[K12OSN] Tuxpaint config

[Bill Kendrick]

Scott Belford had actually forwarded Peter's post of this from HOSEF-managers
to me directly, so I replied privately before.

Here's my response!



On Fri, Sep 17, 2004 at 02:47:31PM -1000, pnakashi at k12.hi.us wrote:
> >I just found
> >
> >http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/tuxpaint/docs/
> >
> >So now I'm playing with the config file /etc/tuxpaint/tuxpaint.conf

Cool!  BTW, you might be happy to hear we've got a completely graphical
configuration tool coming out with Tux Paint 0.9.14 (to be released
within a week, I hope!)

You can see a screenshot of it here:

  http://newbreedsoftware.com/tuxpaint/screenshots/tuxpaint-config-sshot.png


> >I am now very happy to have full screen mode, simple shapes, and
> >uppercase tool descriptions for our K and 1 students. Next I want to
> >set all printing to print to a png file. What command do I use?

Ah, you want it to actually CREATE a PNG file when you hit print?
Well, the easiest would be something like:

  printcommand=cat > somefile.png

But in that case, the file would be overwritten the next time you print.
I'm not sure the best method of having it either prompt for a filename
(this would have to occur in an external program; I imagine something like
KDialog or Kommander in KDE could be useful here), or use some timestamp
or other unique value for the filename.

Does that help, at all?


> >By the way, currently, whenever I print, the program crashes :-(
> >Tuxpaint 0.9.13 K12LTSP 4.0.1 --Peter

Oh dear!  I wonder... is NetPBM and lpr installed?  I'm not sure how well
Tux Paint would survive a Print command if they didn't (I suppose I should
test these things, huh? :^) )

If you can do the following, and get a picture to print, then you
have everything installed that you need, and something in Tux Paint might
be broken...

  cd ~/.tuxpaint/saved/
  cat `ls *.png | head -1` | pngtopnm | pnmtops | lpr

(What that does is place you in the 'saved files' folder for Tux Paint
and print the oldest picture (The "ls *.png | head -1" gets the file's name,
and then we cat that file to the same chain of commands Tux Paint tries to
use for printing.)

Another good test, before doing all that, is:

  which pngtopnm
  which pnmtops
  which lpr

For example, the first 'which' should return something like:

  /usr/bin/pngtopnm


If any of those 'which' commands complain, and you're SURE these
programs are installed, then it might be a path problem.  You might want
to do something similar to this in Tux Paint's config file:

  printcommand=/usr/local/bin/pngtopnm | /usr/local/bin/pnmtops | /sbin/lpr

(obviously, the pathes would all depend on where those programs actually ARE
on your system; I don't have a [K12]LTSP setup to play with, sadly.)


-bill!