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<title>TUX&GNU@school - 2nd edition</title>
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<h1>TUX&GNU@school - 2nd edition</h1>
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<p><i>Every month the column TUX&GNU@school reports about
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free education software, a homepage on the topic and an easy
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to implement idea. This month I talk about <a
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href="http://www.ofset.org/gcompris">GCompris</a>, a GNU
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education program for the young and the old, about <a
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href="http://www.pingos.schulnetz.org">PingoS.schulnetz.org</a>,
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a homepage for GNU/Linux support at german schools and about
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the idea "Text4mator - text modification made easy".</i></p>
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<p>Welcome to the second edition of TUX&GNU@school [18].
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At the beginning I want to thank all the people who sent me
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tips for education software I could report about. At this
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place it would be good to explain this column's name: TUX is
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the name of the meanwhile well-known mascot of Linux, a
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little dinky penguin. But GNU [2] on the one hand stands for
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the recursive acronym "GNU is not UNIX", which is the name of
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a project that's developing a free version of UNIX and on the
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other hand it stands for the animal species of the mascot of
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GNU. Finally the "@school" means "in or at school". But now
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we're going on to the first item.</p>
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<h3>GCompris - free education software for the young and the
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old</h3>
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<p>GCompris [3] is a free education program that has become
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official GNU software in the meantime. Actually it's more a
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uniform interface for different learning boards. I tested the
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version 1.0.5 under Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 (testing) and KDE
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2.2.</p>
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<p>When you start the program, the main window of screenshot
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1 appears. This window is split in three sections with the
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single learning boards at the top, a short description in the
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middle and a short menu panel at the bottom. Up to now there
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are at the head four links that are guiding to another boards
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and under it, in the second row, there are four boards
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guiding to the following boards: With the first one, the kid
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can learn the clock or time, the second link goes to a simple
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vector painting programm, at the third board you have to set
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the watergates that way TUX with his ship can go trough and
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eventually the child learns with the fourth board, where the
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different countries are situated in North and South America.
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The pictures at the head of the main window are indicated by
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different symbols. The small yellow arrow tells the link is
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going to additional teaching boards, whereas the little
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stars, at the pictures which are boards themselves, show the
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level. At teaching boards with an integrated sound output the
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loudspeaker symbol tells you, if sound output is possible or
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not, like it's the case in screenshot 1. You can always read
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a short description and the name of the author in the middle
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part of the main window. And eventually at the bottom there
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are four symbols which, from left to right, go to more
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information about GCompris, open the configuration menu, show
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the helping documentation and with a click on the last
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picture closes the program. At the configuration menu you can
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make settings like the language you prefer or if GCompris has
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his own window or it starts in fullscreen mode. Regarding the
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language settings, you should adapt the environment variable
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LANG to match your language. If not, you can change it e.g.
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for english by writing the following command on a console:
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<tt>export LANG=en_EN</tt>.</p>
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<p><img src="./img/gcompris-menu.en.png"
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alt="Screenshot 1: GCompris in action" width="808"
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height="628" border="0" /><br />
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</p>
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<h5>Screenshot 1: GCompris in action</h5>
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<br />
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<br />
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<p>With the board for learning the time, I want to show how
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the single subprograms are built. As you can see in
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screenshot 2, there is a menu at the bottom too, which
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contains little pictures. By clicking on the picture
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rightmost you go back to the main window. By the other two
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the picture with the die shows you the current level und by
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clicking on it you climb one level. If you are content with
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your settings, push the hand with thumb up or alternatively
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you can push RETURN and the computer checks the correctness
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of the settings. If the answer was correct you see either a
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happily clown face or a flower with a laughing mouth and you
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can even hear it with activated sound output; if the result
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was wrong, the clown and the flower are sad and you can try
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it again. The problem you have to solve in this board is to
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set the watch as the text at the left says. The watch hands
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can be moved and set with the mouse. In higher levels even
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the hour watch hand are set to the time given by the minute
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hand watch. At the right you can see in which of how many
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levels you are, shown by to numbers.</p>
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<p><img src="./img/gcompris-uhr.en.png"
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alt="Screenshot 2: Learning the time with GCompris"
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width="808" height="628" border="0" /><br />
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</p>
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<h5>Screenshot 2: Learning the time with GCompris</h5>
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<br />
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<br />
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<p>As already said at the beginning GCompris is supposed to
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be "only" a common interface for different teaching boards.
