Subject: Re: [school-discuss] Tuxmath and programs no longer actively developed
On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 08:33:18AM -0500, LM wrote:
> I contacted the Tuxmath
developers list to see if there were any plans to
> update Tuxmath for SDL2 and
find out what the development roadmap looked
> like. The only response I got
back was from another independent developer
> who's working on porting TuxPaint
to SDL2.
I believe one of this year's GSOC projects is porting TuxMath to SDL
2.
I don't think it's no longer maintained, I think there's just a lull in
the
development right now.
Tux Paint went through something similar (mostly
because I, as lead dev
and main person who kept the fire alive, got a much
busier day job, and
now have two little kids :) ). A lot of the reason for the
5 year delay
in Tux Paint 0.9.22 being released had to do with a lot of GSOC
contributions
that needed bugfixing, proper integration, etc. (I have to thank
Pere
in the TP project for basically championing that, in a
long,
slow-and-steady process.)
> I've heard from some educators that
they find TuxPaint, Tuxmath, TuxTyping
> useful. Would be a shame to see
programs like these no longer end up in
> distributions because of "bit
rot".
Tux Math's aged a bit since the last release, it seems (about 3
years),
but I don't see it going away. (In fact, looks like the most
recent
commit to it's git repository was a couple of weeks ago.)
> FreeBSD
has some nice educational
> entertainment programs (Hangman, Scramble and
Concentration) that I don't
> see available in as many Linux distributions any
more because they're no
> longer actively developed. I think it would be great
if Schoolforge could
> do something about the situation and help continue to
make useful older
> programs available even if the original developers are no
longer supporting
> them.
>
> A lot of SDL 1.2.x applications will probably
need to be ported to SDL 2.x
> at some point especially if a Linux system is
going to be using Wayland in
> the future instead of X. (There's a port of SDL
2.x to Wayland, but I
> haven't seen one for SDL 1.2.x.) Some older
applications that use libpng
> need to be updated for API changes to the
library. These are just a few of
> the changes that could affect whether
programs continue to work and build
> on various systems.
I think as people
(like Pere working on Tux Paint) figure out what needs
to be done, the
knowledge will spread around and it'll become easier for
other projects to jump
on the bandwagon.
I've wanted Tux Paint in SDL 2.0 (aka 1.3, back in the day)
for a LONG time,
because of a lot of features it makes available (multitouch,
for example).
Once SDL2 finally stablized enough to no longer be a beta, I
didn't have
nearly as much time to work on Tux Paint. :^P
Other things I'd
like to see: NaCL ports for Chromebook users,
and obvious a proper, official
(vs. random person selling their own
version for $1.99) iOS port, and an
Android port.
-bill!
> By the way, Syllable has a nice list of
applications:
> https://sites.google.com/site/syllablesoftware/home Not all of
them are
> SDL based, but many of them are.
>
> Is there anything
Schoolforge could do as a group to identify useful
> educational programs that
may no longer be actively developed and
> consolidate efforts to keep some of
these programs working and available to
> Open Source users?
>
>
Sincerely,
> Laura
> http://www.distasis.com/cpp
--
-bill!
Sent from my
computer
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