Layt: Tablet Fun and Games [LWN.net]

On his blog, John Layt describes his experience using Plasma Active on an ExoPC and how well it worked, especially for children. Part of the reason is the availability of lots of "apps" from KDE (and KDE Edu) that mostly ran just fine in a touch-based environment. "We may have been [bereft] of net access, but the tablet was fully loaded with edu apps and games and was given a through going-over, err I mean usability test by all the children. It took a single demo from me of how to find and launch apps and they were away, proving just how usable Active is: if a 5 year-old can get it with a 3 second explanation I'm sure most adults will too. A tablet works really well in the context of a group of children playing together, they happily sat around the tablet playing Blinken or KHangman together, rather than arguing over who's next to play Angry Birds on the iPhone. The 5 year-old even demanded his parents install some of the games on their iPad :-) As annma put it on the kdeedu mailing list, a tablet is a ready-made babysitter :-)"

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Layt: Tablet Fun and Games

Posted Sep 1, 2011 21:33 UTC (Thu) by dbruce (subscriber, #57948) [Link]

I maintain Tux Math and Tux Typing (http://tux4kids.alioth.debian.org), and am peripherally involved in Tux Paint (http://www.tuxpaint.org). As kids are clearly going to be using tablets more and more, I would love to see Tux4Kids apps (except Tux Typing, most likely) onto these devices. The article says Tux Paint was a big hit - I would be interested to hear if they tried Tux Math.

Since Tux Math is now GPLv3+, it cannot currently go into Apple's App Store, but an Android port is likely if SDL for Android gets sufficiently completed.

Layt: Tablet Fun and Games

Posted Sep 2, 2011 11:16 UTC (Fri) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link]

I just installed TuxMath and TuxTyping on my ExoPC with Plasma Active and the touch elements work really well. What doesn't work so well is the inability to control sounds in-game (at least I couldn't find that in TuxMath?) which is pretty critical for use of a full screen app/game on a mobile device ;); also, there was no way to enter answers (on screen keyboard) for TuxMath on the tablet.

These are not huge issues given the rest of the work that's gone into these applications. They work very nicely on the tablet otherwise, and I'd love to see them get those bits of polish needed to make them stand-outs. If that is done, I'd love to include them as an "Active App" with the Plasma Active configuration.

Definitely let us know (#active on irc.freenode.net or active@kde.org) if you're interested ... cheers!

Layt: Tablet Fun and Games

Posted Sep 2, 2011 20:55 UTC (Fri) by dbruce (subscriber, #57948) [Link]

Hi Aaron,

Tuxmath has an onscreen keypad option e.g. "tuxmath --keypad", but I checked just now and it doesn't seem to work anymore in the recent version. I actually hadn't tried that option in years. I'll try to look into what is going on to get this option working again. It was set up to allow input with mouse clicks only, so it probably will work with touch events.

Thanks - I'll be in touch soon.

DSB

Layt: Tablet Fun and Games

Posted Sep 2, 2011 20:40 UTC (Fri) by robbe (guest, #16131) [Link]

Who cares about the App Store? Good software only available via Cydia is another reason for people to jailbreak out of Apple slavery. You'd "only" have to find someone porting to the strange environment.

As a datapoint, I couldn't find a free-as-in-beer paint program in the fabled app store comparable in the least to tuxpaint.