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The developer encourages everyone to build own boards as
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descriped shortly in the documentation. Personally I like
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this program very much because it is interesting for every
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age with his different subprograms. Up to now GCompris was
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translated into German, English, French and Spanish whereas
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they work on an Italian translation and for the near future
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we can expect a Hungarian one. What I still miss is a
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evaluation or something like highscores but I think that we
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won't wait as long for these features because the development
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of GCompris is going very quickly. Therefore a great thank
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you for Bruno Coudoin and all the other authors of GCompris
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too and a lot of success for the future.</p>
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<p><i>Addendum: As I saw right now on the mailing list of the
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project, they released GCompris 1.1.0. The first edition with
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editor functions and a Hungarian translation.</i></p>
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<p>But now to the home of the PingoS.</p>
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<h3>Pingos.schulnetz.org - free support for free schools</h3>
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<p><i>Attention: This site is available in German only
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!!!</i></p>
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<p>Under the URL above you find in the first place the head
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quarter [4] (see screenshot 2) of the German PingoS. That's a
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project which wants to find and coordinate volunteers in (at
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the moment) Germany for GNU/Linux support at schools. They
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try this with the help of different online media. Willing and
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interested GNU/Linux appreciators can sign in the online form
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[5] which asks for state of knowledge and residence too. All
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data exclusive the name, the email address and the residence
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are used only internally, the others are entered in the
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PingoS-helper-card (see screenshot 4). Schools in Germany
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searching help for imminent project or that only have
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questions on topic can search on the helper-card [6] and
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click on the nearest town for a list of helpers in that area.
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If you only have questions sometimes it's surely not a bad
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idea to subscribe on the mailing list [7] of the preject.
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There are always able and rapid answers on the main list [8].
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If think about larger projects or questions, they distribute
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the responsibility for it on one of the mailing lists. The
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work is mostly documented with a short description on the
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project website [9]. For the future interesting is surely the
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corporation with groups of Austria or the "ALIS -
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Arbeitsgruppe Linux an Schulen" [10] (Swiss work group for
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Linux at school) of Switzerland. Particularly you can even
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hear about requests from Great Britain for building up
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something similar.</p>
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<p><img src="./img/pingos.en.png"
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alt="Screenshot 3: Front page of the PingoS homepage"
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width="800" height="600" border="0" /><br />
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</p>
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<h5>Screenshot 3: Front page of the Pingos homepage</h5>
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<br />
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<br />
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<p>But the support project isn't the only that's at home on
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the homepage of the PingoS. Not forgetting the section with
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the self-developed software [11] of the PingoS, e.g.
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education or administration software. One of the most famous
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projects surely is the "Tipptrainer" [12], another program
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for learning typing, but more about it at another time.
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Furthermore you can find there a lot of small scripts [13],
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Perl or Bash, which ease the day for us. A last section of
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the website I want to talk about is the area with the
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documentation and the schooling brochures [14]. There you can
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find almost everything from Python introductions to medium
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large GNU/Linux courses.</p>
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<p><img src="./img/pingos-karte.jpg"
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alt="Screenshot 4: PingoS helper card" width="492"
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height="647" border="0" /><br />
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</p>
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<h5>Screenshot 4: PingoS helper card</h5>
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<br />
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<br />
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<p>At the end I still want to tell about a very interesting
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project of the PingoS: SelfLinux [15]. With SelfLinux the
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PingoS want to create a complete reference to GNU/Linux for
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novices. Therefor they collect written descriptions and
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articles about tasks and problems around the free operating
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system and the application software and compose them
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structured. Until now there is already a lot of knowledge and
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texts but they still need writer for another texts. At [16]
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you can explore the work made up to now. From my side good
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speed for the future and may you receive a "thank you" from
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time to time.</p>
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<p>That's it about the PingoS, let's proceed to a new idea
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for an easy to implement software.</p>
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<h3>Text4mator - text modification made easy</h3>
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<p>Before I talk about the idea of this month, I still want
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to write something about the last one and what resulted of
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it. In the first three or four months after the publication
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of the first edition it seemed as if nobody had time to
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implement the idea. Therefor and because I had to learn
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programming for my studies I tried it myself. I wrote a not
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yet satisfying program in C++ that generates random numbers
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through a bash script that the program writes to a file with
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LaTeX formatting. The two commands <tt>latex</tt> and
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<tt>dvips</tt> transform this file into an Postscript file
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which is printed by <tt>lpr</tt>. I'll release the program
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and a short description in a few days on [10] under the terms
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of the GNU GPL. At this point still a thank you to Diego
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Kuonen for his help with the LaTeX syntax. Then before
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approximately one and a half month I received an email form
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Franziska Meyer that she implemented the idea too. But she
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made it by far more interesting. Because she was already
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familiarising herself with PHP at that time, she had the idea
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to implement it as a web service (I want to use this new word
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once too ;-). Thought and done and like this it is possible
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today going on her website [17] to generate a worksheet which
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is downloadable as a pdf-file for the quarter of an hour. An
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ingenious idea as I think; because like this you don't even
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have to install a separate program. When I asked her to
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release the source code to install it perhaps in an Intranet
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she said: "Ok, ich überleg's mir mal - und schaue den Code
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durch, ob ich den wirklich freigeben kann ;-)" (Ok, I think
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about it - and will go through the code whether I can really
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release that ;-)). Here too a great thank you to ZIS for her
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effort.</p>
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<p>But now up to the actually idea I want to introduce this
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time. If you learn the verbosity at school you're doing it
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right often with worksheets with upper-case texts. In the
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other case you use for the introduction of punctuation marks
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often texts without periods, commas, questions marks, etc.
