[K12OSN] Tux Paint - OO Writer Code to link them needed.

[James P. Kinney III]

As a typical consultant/geek that was my answer :)

One of the things I do spend a large amount of my time on is testing
various FOSS packages.  I'm not a programmer by training or profession
although I have done plenty and more to do in the coming months. So I
tend to look at using existing packages first. I must have blinked over
the age of the kids on the original post. Scribus is NOT a tool for
little kids. It's rather complex. Somehow I got the idea that the need
for the desktop publishing was for teachers or older kids (middle
school).

Upon rereading the two original posts on the desired abilities, I can
see a partial solution for some aspects (a read-only template in
oowriter with some oo scripting to autosave with a date-named file - I
don't know how to implement this.) and a "My Tux Pictures" desktp link
to the ~/.tuxpaint/saved folder (easy). The link should open with the
desktop environment's file manager. Both gnome and KDE will display
thumbnails (or larger) of image files. At that point, it's easy to
drag-n-drop to an open template on oowriter.

A brief look at the 1100 page ooSDK developers manual is overwhelming!
In short, since the desired goal is a combination of system manipulation
and application-specific work, it will require some fairly serious
coding to make it happen. Java might work as well some C++ "glue" that
links into the openoffice API. This is, unfortunately _way_ outside of
my process.

It may be easier to add page templates to tuxpaint.

On Mon, 2006-07-03 at 23:57 -0400, David Trask wrote:
> First....my intent is not to jump down anyone's throat, but this is
> precisely what we as geeks need to avoid.  This is a typical
> consultant/geek answer.  The question was asked by a grade school teacher
> working with the very low grades....like kindergarten and first-grade. 
> Granted, Scribus will output great files....etc.  But a program like
> EasyBook is designed with small children in mind....much like TuxPaint. 
> Kids need to be able to drag pre-determined clip art (like Tux paint
> stamps) onto a page to make a story background.  Then they need to be able
> to type in some simple text in a predetermined "box" for their story.  The
> incredible participation by classroom teachers at NELS this year
> (http://www.nelinux.net) and the great increase in teacher registrations
> over the past week for the upcoming NELS at UNH....is a prime indicator
> that at least here in the Northeast (USA)....that the teachers have begun
> to "arrive".  As I've mentioned before....we need to be ready to
> help....in a realistic non-geeky manner.  I'm not a programmer....I wish I
> was.....but my opinion as a Linux ambassador, classroom teacher, network
> geek...etc....is that probably TuxPaint or TuxPrint would be the perfect
> "starting point" for something like this....what we need are programmers. 
> Anyone?
> 
> Also...I don't ever want to discourage anyone from making
> suggestions...etc. like this one....I simply want to remind everyone that
> we need to bear in mind who the "customer" is....in this case they are 5,
> 6, or 7 years old.  
> 
> 
> "Support list for opensource software in schools." <k12osn at redhat.com> on
> Mon Jul  3 2006 at 18:18 +0000 wrote:
> >I believe the desktop publishing tool called Scribus is what you are
> >looking for. It is a full-featured desktop publishing tool similar to
> >Quark Express. Once a page layout template is made, one simply copies in
> >text and pictures. It does not generate HTML, however. It is designed to
> >submit for real paper printing. So the PDF output is very good.
> 
> 
> David N. Trask
> Technology Teacher/Director
> Vassalboro Community School
> dtrask at vcsvikings.org
> (207)923-3100
> 
> 
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-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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