An interesting post from the Gnome list I thought might be of interest to people here. Specifically, our crowd that's interested in computing for kids, the linux crowd, and those interested (curious?) in all of the things happening in the area of bringing this stuff to the "public" desktop. This is a rather cool project with some big implications (and volunteer opportunities). . . maybe someone can find some ideas for implementing it elsewhere. For those not familiar with Gnome, might want to visit http://www.gnome.org . That goes for Mac users especially (Gnome takes a lot of look and feel from MacOS), and hardcore graphics folks. Those not familiar with XWindows might wonder how the desktop images get so big -- think of your desktop as four (or more) 3x5 cards. The normal monitor window can show one card at a time, but the whole desktop can cover four (i.e., you can hotkey your way among multiple screens instead of having to reduce and re-open program windows on the taskbar). Thus, the screenshots there are really about the size you see things in the monitor. If you like what you see, might want to wander over to http://www.enlightenment.org , as the windows manager used in many of those screenshots is Enlightenment. (If you make it there, check out the rather nifty ability shown in their screenshots to specify background images *within* applications--you'll see that the telnet/shell windows have pictures in the background . . .). Anyway, cool stuff, interesting possibilities. Wish someone were putting this stuff on my desktop as a kid . . . Brett ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 13:54:25 -0600 (CST) From: Arturo Espinosa Aldama <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Mexico's Educative System Goes for GNU/Linux + GNOME Greetings, beloved GNOME users and developers. I work as the proyect leader of the "Scholar Net", a program that aims to bring computers and the net to every elementary and mid-level school in Mexico. We expect to install from 20 to 35 thousand labs per year to a total of 140,000 centers in the next five years. Due to matters of cost, reliability and configurability, we plan to use GNU/Linux to replace the propietary server options and, now thanks to GNOME, the propietary desktop application options. We will develop GNOME to a point where we can get a useful and friendly enough desktop for the elementary and high school student. There are some aspects of GNOME, such as uniformity, spanish translation, bug fixing and application development which we will address to achieve this. At an average of 20 users per machine, and being all of them school children and teachers, GNU/Linux will become, at the long term, a major influence in Mexico. In the short term, GNOME will get an additional impulse from us and those who will contribute following our guidelines, and GNU/Linux will prove to be a real-world option for the end user. For further information and details on the Scholar Net and, specially for GNOME developers, on how to contribute to GNOME for us to arrive to deployment stage, please contact Arturo Espinosa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. Arturo Espinosa Aldama Proyect Leader Academic Services Coordination National Autonomous University of Mexico The text above may be copied in any way provided that it stays with this parragraph and unmodified. ____________________________________________________________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------- Join The Web Consultants Association : Register on our web site Now Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants If you lose the instructions All subscription/unsubscribing can be done directly from our website for all our lists. ---------------------------------------------------------------------
