Tux Paint is a raster graphics editor (program for creating and processing raster graphics) intended for children. The project was started in 2002 by Bill Kendrick who continues to maintain and improve it, with the help of many volunteers. Tux Paint is seen by many as a free software alternative to Kid Pix, a similar educational software product.
Video Tux Paint
Histori
Tux Paint was originally created for the Linux operating system, as there was no drawing program suitable for young children available for Linux at the time. It is written in the C programming language and uses a variety of free and open source helpers libraries, including Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL), and has since been made available for Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, BeOS and other platforms.
Achievement of specific milestones:
- 2002.06.16 (June 16, 2002) - Initial release (brush, stamp, line, eraser), two days after coding begins
- 2002.06.30 (June 30, 2002) - The first magic tool is added (blur, block, negative)
- 2002.07.31 (July 31, 2002) - Localization support added
- 0.9.11 (June 17, 2003) - Right-to-left support, UTF-8 support in the Text tool
- 0.9.14 (October 12, 2004) - Configuration tool Tux Paint Config. released, Starter image support
- 0.9.16 (October 21, 2006) - Slideshow feature, animation and directional brushes
- 0.9.17 (July 1, 2007) - Screen size and different orientation support, SVG support, input method support
- 0.9.18 (November 21, 2007) - The Witch Tool transforms into plug-in, Pango text rendering
Maps Tux Paint
Features
Tux Paint stands apart from typical graphical editing software (such as GIMP or Photoshop) designed to be used by children as young as 3 years. The user interface is meant to be intuitive, and uses icons, audible feedback and textual hints to help explain how the software works. The brightly colored interface, sound effects and cartoon mascots (Tux, the mascot of the Linux kernel) are meant to involve children.
Tux Paint's normal interface is divided into five sections:
- Toolbox, contains a variety of basic tools (see below) and application controls (undo, save, new, print)
- Canvas, where images are taken and edited
- Color palette, where colors can be selected (if applicable for the current tool)
- Selector, provides various objects to choose from (for example, brushes, fonts or sub-tools, depending on the current tool)
- An area of ​​information, where directions, tips, and encouragements are provided
Simple slide show feature allows previously saved images to be displayed as basic flip-book animations or as slide presentations.
Basic image tools
Like most popular graphical editing tools and compositions, Tux Paint includes paint brushes, erasers, and tools for drawing polygonal lines, shapes and text. Tux Paint provides multiple undo and redo levels, allowing unintentional or unwanted changes to be removed while editing an image.
File and printing
Tux Paint is designed in such a way that users do not need to understand the underlying operating system or how to handle files. The "Save" and "Open" commands are designed to mimic software for personal digital assistant devices, such as Palm handheld devices. When someone saves an image in Tux Paint, they do not need to provide a filename or find a place to place it. When someone goes to open a previously saved image, the thumbnail collection of saved images is displayed.
Similarly, printing is usually a 'no question' process, as well.
Advanced image tools
Tux Paint includes a number of 'filters' and 'special effects' that can be applied to the image, such as blurry, faded, and make the image appear as if it were pulled with chalk on the sidewalk. It's available through the 'Magic' tool in Tux Paint. Starting with version 0.9.18, the 'Magic' Tux Paint tool is created as a plugin that is loaded at runtime and uses a special C API to create the tool.
A large collection of artwork and photographic images is also available (under a license that allows free redistribution), and can be placed inside the drawing using the "Stamp Stamp" tool of Tux Paint. Stamps can be either raster (bitmap) format (in PNG format, supporting 24bpp and full alpha transparency), or as vector graphics (in SVG format) on many Tux Paint supported platforms. In mid-2008, more than 800 stamps were included in the collection of stamps.
Parent and teacher control
When the feature is added to Tux Paint, configuration options have been added that allow parents and teachers to disable features and change behaviors to better suit the needs of their children or students, or to better integrate software in their home or school computing environment. Common options, such as enable or disable sound effects and full screen mode are available. There are also options that help make Tux Paint suitable for younger or disabled children, such as displaying text with only capital letters or ignoring the difference between the buttons on the mouse.
Localization
Tux Paint has been translated into various languages, and has support for displaying text in languages ​​that use non-Latin character sets, such as Japanese, Greek, or Telugu. As of June 2008, over 80 languages ​​are supported. Correct support for complex languages ​​requires Pango. Descriptive sound and sound effects for stamp imaging can also be localized. Tux Paint includes a form of support for its own input method, which allows non-Latin character entries using the 'Text' tool. Japanese (Romanized Hiragana and Romanized Katakana), Korean (Hangul 2-bul) and Traditional Chinese are currently supported.
Distribution
Tux Paint is included with the software included with ASUS Eee PC. It is also a standard package in an education-oriented Linux distribution, such as Debian Jr. and Edubuntu, as an optional package in many other Linux distributions, as well as part of a number of educational Live Linux CDs. It is included in various software collections for Windows (such as GNUWin II and Open Source Software CD), as well as a collection of portable software for Windows, as it can run as a stand-alone application (without the need to install system-wide). Tux Paint is also available as an activity within GCompris's free and open source education resources.
See also
- GCompris
- List of raster graphics editors
- Comparison of raster graphics editor
- Tux Typing
- Tux, from Math Command
- MyPaint
References
External links
- Official website
- Tux Paint on SourceForge.net
- Tux4Kids
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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