[kde-edu]: announcement

[Jos Poortvliet]

Hi guys,

thanks to all the work you've been doing, the edu part of KDE will get
some attention in the release announcement ;-)

I thus would like to collect some comments on the text below - how
complete is it and what did I say wrong?


Educational Software

 As we have come to expect, a lot of work has going on in the
educational area. Last month saw improvements in marble, KVoctrain
(now renamed to Parley) and bugfixes.

KVoctrain, an application which can be used to train language
vocabulary, received usability work, features and a namechange. The
new name, Parley, points to a discussion or conference, especially one
between enemies over terms of truce or other matters. This fresh name
is fitting for the shiney new interface. It became much easier and
intuitive to start and display lectures, and the practice gui got
improved as well. You can now skip configuration - just enter some
words or get a vocabulary file through Get Hot New Stuff to practice,
hit "practice" and you are on your way. Frederik Gladhorn also got to
implement a three year old wish thanks to the new and easy "start
test" dialog, making it possible to use arbitrary language
combinations. Finally, Parley became more colorful when the picture
support was added, which enables users to practise with pictures as
well. edu Parley.png

 Thanks to the work by Carlos Licea, Marble sports a new 2D projection
where you can view the earth like a map. Marble also retrieves
Wikipedia articles about cities you select. edu marble.png

 On saturday the 15th of October, the KDE-Edu team had a polish day.
This let to many fixes and improvements, most notably in Blinken,
KGeography, KHangMan and Marble. Also a global sound issue has been
fixed in all Edu apps, and currently there is investigation going on
in the Get Hot New Stuff area.

 After all this work, the edu team is now shifting gears and focusing
on stabilization and translation work, though there still are some
things in the pipeline.