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Kids are presented with a blank canvas and a variety of drawing tools to help them be creative.
New Breed Software has released Tux Paint 0.9.18.06, adding new features, new translations and numerous other improvements to the Open Source drawing program for young children. The product, along with an expanded collection of add-on "stamps," is being released simultaneously for multiple operating systems, including Mac OS X, Linux and Microsoft Windows.
Tux Paint was developed by a global community of independent programmers. With the arrival of Albanian, Estonian, Gaelic, Galician, Gronings, Kinyarwanda, Mexican Spanish, Swahili, Thai, and Urkanian translators to the project, the latest release has been localized to over 55 languages.
Features
Simple Interface
• A small number of useful tools are available. (See below.)
• The drawing canvas is a fixed size, so the user doesn’t need to worry about “pixels” or “inches” when making a new picture.
• The entire program fits in 640x480, and can be displayed full-screen, to hide the computer’s underlying “desktop” interface. (It defaults to 800x600 mode, and can run at larger sizes, as well.)
• Loading and saving of images is done using thumbnails, so no knowledge of the underlying operating system’s filesystem structure is needed. Even filenames are unnecessary.
Entertaining Interface
• Fun sound effects are played when tools are selected and used.
• A cartoon version of Tux, the Linux penguin, appears at the bottom to give tips, hints and information.
Drawing Tools
• Paint brush
- Various brushes available
- Parents/teachers can add more brushes
- Various colors available
• Rubber stamp
- Hundreds of photographic and cartoon stamps images are available
- Parents/teachers can add more stamps and create categories
- Stamps can have text (names, facts, etc.) and sound effects assigned to them
- Stamps can be resized, flipped and mirrored
• Line tool
- Uses Paint Brush’s brushes
- “Rubberband” shows where the line will be drawn as you move the mouse
• Shape tool
- Draw various filled and unfilled polygonal shapes
- Rotate shapes (this feature can be disabled for younger children)
• Text tool
- Comes with various fonts
- Bold, italic and size can be changed
- Parents/teachers can add more fonts
• “Magic” (special effects) tool
- Fill – “flood-fill” an area with a particular color
- Grass – paint realistic clumps of grass on the screen and into the distance
- Bricks – paint realistic large or small brick patterns
- Rainbow brush – draw using a brush that paints in all colors in the rainbow
- Sparkles – draw glowing yellow sparkles
- Blur – blur parts of the picture using the mouse
- Smudge – push the colors around as though smudging wet paint
- Lighten – fade the colors of parts of the picture
- Darken – darken the colors of parts of the picture
- Chalk – make parts of the picture look like a chalk drawing
- Blocks – turn parts of the picture “blocky”
- Negative – invert the colors of parts of the picture
- Tint – change the color of parts of the picture
- Drip – make parts of the picture look like it’s dripping away
- Cartoon – make parts of the picture look like a cartoon
- Mirror – flip the image horizontally
- Flip – flip the image vertically
• Eraser
• Undo
- Multiple levels of undo
- Undo actions can themselves be undone with the “Redo” button
Commands
• Save
- Save a picture to the virtual “picturebook”
- One-click save: No file browser dialogs or filename prompts are used
- If saving an opened picture, choose to save over it (like “Save” in desktop programs), or save a new picture (like “Save As”)
• Open
- Open a previous drawing by selecting its thumbnail in a virtual “picturebook”
- Delete previously-saved pictures
• Slides (coming in version 0.9.16!)
- View a slideshow of multiple saved drawings
- Control the speed of playback, for presentations or a simple looping animation
- Go forward or back using the arrow keys
- Print pictures on a printer
Parental and Teacher Controls
• Run Tux Paint in full-screen mode, or have it “grab” the mouse pointer, to prevent children from accidentally accessing other programs or files on the desktop.
• Sound effects can be disabled.
• The Print and Quit options can be disabled.
• Alternatively, the Print option can be limited to allow only one print every n minutes.
• Tux Paint cannot be launched more than once every 30 seconds, to prevent multiple copies from being run accidentally, due to over-eager mouse clicking.
• The directory/folder where Tux Paint saves files may be changed. This can be used to save pictures in a student’s home directory on a network drive or shared drive, rather than locally on one particular workstation.
• Stamps and brushes are stored using standard formats (PNG, WAV, text), allowing parents and teachers to create their own content for use at home or in classes.
• The “Tux Paint Config.” program allows parents, teachers, and school technicians to alter Tux Paint’s behaviour using a simple, easy-to-use graphical interface. (It’s separate from Tux Paint, to prevent children from changing things.)
For what's new in version 0.9.18.06, see:
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=555833&group_id=66938
System requirements:
Tux Paint runs on a variety of platforms, including all versions of Windows (including Tablet PC), Mac OS X 10.3 and up, Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD. It works well on older, slower systems, as well as thin-clients such as LTSP, Citrix and Windows Terminal Services. It even runs on some handheld computers!
System support:
PPC/Intel
Free
For more information, visit:
http://www.tuxpaint.org/
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