PRESENTATIONS_ENABLED, off by default, independent of everything else. A
teacher downloads a session in ordinary Chrome and it is on the
Presentations screen a few seconds later, ready for the television. No
file manager, no import button, no Impress.
WHY NOTHING LAUNCHES A DOCUMENT APPLICATION. The brief was to use
existing presentation software, so the existing software was tried
first, on Debian 13, before any of this was designed. `soffice --show`
does start a real fullscreen slideshow — and needs XDG_SESSION_TYPE plus
a VCL plugin or it dies with "Failed to open display", shows a splash,
opened a "Tip of the Day: 1/225" dialog over the slides, and leaves the
Impress editor when the show ends. `okular --presentation` opens THREE
windows: the presentation, the ordinary document window behind it, and
an information dialog. zathura is not a presenter. pdfpc is the closest
and is another dependency with a presenter-console model. Every one of
them leaves an application on screen that can open any file on the
machine, and none of them knows there is a library to go back to.
So LibreOffice converts once, headless, at import, with no window on any
screen; poppler renders the pages; the classroom shows the pictures.
Measured: 0.34s for a ten-slide PPTX, 0.03s for its ten thumbnails,
0.10s for one slide at 1920px. That is not a new renderer — it is the
same engine Impress would have used live — and it means Escape is ours,
presenting is instant, and a PDF exported from Google Slides skips the
conversion entirely and keeps the appearance Google gave it.
THE THREE THINGS KEPT APART. The library thumbnail, the starting slide
and the retention clock are independent, because the first slide of a
Bible study session is a generic opening shared by every session and the
one that names it is usually the second. Quick Look chooses the picture;
it does not change where the slideshow starts and it does not count as
having presented anything. mark_presented() is called when a slide is
actually drawn, not when Present is pressed: an intention is not a
presentation, and a viewer that failed to start must not buy another
thirty days.
IMPORTING. The teacher's download is copied, never moved, renamed or
deleted. A file with a .crdownload beside it is still arriving. Wonder
Ink's own folder is not looked at. Two downloads of the same name are
two presentations, the second titled (2) — found in the lab, where a PDF
and a PPTX of one session both came out with the same name because the
import being named was excluded from the taken-titles set BY TITLE, and
a set holds one copy of a repeated string.
Metadata is written saying "importing" before any work, so a reboot
mid-conversion leaves a directory the next startup sweeps and imports
again. A file that cannot be converted gets a card saying so, offering
only Remove, with the teacher's download untouched.
Retention: 180 days never presented, 30 days from the last presentation,
every presentation starting the thirty over. The cleanup never touches a
presentation being shown, never leaves the library directory, and never
looks at Downloads.
The dock order is unchanged: Presentations is appended after the disc
player, so Wonder Ink, the browser and the player keep the places
teachers have been reaching for. There is a test for exactly that.
classroom-wonderink now asks feature() rather than carrying its own copy
of the default, so the panel and the command cannot disagree.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
All 1920×1080, captured with grim from a real running session in the
container lab. See ../classroom-v2-experiment.md.
The desktop
v2-idle-desktop
the idle desktop: the wallpaper, one bar, nothing else
v2-from-package
the same desktop, produced by installing the .deb on a clean machine
v2-dark-bar, v2-light-bar
the bar in both themes
v2-theme-compare
the two, one above the other
v2-testpage
a maximised browser, edge to edge above the bar
v2-wonderink
Wonder Ink as an application, in its own profile
Application state
state-1-closed
both launchers closed: no indicator
state-3-behind
one active (teal), one running behind it (grey)
state-4-minimized
minimised — measured identical to behind, which is why minimise was removed as a route
state-5-restored
back
v2-both-apps
both applications, one button each, from the packaged install
labelled-tasks
the labelled task manager, evaluated and rejected: it shows changing page titles rather than application names
Wonder Ink with tabs
0.2.1. A teacher prepares a lesson across several tabs, and none of a
browser's other furniture is on the screen.
wonderink-tabs
[ Lesson ] [ Video ] [ Activity ] — the second and third opened by the lesson itself, one through target=_blank and one through window.open
wonderink-one-tab
one tab, and no strip at all: the room looks exactly like the application this replaced
wonderink-tab-closed
the middle tab closed; the other two carry on
wonderink-fullscreen
a lesson's video over the whole display, panel and tab strip included
wonderink-after-fullscreen
and back, maximised above the bar, tabs intact — the bug this caught left the window 200 pixels wide in the corner
wonderink-context-menu
the whole of the right-click menu: back, forward, reload, print. No view-source, no save-page, no new window
wonderink-print-dialog
a lesson calling window.print(), landing on the room's own Elmer queue
wonderink-and-browser
the point of the split, in one picture: Chrome in front with its address bar, Wonder Ink a separate button beside it
wonderink-autoplay, wonderink-autoplay-control
the Present-view autoplay failure reproduced and then not reproduced: an unmuted video started by a script with no gesture, blocked at Chrome's default and playing as shipped
wonderink-packaged
the packaged shell against the real app.wonderink.org, launched from the .deb on a rebooted machine
wonderink-disabled
WONDERINK_ENABLED=false — no lesson button, the browser and the disc player where they were
Wonder Ink worksheets
0.2.2. A lesson link that downloads a PDF comes back as a tab, and
nothing else about the room's locks moves.
