Re: [school-discuss] Tuxmath and programs no longer actively developed

[Bill Kendrick <nbs@xxxxxxxxx>]

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I don't think it's no longer maintained, I think there's just a lull in the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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