wow - it's busy

[Malonowa <malonowa@wanadoo.fr>]

I think we can say that translating VB is out.

But TCL looks interesting - how many teacher's and pupils could learn
enough of TCL to make good use of it? TCL will need to be extended if we
want to use it for multimedia authoring. Then there's the problem with
Linux itself - no good multimedia framework at all.

As much as Linux advocates would like to deny it Windows, Mac, Irix etc.
surpass Linux in this area. Linux is just a stinky pile of poo when it
comes to a multimedia API.

Don't get me wrong though - I have 3 Linux stations here and I love them. I
just couldn't even begin to port some of the commercial projects we're
working on now - it would just be impossible.

GNOME's supposed to be addressing this problem but how long will this take?

I think what we need to think about here is what standards we cobble
together so that educational software inspired by us will run on most
peoples machines. For example, if "Fictitious Flossy" writes an app that
uses NAS, what happens to those users using ESound or KDE etc. I think we
could safely say to Flossy, hey - use Esound instead. GNOME uses it and now
KDE libraries support it so if you really want lots of kids to use your
app. then that's the way to go girl!

There ae real problems here. People seem to forget that whilst Linux has
got a few years behind it now - it's still in its infancy compared to other
platforms. It certainly makes my life difficult.

So if we want apps and we want ported apps too then we have to think about
ways of helping people write and port the software which uses more advanced
facilities than the stuff available on Linux right now.

Roman.