Re: priority #1 ...

[Roman Suzi <rnd@sampo.karelia.ru>]

On Tue, 17 Nov 1998, Doug Loss wrote:

>Roman Suzi wrote:

>Part of the reason is that (especially with "Living Books") the programs
>aren't completely original but are adaptations of regular books.  The
>rights to use those books have to be given by the copyright holders, who
>usually want to be paid; therefore the program has to cost something
>just to cover the licensing or the content.

So, tool & program could be free, but not the content!

>> However, multimedia creations  will  never  be  freeware!  They
>> can't be! And this is a major brake  for  Linux  in  education:
>> Windows/Macs are deployed due to wide acceptance by  multimedia
>> vendors...
>> 
>I don't know about that.  You could make the same argument as to why
>software can't ever be free.  And we know that it can.

Well, probably people will buy  multimedia  CDs  for  the  same
reason they buy usual software CDs: convenience of use...

And thses CDs could cost 50$ or even more...

>There isn't a Russian version?  I know the LDP HOWTOs have been
>translated, and one of the HOWTOs is on doing Cyrillic output from
>LaTeX; I would have thought that someone would have Russified Linux
>too.  Yet another project for someone.

Well, cyrillic support is here.
What I mean is that the Linux environment is all  english:  you
can type russian letters, but use english menu, command line
(of course!).

This stops people from even exploring Linux: our people usually
aren't so much familiar with forein languages...

And Gnome developers says its just a metter of creating
translation! (mo/po files!)

>> In the edu software domain I see something like HyperCard to be
>> the most needed open source application: having  this  we  will
>> observe endless enthusiasm and creativeness.
>> 
>> It MUST be open source to ensure its stay for a long time!
>> 
>The only thing along these lines I've found is Visual Tcl, which is a

There is also Glade for Gtk (NB!), which creates  C  code.
-- this Glade could make it easier to learn Gtk!

But they are halfway  from  Geeky  and  don't  satisfy  neither
geeks, nor 'programming users' ;-) for different reasons.

HyperCard is not easy, I admit. But it has simpler dialogs  and
more clear way to program objects!

And also, I did not find way to make a cardstack-like thing  in
VisualTcl...

Thus I say we need such visual tool as  #1  thing:  this  thing
allow to create more things and will effectively fence  applied
programmers from Gnome/Gtk details.

So, the tool must be integrated with Gnome..!

On Tue, 17 Nov 1998 EAMorical@aol.com wrote:

>>But so  far  open  source  has  NO  (AFAIK)  followers  in  the
>>edutainment sphere and multimedia.
>
>If I understand the question correctly, the answer is that there is extensive
>work going on in open source multimedia. It is just lagging behind commercial

It is lagging due to these is no  professional  (and  freeware)
tool for it!

>development. I will put it on my ToDo list to provide a list of links. Roger,
>I'm working on it. The one area that concerns me is speech recognition.
>
>http://www.linuxresources.com/wish

Thank you!

-- 
Roman A. Suzi
 -- Petrozavodsk -- Karelia -- Russia --
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