KOCHI: Learn programming through simple and easy steps while playing a video game or enjoying an online game at Swathanthra Software Sangamam 2010. The Sangamam, organised by the Vocational Higher Secondary School, Irimpanam, in association with the Indian Libre Users Group (ILUG) Kochi - the third edition of the meet - brings together the free software community which includes teachers and students. The five-day workshop which began on Monday had discussions and seminars where the free software community engaged in different knowledge-sharing programmes.
The students of the VHSS were on a mission - to translate the interface of popular free software drawing programme, Tux Paint, a 2D drawing application, into Malayalam. The meet has 25 VHSS students. “The training was from 10 am to 4 pm,” said Sanalkumar M R, programme coordinator of the Sangamam. He said the workshop focussed on localisation of Tux Paint. “The students decided to undertake the translation as their previous attempts at making stamps of Indian flowers and fruits, and integrating them into the application (images, text and voice) were a success.
The changes were mailed to Bill Kendrick, founder and lead developer of Tux Paint in the US, who suggested localising Tux Paint by giving it a Malayalam interface. The contribution (stamps) of the students is expected to be included in the next official release of Tux Paint,” he said. Another highlight of the programme was that some of the topics covered were handled by students themselves. Students who completed the vacation course at the Free Learning Institute, Palarivattom, handled topics they learnt during the course.
The objectives of the five-day programme were to teach the basics of computing, understand the functioning of a machine through the command line interface, explain various concepts of programming and enable students to contribute to the free software application Tux Paint.
A native stamp
The students have captured the beauty of the landscape by photographing native flowers and developing stamps in the 2D drawing application, Tux Paint. Around 10 to 15 students and five teachers of the school will now become official contributors in the next release of Tux Paint, which will have the latest Indian flowers as stamps for users as mentioned in the email sent by Bill Kendrick. When a user selects a stamp tool in Tux Paint and clicks on the image of a flower he can and see it or listen to its name displayed in Malayalam.
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