[gcompris-devel] bug report about no text only voices

[Bruno Coudoin]

Le 17/08/2013 21:32, shirish शिरीष a écrit :
> Hi all,
> I tried to see if there is a bug-tracker in gcompris but unfortunately
> seems the developer (Brian) does not use a bug-tracker, or if there is
> a bug tracker please point the same to me.
Probably not enough easy to find but it is mentioned here:
http://gcompris.net/-Documentation,10-

So our bugzilla is here :
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/query.cgi

>
> First of all thank you for making a great application. I enjoy it
> immensely and do show it to young people whenever I visit some
> schools.
Thanks a lot in the name of all the contributors.
> Now the thing/issue is for various activities the text help is either
> limited or out-dated. I haven't gone through all the 136 activities to
> see if it's the same but a random sampling of some activities tells
> the story.
>
> a. For e.g. 'Building the same model' which is one of the activities
> in the Puzzles section gives a one single line of help (by clicking
> the question mark) which talks of the pre-requisite required :-
>
> pre-requisite :- Mouse Manipulation
> Goal :- Motor Coordination
> Manual :- Move the items in the bottom left frame to copy their
> position in the top right model. Below the crane itself, you will find
> four arrows that let you move items. To select the item to move, just
> click on it. If you prefer, you can use the arrow keys and the space
> or tab key instead.
>
> It's only in the manual that you get what you need to do and I would
> not contend is not easily discoverable. There is a voice-over which
> tells what is to be done but due to the accent and maybe modulation
> and other things, the goal is not easily understood. What would be
> nice and better is if there were on-screen instructions or
> close-captioned text or something which followed the voice. I'm
> guessing this would be one of the more often-asked feature.
I agree with you. In newer activities we are more careful at that. A 
workaround would be to display the manual when the children enters an 
activity. Do you think this is a good idea?

On the other way, I am not a teacher but letting children search what 
must be done can be seen as a part of the educational value of an activity.

>
> There is also the use-case where in school you do not have speakers
> (and have been to many schools where there are no speakers i.e. no
> music) . In such a scenario you are left clueless unless you take the
> time to read the manual.
We added the intro voices as a workaround for the lack of instructions. 
Maybe a good option would be to have the intro voice as text as well and 
display it when the activity starts.

>
> If need be I could name probably a dozen or so activities which I use
> which have the same issue (or maybe more).
>
> b. This is more of a wishlist bug, it would be great to have map based
> geography and names puzzles. Something like these :-
>
> http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/states_experiment_drag-drop_Intermed_State15s_500.html
>
> While this is obviously geared for the American market and geography,
> maybe something with the world would be nice, if such a game exists in
> Gcompris 137 activities please guide me where to find it ?
You can see the list of all the activities there:
http://gcompris.net/-On-one-page-

In GCompris we have 2 activities related to geography:
http://gcompris.net/en-geo_country
http://gcompris.net/en-geography

Now I realize that these are not easy to find, they are in 
/discovery/miscelaneous. You will see that in the help of each activity 
at the top there is the formal location of the activity, it includes the 
path like a directory structure.

>
> c. Which brings me to the third point, at 137 activities it becomes
> next to impossible to find things on many levels . For e.g. :-
>
> a. Which activities are new activities which were not there in the
> previous version ? There should be some visual indicator which tells
> and attracts players to the newest activities. If there is such a way
> please guide/share how it's indicated to a user. I looked at the raw
> changelog to get some ideas of the new activities but this cannot be
> assumed for regular people/joe. The only thing to know there are new
> activities was by looking at the debian bug-report which I just took
> as a chance in the Debian changelog #694103 . I would propose to have
> a #NEWS.gz at the very least for people to know what those 13 new
> activities (or whatever new activities arrive in version 13.0 and
> above .
I always create a release note and it contains what's new in this release.

For example you can see the release notes of the latest stable release 
there:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gcompris/files/12.11/

There are also the latest news here:
http://gcompris.net/-News-

This information is also on this list.

>
> I hope this could be added to some TODO or some roadmap. If there is a
> TODO or a tentative roadmap . If such a thing exists please point out
> at the resource. I did look at the wiki but wasn't able to find the
> same.
In our wiki, follow "Developer's corner" from the main page and then got 
in "Ideas for activities".

We don't have a roadmap but a list of thinks we'd like to have. I 
propose contributors to look at it if they don't know what they want to 
do for GCompris. I cannot force anybody to work on anything particular. 
I integrate any proposed works that have the expected quality level and 
are in the spirit of GCompris.

>
> b. Keywords, tags :- I don't know if there is a way to do that but
> would be nice. If the games could be defined by some keywords it would
> be more discoverable. As number of activities increase this would
> become more and more urgent.
We already have a manual for each activity. We don't need a tag for 
this. I agree that this feature would be nice to have and already though 
of it. I just added it in our 'idea list'.

> If I'm not able to make any sense (because of my poor English skills
> or something) please get back to me and I'll try to be more precise.
>
As a French, your English is perfect for me.

Bruno.