GCompris is a complete educational suite for children from 2 to 10.

GCompris is an educational software which propose different activities to kids from 2 to 10. Some activities are game oriented, but always educational. You will find some activities in the following topics:

· computer discovery: keyboard, mouse, different mouse gesture, ...
· algebra: table memory, enumeration, double entry table, mirror image, ...
· science: the canal lock, the water cycle, the submarine, ...
· geography: place the country on the map
· games: chess, memory, ...
· reading: reading practice
· other: learn to tell time, puzzle of famous paintings, vector drawing, ...

GCompris project proposes more than 60 activities and it continues to evolves. GCompris is a free software, you have the possibility to adapt it to your needs or to improve it, and, why not, to share your work with the kids of all the world.

GCompris intent is to provide a central location where a user can find different kind of small educational content called 'boards'.

Today there is already a lot of free software that provides a small education content. Unfortunatly, it is difficult to track, intall and use them because they do not evolve at the same speed and offer their own user interface.

GCompris aims to provide a unique user interface that gives access to different boards.

GCompris is part of the GNU project.

Once started, GCompris presents a graphical view that includes from top to bottom:

1. Boards icon list Each icon represent a board. When you move the mouse over them, they are highlighted and the name and description of the board is displayed in the board description area.
2. Boards description area Display a small description of what the highlited board icon is about. Note that the descriptions are internationalized which means translated in a target language (See section Internationalization Issues for more information on Internationalization).
3. Control bar: The control bar is always present in GCompris. This icons are contextual which means that when an icon is not meaningfull in a specific context, it is simply not displayed. The control bar contains the icons from left to right:
1. Help: In some case, a board can be too complex to be described in the Board description area. In this case this will provide access to the additionnal instructions.
2. Level: Some boards provide different level. The number of levels is board dependant.
3. OK: Some boards do not automatically detect that the child has finish the given task. Clicking here is similar to entering RET on the keyboard and thus the RET key is a shortcut.
4. End: End the current board if any, otherwise Exit GCompris. When entered at the board menu level, it will create a dialog window to confirm the Exit of GCompris.
5. About: Display the about box for gcompris with the version number, the author, the licence and links to online resources.
6. Configure: Display the configuration box for gcompris. Configuration can be done at gcompris level when no boards is selected. If a board is selected, it can provides configuration options. Configuration is persistent and saved in the gnome file in the user home directory under .gnome/gcompris.

What's New in 8.5 Pre 1 Development Release:

· Each activity is in it's own directory. This has allowed us to provide OLPC XO bundles by activity.
· We now use the goocanvas instead of the gnomecanvas. The goocanvas has a similar API but uses a cairo backend for the drawing. It's more modern, provides a good anti alisasing and is native SVG.

What's New in 8.4.5 Stable Release:

· New football based activity to learn the double click.
· Reintroduced the erase double click activity by popular demand.
· Added Mexican geography map
· Added support for Persan
· It is now possible to add activity introduction voices.