[gcompris-devel] Preparing release 9.4

[Bruno Coudoin]

I am currently cleaning things up and rounding the edges for a new
release. I was afraid we had not so much to offer but while creating the
release notes (see below) I found out the list to be long enough.

First, is there some people working on GCompris willing me to delay the
release to incorporate their work ? Unless someone needs more time,
let's set the release date to the 26th of November.

IMPORTANT TRANSLATOR NOTICE:
  The new hangman activity uses our default-<locale>.xml files to
  propose words to the children. It is thus very important now to have
  them properly filled. For now I did the work for English and French.
  Translators, please refer to this page for instructions:
  http://gcompris.net/wiki/Translation_addons


I also created a tool to extract wiktionary to an xml file suitable to
GCompris ( http://gcompris.net/wiki/Wiktionary_to_XML ). So far, it
works only for French and it's a lot of work to make it work for other
language. Anyway, the list of words in default-<locale>.xml files is
needed as input to this tool.

Release note for GCompris 9.4 (SO FAR):

Major changes:

- Fixed level 8 of babyshapes. The makefile was missing all the images
  for this level. I reworked the files so that they lie in the
  resource directory instead of subdirectories.

- New hangman activity. Icon is a a modified one from Mathieu's icon
  set. The cute background is based on a drawing Franck Doucet made
  for our bargame activity.  This activity uses our
  default-<locale>.xml files to propose words to the children. It is
  thus very important now to have them properly filled. For now I did
  the work for English and French. Translators, please refer to this
  page for instructions: http://gcompris.net/wiki/Translation_addons

- Added details activity by Marc Levivier.  In the spirit of famous
  painting discovery, in this activity the painting is complete and
  the children must put painting parts on the right places.

- New feature in the chat activity. The user has a shared white boards
  now. This has been developped by Fionn Ziegler.

- First release of an in progress tool that converts wiktionary xml
  dumps in an xml file. For now, it works only for French, this page
  tracks the progress: http://gcompris.net/wiki/Wiktionary_to_XML The
  idea behind this is to get an xml formatted dictionnary to create
  new activities in the reading / writing area. For now this is just
  not used in GCompris.


Minor fixes:

- Fixed activity 'double entry' for level 3. References to voices were
  wrong, this level was not playable.

- Fixed bug in which some buttons are no more displayed like in the
  help and the ok buttons in the dialogs (happens on Ubuntu 10.10) No
  more use my autocrop feature in goocanvas. It no more works for an
  unknown reason but it is not very useful, we can live without it. I
  ported GCompris to no more use it.

- Added the command line option --nocursor (-C). As its name implies,
  GCompris won't show any visible cursor. This is very useful to touch
  screen users.

- Added missing words list for Ukranian, Esperanto and Hebrew. There
  were not properly packaged (they need to be completed anyway).

- Now hide the bar in shapegame activities when the focus is on the ok
  button we now show the title and info items. This let the children
  have a complete view of the painting.

- Fixed gc_file_find_absolute() to better parse long and short locale.
  Now a 3 letter locale like 'ast' is supported. Added support for
  locale Fixed a startup issue. Our gc_file_find_absolute() was without
  '.'.

- A few fixes to better manage locale especially in click_on_letter to
  properly display the locale to search if its not a 2 letter prefix
  like for asturian (locale=ast).

- Replaced paintings considered not children proof by new one (By Marc
  Levivier).


Minor changes:

- Added -O2 flag instead of debug in our compilation chain by
  default. Without it we crashes on macosx EXC_ARITHMETIC in a g_malloc
  in sound init.

- Removed the flying plane in the about dialog. This removes the
  need for an extra .png of our logo. Now we have our logo in the
  main window when we start it.

- Integrated the gcompris and fsf logo in our skin.svg file Modified
  the code to use the logo from there.

- Avoid compilation issue in debug mode in gnuchess.

- Added basic instructions to compile GCompris on MacOSX.

- Updated translation instructions for our word list xml files.

- Fixed activation code. Was broken on windows.

- Allow deprecated flag for gtk and gdk to compile again against gtk
  2.22

- Added an explicit sound_close when we exit.  The patch comes from
  debian.

- Added a toolitp in superbrain activity to make it easy to understand
  what a white or black square means.

- Added the method gcompris.get_random_word(wordlist, level) on the
  python side.

- Fixed references to african country for the voices to no more have
  them in a separate directory.

- Added author information for each paintings by Marc Levivier.

- Added the info tag in shape based activity. An info tag is exactly
  the same as a title tag except that is is displayed only when the
  level is completed and the mouse enters the OK button.

- Improved documentation of the sound API documentation (python doc)

- Support GNUCHESS environment variable Will be useful in 0install
  environment when GnuChess is installed from 0install feed.

- Support GNUCAP environment variable Will be useful in 0install
  environment when GnuCap is installed from 0install feed.

- Fix sqlite-less build by Aleksey Lim

- Fixes bug#619433 in the chess game, we no more display the turn at
  game end.

- Removed the help button in the administration where we don't have
  help.

- Improved our shape based activities so that titles entries are
  raised when the focus enters the OK button. It allows the children to
  see the name of the painting even if it is displayed under it.

- Improved the python template activity to have an hello world. For
  info, this page explains how to add an activity:
  http://gcompris.net/wiki/Adding_an_activity

- Created a new script utility named createit.sh. It creates a new
  empty activity with the given name (only python activity).

- Pass NULL as last goo_canvas_image_new's argument. May be fixes some
  crashes.

- Fixed es.po, no more translate keywords in es.po

- In shapegame activities, now the xml format does accept
  'targetfile=""' to remove the red dot.

- Added the number of activities in the main menu view.

- No more check for pysqlite2 unless installed python is 2.4

- Fixed status bar call crashing in command line mode like for
  gcompris -l list.

- README.translators updated to reflect new file organisation.


-- 
Bruno Coudoin
http://gcompris.net  Free educational software for kids
http://toulibre.org  Logiciel Libre à Toulouse
http://april.org     Promouvoir et défendre le Logiciel Libre