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CPH | 4 Feb 2005 13:01

Re: : Fwd: Framework Webpage! Join the fun!

On Thursday 20 January 2005 23:02, Anne-Marie Mahfouf wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Today, while I was for a short time on IRC, we (Pino, Arnold and me)
> chatted seriously about a KDE-Edu framwork, having in mind what CPH stated
> in his mail "GUI policies and styles".
> We decided to start putting the ideas on a webpage so to keep them and
>  improve them.
>
> So I wrote a very bare starting page for tha
> http://edu.kde.org/development/framework.php
>
> Any idea is welcome, the better would be to express the idea the more
> precisely possible or to illustrate it with an example. For example about
> the fonts, try defining "big font" and so on.
>
> So we need to make this page a pool of nice ideas! Please send your ideas
>  here or, if you have cvs access, add them directly.
>
> 3, 2, 1, start!

Hi,
  I was at a school yesterday and had some interesting conversations with some 
teachers. I was wondering if others have talked to teachers and gotten 
similar responses. Some of the things they commented on include :

1) it's importand for younger kids that applications start full screen
2) it would be quite interesting to have a "run a test" mode for some of the 
applications i.e. name, start time, questions answered correctly, etc which 
would be saved in a database for further analysis. I think that this
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Josef Spillner | 4 Feb 2005 13:13
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Re: : Fwd: Framework Webpage! Join the fun!

Am Freitag, 4. Februar 2005 13:01 schrieb CPH:
> 1) it's importand for younger kids that applications start full screen

Is this because they're distracted by the rest of the desktop?
In this case it might also be nice to hide it with a nice (not flashy) 
background image and start the application in the front.
This would even work for apps which do not provide a fullscreen mode.

This background could later be extended to contain some buttons for the edu 
apps so the kids do not need kicker anymore to launch them.

Josef
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CPH | 4 Feb 2005 13:31

Re: [kde-edu]: Fwd: Framework Webpage! Join the fun!

On Friday 04 February 2005 12:13, Josef Spillner wrote:
> Am Freitag, 4. Februar 2005 13:01 schrieb CPH:
> > 1) it's importand for younger kids that applications start full screen
>
> Is this because they're distracted by the rest of the desktop?
Yes.

> In this case it might also be nice to hide it with a nice (not flashy)
> background image and start the application in the front.
Thats's a good idea.

> This would even work for apps which do not provide a fullscreen mode.
>
> This background could later be extended to contain some buttons for the edu
> apps so the kids do not need kicker anymore to launch them.
Because the machines in the school are low spec (PII with 128 MB max), I 
actually use IceWM and idesk as they are quite light. The only real issue 
with starting KDE apps is that kbuildsyscoca needs to be called for each 
which takes some time. Anyone know of a way around this ?

CPH
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Kevin Krammer | 4 Feb 2005 13:34
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Re: : Fwd: Framework Webpage! Join the fun!

On Friday 04 February 2005 13:31, CPH wrote:
> On Friday 04 February 2005 12:13, Josef Spillner wrote:
> > Am Freitag, 4. Februar 2005 13:01 schrieb CPH:
> > > 1) it's importand for younger kids that applications start full screen
> >
> > Is this because they're distracted by the rest of the desktop?
>
> Yes.
>
> > In this case it might also be nice to hide it with a nice (not flashy)
> > background image and start the application in the front.
>
> Thats's a good idea.
>
> > This would even work for apps which do not provide a fullscreen mode.
> >
> > This background could later be extended to contain some buttons for the
> > edu apps so the kids do not need kicker anymore to launch them.
>
> Because the machines in the school are low spec (PII with 128 MB max), I
> actually use IceWM and idesk as they are quite light. The only real issue
> with starting KDE apps is that kbuildsyscoca needs to be called for each
> which takes some time. Anyone know of a way around this ?

You could run kdeinit at session startup.

But if you load KDE apps anyway, meaning you also load the KDE libs, do you 
really save so much compared to starting KDE?

Cheers,
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CPH | 7 Feb 2005 18:11

Re: : Fwd: Framework Webpage! Join the fun!

On Friday 04 February 2005 12:34, Kevin Krammer wrote:
> But if you load KDE apps anyway, meaning you also load the KDE libs, do you
> really save so much compared to starting KDE?
For example I kicker, kwin, dcopserver, klauncher, kded, artsd, ksmserver, and 
kdesktop are not needed. Actually I'm interested to know why the kdeedu 
packages need kbuildsyscoca running and if they can be run without it (or 
would that improve the startup time ?)

CPH
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Anne-Marie Mahfouf | 7 Feb 2005 18:26
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Re: : Fwd: Framework Webpage! Join the fun!

