Re: [kidsgames] Re: GUIs und kinder

[Jeffery Douglas Waddell <jeff@smluc.org>]

Hi Doug,

On Thu, 30 Sep 1999, Doug Loss wrote:

> thudson@cygnus.com wrote:
> > 
> > Has anyone given any thought to programming languages or
> > environments. Seems like it would be nice to provide
> > some time of framework/language/visual design environment
> > so that non-programmers could develop content. I'm not
> > that familiar with the Mac, but I've heard that Hyperstack
> > was like this.
> 
> Over on seul-edu we've been discussing this for some time.  Currently
> the product most used on the Mac (I'm told) for this sort of thing,
> which we're calling an authoring tool, is HyperStudio.  It's a
> commercial program, from MacroMedia (I think).  There isn't currently
> anything terribly similar to it for Linux.  We found two possible ways
> to address this need.  First, there's MetaCard
> <http://www.metacard.com>, a commercial program that can read HyperCard
> stacks and can generate its own content.  MetaCard has reasonable
> licensing costs for educational use.  The MetaCard people have told us
> that the educational community isn't their primary market focus and that
> they'll consider making a "lite" version of their product available for
> free download for educational use.  They also think that making a
> HyperStudio-like interface to MetaCard should be fairly simple, although
> they don't plan to invest any effort in doing so.
> 

Development tools must be free, so the applications can have choice.  It
looks like neither of the above are freed development tools.  I spent some
time today looking for hypercard specs, with the vague notion of
implementing a gpl'ed hypercard stack renderer for linux, however that
didn't get me anywhere.  I suppose with Apple's new "Open Source" bent
(Darwin, etc.) we could mount a petition for them to free the
specifications of the language so we could implement our own renderer.  If
we managed that, we would bring a HUGE amount of already developed teacher
resources into the fold.

> Then, there's Squeak <http://www.squeak.org>, an implementation of
> SmallTalk.  It is being designed by Alan Kay's development group at
> Disney Imagineering.  One of their design goals is to have a user
> interface that can be expanded, so that it can be made appropriate for
> everyone from small children to experienced programmers.  One of the
> members of seul-edu is going to go down to Disney in November to meet
> with the Squeak team to find out how seul-edu can help in the
> development of Squeak as an authoring tool for Linux.
> 

What kind of licensing will Disney place on this?

> That's about all I know of at this time.
> 
> 

Thanks for sharing

Jeff
jeff@smluc.org


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