Category talk:Software ideas
Java support really aught to be integrated, so that software can be ported on to the OLPC with NO adaptations. JAVA is also a fairly kid-friendly language, and SUN will be open-sourcing parts of it soon, making it ideal.
GIS / Mapping Software
I would really hope that mapping software is included in the olpc. Although the popular proprietary GIS applications are very large / memory intensive, there are plenty of open source examples already in existance which show that this is feasible within a 100mb size limit. Geographical Information Systems are a cross cirricula learning tool, but most obviously, a GIS would compliment the data logging applications described on this wiki, providing a way for children to analyse results. The application should focus on use of vector data (point line and polygon) as these are least memory intensive - although raster images could be used if connected to a usb cd drive.
Consider the addition of Graphite to handle complex fonts likely to be encountered
Given the real possibility these laptops will someday make their way into languages where non-Roman scripts and fonts will render these machines unusable, please consider the addition of Graphite as a potential solution to this problem. This includes large languages such as Arabic, Thai, Burmese, Greek, Tamil as well as many smaller minority languages.
Graphite is open-source and has been ported to Linux. A Graphite enabled smart font can handle these real world issues:
- contextual shaping
- ligatures
- reordering
- split glyphs
- bidirectionality
- stacking diacritics
- complex positioning
See [1] for practical examples of each case.
A good place to start learning about Graphite is [2] where you'll find documentation, contacts and links to its SourceForge home.
