Re: [kidsgames] Linux Letters and Numbers

[Steve Baker <sjbaker1@airmail.net>]

Jeff Waddell wrote:

> He had some trouble with the keyboard in that he did not want to let go of
> the key he was pressing and the program just cycled through picture after
> picture and usually by the time he let go it had gone away....

Try running 'xset r off'  before running the game and 'xset r on' after
it completes.  That turns the auto-key-repeat function off and on again
at the level of the X server.

You might want to create a script to run the game that does that automatically.

Of course, learning to take your finger off the key is an important
thing too!

> I'm sure there are drawbacks to using a database, but I'm not yet sure
> what they are....

Well, I could guess that one drawback (if it's use became widespread) might
be that every kids program would display the exact SAME giraffe when that
word appeared.  I could imagine a degree of "negative training value" there
if kids somehow failed to generalize the meaning of the word.  In a sense,
the word 'Giraffe' could become associated with that particular giraffe.

However, I don't think that's really a serious problem so long as the
computer isn't the only source of learning about giraffes.  Having that
huge database available as a resource would make it SO much easier to
write edutainment programs that the gain would by far exceed the potential
loss.

-- 
Steve Baker                  http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
sjbaker1@airmail.net (home)  http://www.woodsoup.org/~sbaker
sjbaker@hti.com      (work)
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