Tux Paint's saved-files are pretty basic. Just standard PNG files. However, one of the 'issues' many parents have is that Tux Paint "hides" these files. (This is part of being simpler to use for young children, but ends up confusing the adults when they want to email a drawing :^) )
It might be good if Tux Paint had a simple GUI tool to allow viewing and copying of saved pictures. However, this is kind of a duplication of the GUI environments people have already (Konqueror/Nautilus/etc. on Linux, Finder on Mac, Explorer on Windows, etc.), so I'm NOT too concerned about this. On the other hand, I think it'd be awesome if we had a GUI to allow people to import EXISTING pictures INTO Tux Paint... (like a JPEG digital photo or a GIF downloaded from a website). We already have "tuxpaint-import", a simple shell script for Linux/Unix that uses NetPBM tools (e.g., "anytopnm") to convert an existing file into an appropriately-shaped PNG image for Tux Paint to load, and drops it into the 'saved' directory. Even makes the thumbnail :^) However, I think a GUI tool would be cool. It could have a very basic set of tools for turning a raw image (like a JPEG photo) into something suitable for Tux Paint (so that one doesn't need to load Photoshop or Gimp first!) First would be the obvious: a crop tool. Of course, Tux Paint's canvas is a fixed size, so the user would only be able to move the crop. (Or, if they could resize it, it would keep its aspect, to match Tux Paint's canvas.) Second would be a scale tool. (e.g., if the photo is huge, and you want more than someone's nose in Tux Paint, you could zoom out enough to let it fit in Tux Paint's canvas.) Although, I guess if the crop tool were resizable, this would be moot. Scaling would simply be 'built-in' to the cropping action. What do people think so far? Now, here comes the crazy part... one thing I've always wanted was a very simple GUI tool to allow people to make stamps. (At least the images, if not everything else; sound effect, description, set options, etc.) The reason this would be necessary is because not everyone out there has Photoshop or Gimp... and even if they do, they might not understand or care much about alpha channels, which are really /necessary/ in Tux Paint. So I imagine a tool which loads up a bitmap image (like a JPEG or GIF), and lets the parent/teacher/artist/etc. "draw" the alpha channel. (Think of a layer mask in Gimp, or the QuickMask selection editor mode.) Does THIS make sense? Now, who wants to work on THESE projects!? ;^) -bill! _______________________________________________ Tuxpaint-dev mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://tux4kids.net/mailman/listinfo/tuxpaint-dev
