[Tux4kids-tuxtype-dev] non free sounds & better backgrounds

David Bruce davidstuartbruce at gmail.com
Tue Sep 8 03:12:48 UTC 2009


Hi Caroline,

On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 3:30 PM, Caroline
Ford<caroline.ford.work at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 5 sounds are non-free in tuxtype as they are under a non-commercial license.
> They are click.wav and kmus1 to kmus4. I can't see where click.wav gets
> played in tuxtype but I've found it in tuxmath, where it hasn't been flagged
> up as non-free!

I have to admit I'm not very worried about the license status of  a
0.1 sec click sound, although I don't mind replacing it with an
unequivocally free one.  I have to admit we don't really know where
some of these little sounds ultimately came from - the only info on
the 5 "non-free" ones is that they were either public domain or free
for non-commercial use.  The music files are identifiable enough that
we should definitely replace them at some point in case some one
objects.  I don't think kmus1-4 are very good anyway.

The attached replacement "click" sounds to me like a bass drum, so we
might want to keep looking.

Tuxmath's music files are believed to be public domain, but we don't
have any sort of formal release from their authors.  They were all
posted on public web sites years ago as part of the old Atari "demo
scene", and the authors are known only from online handle names
obtained by pulling the strings out of the binary sound files.  By now
I feel like tuxmath wouldn't be the same if we changed the music
files, so I would strongly prefer we keep them.

As for better backgrounds, tuxtype has scaling code in place, just
like tuxmath.  We just need to get around to sticking higher
resolution jpegs in there to take advantage of it.  The background
files for tuxmath are 1280x1024, which I think is plenty for our
purposes.  They still look quite good if scaled up for larger
monitors.  I tried even bigger images at first, but the scaling times
are proportional to the number of pixels, and are very noticeable on
slower machines.

Best,

David



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