pdf-opened
the worksheet a click downloaded, open as a tab beside the lesson and actually rendered — three pages, not a blank frame
pdf-page2
page 2 of 3: multi-page navigation inside the tab
pdf-spaces
Leader Guide, Week 1 (Advent).pdf — spaces, a comma and brackets, through the download and into a tab
pdf-print
printing the worksheet, on the room's own Elmer queue
pdf-closed-then-page
the worksheet tab closed, the lesson still there and still working, and an ordinary target=_blank tab beside it
pdf-broken
HTML the server called .pdf: refused on its contents, with a message, and no blank tab
pdf-interrupted
a download that did not finish, saying so. The first version of this said nothing at all
pdf-guard
three attempts to reach a local file from the page — a link, a script, and a link to a worksheet that was downloaded but not opened by the shell. All refused
pdf-dotmenu
the whole of the PDF viewer's overflow menu, audited: two-page view, annotations, present, properties. No open, no save-as, no external link
pdf-after-save
the viewer's own download button: straight to Wonder Ink's directory with a notification, no file chooser and no duplicate tab
pdf-autoplay-preserved
the 0.2.1 Present-view autoplay fix, still working on the packaged 0.2.2
Parent Call
pc-icon-vs-notifications
the Parent Call mark beside Plasma's notification bell — the comparison that decided it
pc-mark
the mark at 32, 48 and 64px, beside the two marks it replaced
pc-panel
the whole bar: Parent Call left, applications centre, status right
pc-ready
the card, ready, in approval mode
pc-waiting
waiting for a volunteer to approve
pc-sent
Sent to sanctuary — never "displayed"
pc-rejected
not approved, offering Try again
pc-off
the coordinator's mode is off
pc-nobroker
the broker is unreachable
pc-typed
a name in the field
icon-candidates-2
sixteen Breeze person icons at real panel size, none of which meant Parent Call
DVD
dvd-panel
DVD in the row with the applications, out of the status area
dvd-cover
the DVD launcher's tooltip on the packaged install
v2-dvd-overlay, v2-layershell
the loading cover: a gtk-layer-shell overlay under KWin
Windows
v2-secondary-window
a window a page opened, floating over an untouched browser, with its own close button
v2-print-dialog
the system print dialog, over the page that raised it, offering only Elmer
v2-fullscreen
fullscreen video: the whole display, panel covered
v2-layershell
a gtk-layer-shell overlay under KWin — what the DVD loading cover is made of
v2-notification-crop
a notification card, top right
Administration
admin-terminal
the maintenance terminal, opened by its chord's action
admin-terminal-bar
the bar with the terminal open, and after closing it: a task button while it runs, no launcher ever
Reliability and lockdown
recovery-after-8-kills
the panel after eight consecutive SIGKILLs
recovery-after-kwin-kill
the session after KWin was killed twice; the application window survived
recover-panel
the bar rebuilt from the layout script after its configuration was deleted
lock-desktop-rmb
right-clicking the wallpaper: no menu
lock-panel-rmb
right-clicking the bar: no menu
lock-krunner
KRunner asked for, and not there
The migration
migration-before
what a real room got when it upgraded: stock Debian Plasma, kickoff, a pager, a system tray, the Debian wallpaper. Reproduced in the lab by taking one line out of the harness.
migration-after
the same machine after the fix — a Hyprland-era install, upgraded, rebooted
migration-after-bar
its bar, at the size a teacher sees it
migration-parent-call
Parent Call on the migrated machine, saying it cannot reach the church network rather than pretending it can
theme-light-live, theme-light-after-logout
the room's own light theme, and the same room after logging out and back in. The first attempt at this pass lost it.
The rooms themselves
v2-from-package
the classroom with the church's own wallpaper and the real Wonder Ink mark
wonderink-icon
the same mark as a running application's button
display-settings
the hidden display-size dialog, saying that saving needs an administrator
the room at 200%: the panel, a notification card, and the browser, all doubled together
notification-style
the notification card on the classroom's own Plasma style
osd-volume
Plasma's volume display, which the room keeps
osd-shellpackage
the custom one, which rendered correctly and cost the panel
pc-unreachable, pc-not-configured
Parent Call telling a broker it cannot reach from one that was never set up
dvd-absent-bar
the bar on a machine with no optical drive
A morning in the rooms
pc-no-mode
Parent Call ready against a broker with no retained mode — the state that used to say the room was never set up
pc-bottom-left, pc-200-package
the card anchored bottom-left at 100% and at 200%
notif-package-100, notif-package-200
the notification card at both scales, from Classroom
notif-13pt, notif-15pt
the two font sizes that were weighed for it
pc-typed-layer
the card gone: the lab's keyboard tool closes it, which is why typing is still a bench test
Failures, kept
—
keyboard injection never reached the nested session, so every interaction in this experiment was driven by the pointer. It is why Parent Call has never had a real key pressed into it, and why that is the first bench test.
m-closed, m-minimized
the pair whose pixels were sampled to show that Plasma draws minimised and closed differently, but minimised and behind the same