On February 7, 2005 12:11 pm, CPH wrote:
> On Friday 04 February 2005 12:34, Kevin Krammer wrote:
> > But if you load KDE apps anyway, meaning you also load the KDE libs, do
> > you really save so much compared to starting KDE?
>
> For example I kicker, kwin, dcopserver, klauncher, kded, artsd, ksmserver,
> and kdesktop are not needed. Actually I'm interested to know why the kdeedu
> packages need kbuildsyscoca running and if they can be run without it (or
> would that improve the startup time ?)
I am not sure about not needing qrtsd for running kdeedu apps. Try KLettres 
without it please and tell me if it works or not, thanks.

Anne-Marie

About apps starting in full screen mode, i am not sure it's a good idea 
considering the high resolution monitor people have at home. It does not 
render well in most cases, like KHangMan.
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Kevin Krammer | 7 Feb 2005 18:55
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Re: [kde-edu]: Fwd: Framework Webpage! Join the fun!

On Monday 07 February 2005 18:11, CPH wrote:
> On Friday 04 February 2005 12:34, Kevin Krammer wrote:
> > But if you load KDE apps anyway, meaning you also load the KDE libs, do
> > you really save so much compared to starting KDE?
>
> For example I kicker, kwin, dcopserver, klauncher, kded, artsd, ksmserver,
> and kdesktop are not needed.

I think it would be possible to remove most of them from a normal KDE startup.
I am not sure using a different window manager gains you a lot as the KDE 
applications already load the KDE libraries and I think KWin is pretty small 
itself.

I am pretty sure that starting a KDE application always also starts the DCOP 
server if it isn't running yet.

> Actually I'm interested to know why the kdeedu 
> packages need kbuildsyscoca running and if they can be run without it (or
> would that improve the startup time ?)

That is the KDE core starting up, it rebuild the system config cache at least 
on session startup, as you don't have a session running yet, starting the 
first KDE application triggers it.

As I said running kdeinit somewhere during session startup should make the KDE 
applications start faster.

If you have some time for experimentation, try to run a minimal KDE session 
instead: remove the global autostart entries and maybe editing startkde to 
not start KDE's session manager.
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Henrique Pinto | 7 Feb 2005 20:47
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Re: : Fwd: Framework Webpage! Join the fun!

Em Seg 07 Fev 2005 15:11, CPH escreveu:
> Actually I'm interested to know why the kdeedu
> packages need kbuildsyscoca running and if they can be run without it (or
> would that improve the startup time ?)

That's not KDE-Edu apps directly, that's kdeinit. KBuildSyCoCa is run by 
kdeinit to make sure the system configuration cache (the SyCoCa) is 
up-to-date. If you run KDE, then kbuildsycoca is only run during startup and 
when some file that could change the system configuration is modified. If you 
run something else, then perhaps kbuildsycoca is run everytime a KDE app is 
started. By the way, kdeinit is a way to speed up startup of KDE apps 
(http://webcvs.kde.org/kdelibs/kinit/README). I'm not sure if it is possible 
to disable it.

--

-- 
 Henrique Pinto
 henrique.pinto <at> kdemail.net
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CPH | 8 Feb 2005 12:45

Re: [kde-edu]: Fwd: Framework Webpage! Join the fun!

On Monday 07 February 2005 17:26, Anne-Marie Mahfouf wrote:
> On February 7, 2005 12:11 pm, CPH wrote:
> > On Friday 04 February 2005 12:34, Kevin Krammer wrote:
> > > But if you load KDE apps anyway, meaning you also load the KDE libs, do
> > > you really save so much compared to starting KDE?
> >
> > For example I kicker, kwin, dcopserver, klauncher, kded, artsd,
> > ksmserver, and kdesktop are not needed. Actually I'm interested to know
> > why the kdeedu packages need kbuildsyscoca running and if they can be run
> > without it (or would that improve the startup time ?)
>
> I am not sure about not needing qrtsd for running kdeedu apps. Try KLettres
> without it please and tell me if it works or not, thanks.
Ok, there may be some needs - however right now I have not setup klettres as 
the primary (k12) schools do not need this yet. I'll test this later today.

> About apps starting in full screen mode, i am not sure it's a good idea
> considering the high resolution monitor people have at home. It does not
> render well in most cases, like KHangMan.

But maybe this is a good reason then to improve the graphics used :)

CPH
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Anne-Marie Mahfouf | 8 Feb 2005 14:03
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Re: [kde-edu]: Fwd: Framework Webpage! Join the fun!

Hi,

> But maybe this is a good reason then to improve the graphics used :)
no, it's just that such a program is NOT designed to be full screen except 
maybe on very low resolutions. There is nothing on the interface that needs 
full screen, not enough to do for the user. 
As for the graphics, we are now lucky to have a strong artist community but 
until now, we did with what we had which was not so bad. 

Anne-Marie
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