Re: [tdf-discuss] UI proposal

Le 2010-10-22 15:42, Ian a écrit :
ds are clearly those of photo-retouch and .jpg work.
> All this begs the question of what learning we are trying to achieve. I
> have two key goals in ICT
>
> 1. Prepare them for change because that is one thing that is certain.
> 2. Develop the skills and good habits needed early so they don't have to
> unlearn stuff.
>
> For 1. they have to use a range of applications. One of the biggest
> problems with MSO in schools is that it becomes the only thing taught.
> Children are not educated, they are trained in using an office suite -
> that would also be true of OOo/LO if it was used in the same way.
>
> Touching up photos IMHO might have surpassed design work but is that
> really educationally desirable? Look at how often we need to communicate
> graphically. Draw diagrams in science, simple plans such as layout of a
> room or garden. I'd say the reason we teach bit map editing is because
> it is superficially easy, Windows only comes with such tools and
> teachers generally don't have the design skills themselves. Neither of
> these reasons is particularly sound educationally.

Totally in agreement with all of this, which we have heard for the last 
20 years or so in educational circles. Unfortunately, what it all boils 
down to is if the masses will pick the cool photo editing software suite 
or the suite with the vector graphics suite that may not suit their 
needs. I believe also boils down to the philosophy behind the LibO suite.
> > I am not sure if this makes a difference as to which tool should be
> > included in the suite.
>
> Back in the 80s when Acorn computers were in most UK schools, a good
> vector drawing program and its engine were built into the OS. This
> encouraged 3rd party developers to eg provide vector export to
> spreadsheet tables, graphics etc. You could export a graphic generated
> from any third party spreadsheet in a vector format, embed it in a text
> document, rotate it and scale it without loss of resolution. You could
> take such a graphic into a drawing program ungroup its components and
> edit it. All of this is possible if you have a standard vector format
> that is open and documented. This was back in 1988/9 over 20 years ago
> so this is one example of how Windows and commercial licensing has held
> back progress. We are so used to it now we just assume that is the way
> it has to be.

Yes, back in the 80's on this side of the pond, our Canadian schools 
used mostly the ICON computers and right through the early 90's. There 
were also great sets of tools as well as vector graphic programmes as 
well a great Logo set of tools. As well, we also pushed the Apple vector 
drawing programme (name escapes me right now) and some of our 
Mathematics textbooks were literally written with Logo and Vector 
drawing in mind. Still cool!

> If LibO had a standard and openly published svg engine (and Inkscape
> already has it) just think of the possibilities. You can already access
> many vector routines in Inkscape from scripted commands so a longer term
> goal would be to make a LibO UI that fit the svg engine and documented
> it so third parties could write applets that could access the routines
> for specific tasks. eg rendering charts and graphs as svg files to
> export from Calc.

Well then this speaks to the philosophy behind the suite. Are we to 
"sell" the product to the masses based on these set of tools (honestly, 
in educational circles, a vector writing tool would be a big sell) or do 
we keep Draw and push it as a popular photo-retouching software that the 
masses will enjoy.

By the same token, are photo-retouching tools available in Inkscape?

Marc




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