry Pi, we'll provide an installer soon. The updated version for iOS is still not available. Note that the MacOS package is not yet notarized, we will look at doing this during next year.

On the voices side, we added a new voice "try again" which is used in several activities instead of "check answer". You can check on this page if this voice is available in your language: https://gcompris.net/voicestats/ (in the "Misc" section). You can help us by providing a nice recording of your voice for all the missing entries in your native language.

On the translation side, we have 20 languages fully supported: Basque, Brazilian Portuguese, Breton, British English, Catalan, Chinese Traditional, Dutch, French, Galician, Greek, Italian, Macedonian, Malayalam, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian.

We also have 15 languages partially supported: Belarusian (65%), Catalan (Valencian 95%), Chinese Simplified (66%), Estonian (93%), Finnish (86%), German (96%), Hindi (73%), Hungarian (95%), Indonesian (95%), Irish Gaelic (78%), Norwegian Nynorsk (93%), Russian (76%), Scottish Gaelic (67%), Slovenian (54%), Turkish (95%).

Usually we only ship translations that are at least 80% complete. However several translations dropped way below 80% (especially Slovenian, Belarusian and Scottish Gaelic ; but also Hindi, Russian and Irish Gaelic). We decided to keep those exceptionally for this release, and hope to see former or new translators complete those translations. If we get updates or new translations, we will make a release update.

So if your language is in the partially supported list, or is not yet supported at all, and you want to help, please contact us and we will give you instructions to get started translating.

Another way to help is to write some posts in your community about GCompris, and don't hesitate to give us feedbacks.

Notes:

For the Malayalam language, we noticed some issues with the default font "Andika-R". We recommend Malayalam users to select the font Noto-Sans-Malayalam or RaghuMalaylamSans from the application menu (if it is not available in the list you need to install this font on your system to be able to select it).

Thank you all,
Timothée & Johnny

Hi,
We are pleased to announce the release of GCompris version 0.96.

This new version includes updated translation for several languages, and a few bug fixes.

Translations that received a big update:

Brazilian Portuguese (100%)

Breton (100%)

Finnish (90%)

Indonesian (100%)

Norwegian Nynorsk (97%)

Polish (100%)

This means we have now 19 languages fully supported: British English, Brazilian Portuguese, Breton, Catalan, Catalan (Valencian), Chinese Traditional, Dutch, French, Galician, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Malayalam, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Swedish, Ukrainian.

We still have 15 partially supported languages: Basque (78%), Belarusian (68%), Chinese Simplified (69%), Estonian (62%), Finnish (90%), German (84%), Hindi (76%), Irish Gaelic (82%), Norwegian Nynorsk (97%), Russian (77%), Scottish Gaelic (70%), Slovak (62%), Slovenian (56%), Spanish (93%), Turkish (73%).

We decided again for this release to keep the translations that dropped below 80%. It would be sad to have to disable 10 languages from the application, but if no one updates the following translations, they will be disabled in next release: Basque, Belarusian, Chinese Simplified, Estonian, Hindi, Russian, Scottish Gaelic, Slovak, Slovenian and Turkish.

For the windows version, we added a new entry in the start menu called GCompris (Safe Mode) to launch it with software rendering mode. This was needed as the auto-detection of OpenGL support was not reliable. Now, users can easily choose between OpenGL and software rendering without changing the configuration file.

Known issues:

The progress bar for downloads doesn't work anymore. This is a side effect from our switch to https for hosting the files. We are looking to improve this for next release.

As a side note dedicated to GNU/Linux distribution packagers, this new version now requires OpenSSL to be able to download voices and additional images.

As usual you can download this new version from our download page. It will also be available soon on the Android and Windows store.

Thank you all,
Timothée & Johnny

Hi,
Good news for Mac users: we finally have a new version of GCompris for OSX !

The last version of GCompris for OSX was 0.52 from 3 years ago. Since then, no one in the team could update it because of the lack of hardware. Thanks to Boudewijn from the Krita Foundation, we have now a little mac mini, old but good enough to build our packages. It took me several days of dedicated work to learn this new platform and update the build system to produce a distributable package.

This package was built and tested on OSX 10.13. If you can try it on a different OSX version, please let us know if it works.

The .dmg installer is available on the download page.

This time we decided to stop distributing it from the app-store. About the iOS version, it will take some more time before I can look at it, and we still don't have any device to test.

Notes: this package is based on GCompris version 0.95. It is built with the latest version of Qt (5.12.0) which introduced some regressions. We fixed all of those issues, but some of those fixes are only in the development version for now. A few activities are broken (checkers, braille, braille_alphabet, algorithm), but we will make a new release next month that will also address those little issues.

Thank you all,
Timothée - GCompris team

Hi,
We are pleased to announce the release of GCompris version 0.95.

This new version contains 7 new activities:

Binary bulbs: to learn how to count in binary

Railroad activity: to train visual memory

Solar System: to learn about our solar system

Name that Note: to learn to recognize musical notes and their names

Play Piano: to train reading notes on a score

Play Rhythm: to train following a musical rhythm

Piano Composition: to learn composition of a musical score

You can find packages of this new version for GNU/Linux and Windows on the download page. This update will also be available in a few days on the Android and Windows store. For Raspberry Pi, we'll provide an installer in the beginning of 2019. The updated versions for MacOS and iOS are still not available, we hope to be able to release those during next year.

