Project Proposal
OOo4Kids is a simplified version of OpenOffice.org (today Apache OpenOffice), say very simplified, and oriented for 7-12 children.We'd like to Improve OOo4Kids (and by suit OOoLight, based on the same sources) on EFIKA machines.
Currently, we provide an annotation mode with Impress, means we can write on top of a presentation. In a close future, machines will probably mix touch creen and keyboard, and provide large screens. Our current Office suite is not well adapted to that, and we need to investigate borderless windows, and new UX ehaviour, combined to new UI interface.
The idea is to work on new UI concept introducing :
- draw text
- draw primitives
- replace contextual menu with other new controls
The work will be done by students, and mentored by me. I myself mentored more than 20 students for OpenOffice.org, when I got to manage the openOffice.org Education Project.
The need is :
one machine for the student(s) participating
one for me to check and verify the code changes.
ETA : one student-year of work, means around June 2013.
Mandatory Steps (draft) :
- study OpenOffice windows and controls implementation, and OpenOffice framework, to isolate the mandatory changes
- improve Draw shell, and modify the current slideshow
- implement new events ("touch screen" like), and make them work ( ~already done)
- create new controls in overlay, replacing the current contextual menu
- add new primitives, an test them
- localize
- test
- QA the beast
Our priority will be to have great and successfull student experience first, then results.
The work will be done using svn (for the code), IRC (omunication) and a wiki (results, and being open). The student will have to describe everything he does, every day, and I'll participate a lot myself,since I'm the main OOo4Kids and OOoLight developer.
Last but not least, as proefssor in one engineers school (UTBM France), we could very probably communicate internaly about the project.
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