[gcompris-devel] Release 11.09RC1

[Bruno Coudoin]

Time for a new release. I am bored with the numbering scheme of
GCompris, now I propose to follow the Ubuntu number with the year and
the month in it like 11.09 for this one.

You can get the Source and Windows binary version from here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gcompris/files/11.09RC1/

Please focus your test on the new features (see the release notes
bellow). We are not yet in 'string freeze' so if you see misses or
mistakes in the English version please report them.

I'll set a release date depending on the feedback.

New Activities:

- A set of activities to discover the Braille system. They have been
  made by Srishti Sethi this summer (part of the Gnome Summer of
  Code):

  - The history of Louis Braille
  - Discover the Braille system
  - Training using a funny game, like falling letters but with Braille
  - Braille lotto to remember Braille numbers.

- click on letter uppercase: same as click on letter but with only upper
case.
  Now the old activity 'click on letter' poposes only lower case.

Activity updates:

- erase activity: added new animals from picture by Adrien Grellier
  and Claire Gegout from their Antarctic trip.

- shapegame activities: now we display the ok button when all shapes
  are placed even with errors We also show a red cross indicating the
  children errors.  Thanks to Arnaud Limon for the suggestion.  Fixed
  a potential crash when a piece was overwritten by another in their
  wrong position.

- Changed the combo locale system to display the language in their
  textual form instead of their locale code. Maintain them sorted to
  make it even easier to use. Now activites with locale configuration
  use this feature.

- Mostly full rewrite of this activity to allow a specific
  configuration per language and per user.  Now this activity takes a
  desktop formated file as input. It contains for each level the
  questions and answers charaters to propose. This file can be edited
  in the game through the config button, in this case a local data
  file is save under the user's My GCompris folder and is reused.  Now
  for each country we must provide a data file, this is much better
  than before where it was fully random and was not respecting the
  natural difficulties of a language. If this file is missing we
  create the level automatically from the alphabet (or from the
  english one for Latin based alphabet) now display the text of the
  question if we cannot play it for any reason which makes this
  activity playable even if we don't have the voice set or the sound
  is disabled. Also if one letter is missing from the voice set it
  remains playable.  Improved the graphism. based on an openclipart
  image.  Splitted click on letter in two activities, on with
  lowercase one with uppercase as suggested by Sylvain Dechy.

- memory sound activity: the tux band background image with the bsd
  devil is considered offensive in some country.  Now the bsd devil
  looks less like a devil and more like a red little boy.

- wordsgame activity: changed the text color of the falling words to
  be back and white I found out that reading text in color other than
  black and white is very hard.

- In login.py and tuxpaint, reactivated the config button that was
missing.

- memory activity: fixed several potential crash cases when the memory
  was run with sound disabled.

- Now in the hangman, we display the name of the current language.

- Advanced color activity: fixed color names not to include _ when
  composed of 2 names.

- Fixed the 2 click drag mode ( run it with gcompris -g 2clicks).

- findit: no more ask several times a missing answer at the end of the
level

- geo-country activity: added the italian country map with 3 sub
  levels, north, central and south.

- bar: added the keyboard shortcut ctrl-b do hide/show the GCompris
  control bar. Now when changing the level, the sound is played before
  starting the activity in order not to flush the own activity sound.

- advanced_color: remade this activity based on the new findit engine.

- details-activity: Fixed the TajMahal level. References to images was
  wrong.

Voices:

- New voice set for Thai by Thummarat Phromphing

- English voices: new recordset of our english voices by Julia
  Wycherley with the help of Philip Morris.

Internal changes:

- core: added the option gcompris --test that runs all the activities
  automatically in sequecnce.  This is usefull only for test purpose.
  Added the key shortcuts in the manual.

- core python plugin: added support for multi python dir path (must be
  separated by :). Can be used useful in init_path.sh for example to
  pass several directory, one with a plugin engine and one derivative.

- build: preparation for a port to GTK3. Now compiles with
  CFLAGS+="-DGDK_DISABLE_DEPRECATED -DGTK_DISABLE_DEPRECATED"

-- 
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