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The teachers make this all in toilsome handwork. On the other
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case it would be right easy for good script writers and
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programmers to implement a solution. There were again
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different variations and possibilities, e.g. to write all
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words upper- or lower-case, to write only the first letter
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lower- or upper-case, etc. Furthermore you have to pay
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attention to leave always the same space between the single
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words. I hope somebody of you is having a good mind and I can
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report about it next time.</p>
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<p>Ok, that's the end for this time. At the end I let you
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know that my (spontaneous) conceptions for easy to implement
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ideas are becoming quite rare. I hope so that you can help in
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this case and will send some to me [1] I can tell about. The
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next time is already in two weeks because this edition came
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too late and I don't want to begin with delays. Bye up to the
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next time when we're on it again ...</p>
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<h3>Links:</h3>
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<p>[1] <a href="mailto:foxman@lugo.ch">Criticism, questions,
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comments, ideas and more please to: foxman@lugo.ch</a><br />
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[2] <a href="http://www.gnu.org">Homepage of the GNU
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project: www.gnu.org</a><br />
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[3] <a href="http://www.ofset.org/gcompris">Homepage of
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GCompris: www.ofset.org/gcompris</a><br />
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[4] <a href="http://www.pingos.schulnetz.org">Homepage of
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the PingoS: www.pingos.schulnetz.org</a><br />
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[5] <a
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href="http://www.pingos.schulnetz.org/anmeldung.php">Registration
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to the PingoS:
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www.pingos.schulnetz.org/anmeldung.php</a><br />
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[6] <a
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href="http://www.pingos.schulnetz.org/support/map.php">Helper-card
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of the PingoS:
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www.pingos.schulnetz.org/support/map.php</a><br />
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[7] <a
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href="http://www.pingos.schulnetz.org/support/mailinglist/index.php">
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Mailing lists of the PingoS:
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www.pingos.schulnetz.org/support/mailinglist/index.php</a><br />
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[8] <a
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href="http://www.hh.schule.de/mailman/listinfo/all-linux">Main
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list of the PingoS:
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www.hh.schule.de/mailman/listinfo/all-linux</a><br />
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[9] <a
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href="http://www.pingos.schulnetz.org/support/projektliste.php">
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Already finished projects of the PingoS:
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www.pingos.schulnetz.org/support/projektliste.php</a><br />
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[10] <a href="http://www.edux.ch">Homepage of "ALIS -
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Arbeitsgruppe Linux an Schulen" (Swiss work group for linux
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at school): www.edux.ch</a><br />
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[11] <a
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href="http://www.pingos.schulnetz.org/project/software/index.php">
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Software of the PingoS:
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www.pingos.schulnetz.org/project/software/index.php</a><br />
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[12] <a
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href="http://www.pingos.schulnetz.org/tipptrainer">Homepage
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of Tipptrainer:
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www.pingos.schulnetz.org/tipptrainer</a><br />
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[13] <a
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href="http://www.pingos.schulnetz.org/project/scripts/index.php">
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Skript collection of thePingoS:
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www.pingos.schulnetz.org/project/scripts/index.php</a><br />
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[14] <a
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href="http://www.pingos.schulnetz.org/project/schulung/index.php">
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Documentation and schooling brochures of the PingoS:
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www.pingos.schulnetz.org/project/schulung/index.php</a><br />
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[15] <a
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href="http://selflinux.sourceforge.net">Sourceforge.net page
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of SelfLinux: selflinux.sourceforge.net</a><br />
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[16] <a href="http://www.selflinux.de">Homepage of
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SelfLinux: www.selflinux.de</a><br />
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[17] <a href="http://www.atreju.ch/1mal1.phtml">1x1
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worksheets generating online and downloading:
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www.atreju.ch/1mal1.phtml</a><br />
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[18] <a
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href="/activities/tgs/tgs.html">Homepage
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of TUX&GNU@school:
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fsfe.org/activities/tgs/tgs.en.html</a><br />
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</p>
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<h4>About the author:</h4>
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<p>Mario Fux finished 1999 the PrimarlehrerInnenseminar in
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Brig after he made up mathematical and natural scientifical
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matura. In a body with two colleagues he founded the <a
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href="http://www.edux.ch">"ALIS - Arbeitsgruppe Linux an
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Schulen"</a> (Swiss work group for linux at school).
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Meanwhile he studies at the <a
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href="http://www.ethz.ch">Swiss Federal Institut of
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Technology Zurich</a> <a
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href="http://www.ee.ethz.ch">informations technology and
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electrical engineering</a>. And if he once doesn't spend his
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time in front of the PC, he sits at his nature pond in the <a
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href="http://www.randa.ch">mountains</a>.</p>
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<p align="center"><i>Copyright (c) 2002 Mario Fux. Permission
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is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
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under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version
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1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software
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Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts,
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and no Back-Cover Texts.<br />
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A copy of the license can be found at <a
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href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html">http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html</a>.
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</i>
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</p>
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