On the translation side, we have 15 languages fully supported: British English, Catalan, Catalan (Valencian), Chinese Traditional, Dutch, French, Galician, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Malayalam, Portuguese, Romanian, Swedish, Ukrainian.
We also have 19 languages partially supported: Basque (78%), Belarusian (69%), Brazilian Portuguese (74%), Breton (54%), Chinese Simplified (69%), Estonian (63%), Finnish (61%), German (86%), Hindi (77%), Indonesian (84%), Irish Gaelic (82%), Norwegian Nynorsk (89%), Russian (74%), Scottish Gaelic (71%), Slovak (62%), Slovenian (57%), Spanish (95%), Polish (94%), Turkish (74%).

Usually we only ship translations that are at least 80% complete. However for this release, several translations dropped below 80%. We decided to keep them exceptionally for this release, and hope to see former or new translators complete those translations. If we get updates or new translations, we will make a release update for those.
So if your language is in the partially supported list, or is not yet supported at all, and you want to help, please contact us and we will give you instructions to get started translating.

Another way to help is to write some posts in your community about GCompris, and don't hesitate to give us feedbacks.

Notes:

On GNU/Linux and Windows, we used to have two separate installers for OpenGL and software rendering. Now both rendering modes are available from the same installer. By default we try to use the OpenGL rendering, and if not working, we show an error and switch to the software rendering. This automatic switch is new and may not work everywhere. In case it doesn't, you can manually select the software rendering mode by editing the configuration file (in ~/.config/gcompris/gcompris-qt.conf for Linux, %LocalAppData%/gcompris/GCompris.conf for Windows): find the line "renderer=auto", replace auto with software and save the file. We are also interested to get some feedback to help us improve this auto-detection.

For the Malayalam language, we noticed some issues with the default font "Andika-R". We recommend Malayalam users to select the font Noto-Sans-Malayalam from the application menu (if it is not available in the list you need to install this font on your system to be able to select it).

Thank you all,
Timothée & Johnny

Hi,
Here is GCompris 0.91, a new bugfix release to correct some issues in previous version and improve a few things.

Every GNU/Linux distribution shipping 0.90 should update to 0.91.

With 68 commits since last release, the full changelog is too long for this post. But here is a list to summarize the changes.

Activities:

fix English text in several activities

fix score position in several activities

block some buttons and interactions when needed in several places

lots of fixes for audio in several activities

number_sequence (and others based on it), fix base layout

update dataset for clickanddraw, drawnumbers and drawletters

crane, add localized dataset

lightsoff, add keyboard support and other fixes

algorithm, add keyboard support and other fixes

money, fixes for locale currency used

ballcatch, improve audio feedback

calendar, several little fixes

memory-case-association fix icons size

Other changes:

re-enable sound effects on linux

improved playback of sound effects, no more delay

add captions to images and OARS tags in the appdata

add Scottish Gaelic to core, and update some datasets for it

main bar, fix some items size

remove unused images

You can find this new version on the download page, and soon in the Play store and Windows store.

On the translation side, we have 16 languages fully supported: British English, Catalan, Catalan (Valencian), Chinese Traditional, Dutch, French, Greek, Indonesian, Irish Gaelic, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian.
We also have 15 languages partially supported: Norwegian Nynorsk (97%), Hindi (96%), Turkish (90%), Scottish Gaelic (86%), Galician (86%), Brazilian Portuguese (84%), Belarusian (84%), German (81%), Chinese Simplified (79%), Russian (78%), Estonian (77%), Slovak (76%), Finnish (76%), Slovenian (69%), Breton (65%).

If you want to help completing one of these translations or adding a new one, please contact us.

Else you can still help by making some posts in your community about GCompris and don't hesitate to give feedbacks.

Thank you all,
Timothée & Johnny

Hi,

We are happy to bring you GCompris 0.90.

This new version contains 8 new activities:

A calendar activity where the child learns how to use it (by Amit Sagtani)

Another activity based on calendar where the child has to find the date corresponding to a date + some days further/before this date (by Amit Sagtani))

An activity to learn how people on a family are related and how to call this relation (started by Rajdeep Kaur on a previous GSoC, completed by Rudra Nil Basu during last GSoC)

Another similar activity with questions about family members

An extension of memory activities where the child has to match lowercase letters with their corresponding uppercase (by Aman Gupta)

The same activity in two players mode with Tux (by Aman Gupta)

The Gtk+ port and improved submarine activity where the child learns a basic overview on how to run a submarine (by Rudra Nil Basu)

The digital electricity activity where the child can use different components to create an electric schema. There is also a tutorial mode to explain how to use each component (started by Pulkit Gupta on previous GSoC, completed by Rudra Nil Basu)

We always have new features, content and bug fixes:

Updated graphics on several activities by Timothée Giet

Irish translation, voices and datasets by Séamus Ó Briain

Lot of improvements on removing overriding elements issues (score were hidden behind the bar...)

Add Tutorial item to be able to have activity introductions with both images and texts

Add easy mode in letter in word with less words displayed

Add license page

Lots of small bug fixes

You can find this new version on the download page.

On the translation side, we have 14 languages fully supported: British English, Catalan, Catalan (Valencian), Chinese Traditional , Dutch, French, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian;
And some partially supported: Belarusian (87%), Brazilian Portuguese (87%), Breton (65%), Chinese Simplified (80%), Estonian (79%), Finnish (78%), Galician(87%), German (83%), Hindi (86%), Irish Gaelic (99%), Norwegian Nynorsk (86%), Russian (80%), Slovak (76%), Slovenian (70%), Polish (99%), Turkish (93%).

If you want to help, please make some posts in your community about GCompris and don't hesitate to give feedbacks.

Thank you all,
Timothée & Johnny