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Computer Stuff


Here you will find links that are mostly related to open source software for artists and musicians. Also some software projects of my own.


My Software Projects


Tool Sharing

Tool Sharing

Tool sharing is a concept, hopefully soon to be more than just a concept, for sharing tool interfaces between graphics applications. Read more here, and you can see my 2013 presentation about it at the Libre Graphics Meeting here.
Laidout Logo Laidout Screenshot

Laidout

This is a desktop publishing program for Linux I've very slowly making since about 2005, which I use to lay out my books with. It can lay out pictures and lines in folded booklets, and even on top of arbitrary polyhedra (see also my Calehedron program). No text yet, but I'm working on it. It's supposed to be great for zines and books and such. It's now a project on sourceforge.net, so you can contribute!


Laxkit Stew   

The Laxkit

This is my graphical user interface toolkit that I've been making over the last few years. I originally had no intention of being so obsessed with it, but I keep thinking it will be worth it in the end. Most of my other software is built on top of it. Hopefully I will be able to squeeze a few years of use out of all my computer projects, before global warming and resource scarcity destroys society. The Laxkit is also another project on sourceforge.net.
Calehedron Screenshot

Calehedron

Calendar program to create fancy polyhedron calendars, ideally it would allow scribbling and dropping pictures onto faces with wrap around. It really should have some sort of 3-d preview feature too. I am building these features into Laidout, and will not be working on this program any more. As it stands, there's just make the net, and map the months, saving as SVG. The code is aging a bit, but I think it still compiles.
A Bezier Curve
Here is a write-up I wrote for the Laxkit documentation about bezier lines and cubic tensor product patches.
Go to GimpGo to Stuff
Here are some slowly developing side projects to do some neat things with the Gimp.
How To Program





Various other software links:

General Linux stuff - Linux for Artists - 3-d Modeling
Math - Text Games - Other Links


Links for Artists

Last updated 10 May 2013
Links to more artsy Linux stuff
Alexadre Prokoudine's provocative Libre Graphics World libregraphicsworld.org/
Libre Graphics Meeting
the fabulous yearly meeting for all things open source graphics software
libregraphicsmeeting.org/
I think this one is about linux for artists,
but it's all in French, which I can't read
linuxgraphic.org
Fedora's design focused distribution spins.fedoraproject.org/design/


Desktop Publishing
Lyx www.lyx.org/
TeX (linux package, includes Metafont and Metapost) www.tug.org/teTeX
Scribus www.scribus.net
Laidout (my own software!) www.laidout.org
Open Office www.openoffice.org
Passepartout (code is aging a bit) www.stacken.kth.se/project/pptout

Graphics
Mypaint (painting and sketching) mypaint.intilinux.com/
FontForge (font design) fontforge.org
Synfig (animation) www.synfig.com
Krita (image editing/painting) www.krita.org
Inkscape, svg editor www.inkscape.org
The Gnu Image Manipulation Program (Gimp) www.gimp.org
GraphicsMagick image utilities www.graphicsmagick.org
Imagemagick image utilities www.imagemagick.org
Cinepaint (movie frame editor) www.cinepaint.org
Sk1 sk1project.org/
qcad www.qcad.org
dia (fancy diagrams) projects.gnome.org/dia/
Generic Mapping Tools gmt.soest.hawaii.edu

Music and Sound
Lots of links for
this sort of thing
www.linux-sound.org
Lots of sheet music www.mutopiaproject.org
Lilypond, music layout system www.lilypond.org
Denemo, a graphic front for Lilypond www.denemo.org/
Lmms, sound synthesizer lmms.sourceforge.net
Rosegarden, great midi sequencer and more,
you'll need probably Fluidsynth and Jack
www.rosegardenmusic.com
Hydrogen drum machine, uses jack www.hydrogen-music.org
Fluidsynth, kind of a sound font backend www.fluidsynth.org
Jack, versatile sound management backend jackaudio.org

Music Hardware Reviews
Harmony Central www.harmony-central.com


Video Editing
Video editing under Linux is still something of a wild frontier land at the moment (May 2013). This means that often you will want to use the latest source for the projects below, which will minimize the frustration resulting from bizarre bugs that don't seem to have any workaround. Year by year, things improve, but there are still many bottlenecks!!

Synfig (2d animation) www.synfig.com
Tupi (2d animation) www.maefloresta.com/
Blender, 3-d modeler including video sequencer with ffmpeg support blender.org
MPlayer and Mencoder www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage
ffmpeg, command line video+audio stream convertor ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu
Avidemux, your basic, simple editor avidemux.sourceforge.net
Kino, another basic, simple editor www.kinodv.org
Kdenlive, promising new editor, multi track video and audio kdenlive.org
Cinepaint, mainly for touching up frames cinepaint.sourceforge.net
Recordmydesktop, for making video tutorials! recordmydesktop.sourceforge.net
Linux Movies Group (hollywood linux use!) www.linuxmovies.org
Lots of linux video links yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxTutorialVideo.html

Math
Yacas yacas.sourceforge.net
Octave www.octave.org
GnuPlot www.gnuplot.info
Metapost www.tug.org/metapost.html



Other
Project Gutenberg
putting old books online
gutenberg.net

Astronomy
Stellarium, very nice, planetarium-like www.stellarium.org
Celestia, space flight simulator www.shatters.net/celestia
Xephem (star charting) www.clearskyinstitute.com


3-d Modeling Stuff


Blender
www.blender.org
A very nice open source modeler and animation program. Includes a game engine so you could design 3-d games as well as animation and pictures. Blender has a relatively steep learning curve, but it's worth it.

PovRay
Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer, www.povray.org
Excellent ray tracer. Works from text configuration files. There are programs that will convert formats, so for instance, you can design a scene in Blender, and run a script to convert it to a Povray file, and get high quality rendering.

KPovmodeler
www.kde.org/applications/graphics/kpovmodeler/
A point and click interface for making povray files.

VPython
Visiual Python, www.vpython.org
A quick and easy way to sketch out 3-d concepts with the python scripting language.



Here's a bunch of stuff for and about Linux:


Some flavors of Linux
Debian www.debian.org
Fedora fedoraproject.org/
Knoppix www.knoppix.org
Ubuntu www.ubuntulinux.org

Various Hardware Compatibility Links
Can your scanner scan? www.sane-project.org
Digital Camera stuff gphoto.sourceforge.net

Various Linux Links
The Free Software Foundation www.fsf.org
The GNU project www.gnu.org
Freegeek Computer Recyclers where you
can get a computer by volunteering
www.freegeek.org
Openbox Window Manager openbox.org/

Lots of software
www.sourceforge.net
www.github.com
www.linux.org
www.freecode.com


Interactive Text Games


If you've ever played the old Infocom games like Zork 1, 2, or 3, or perhaps the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or The Leather Goddesses of Phobos, then you might be surprised to learn that people are still making interective text games. To learn more and get some games to play, you might try the following.

www.ifarchive.org
Kind of a compendium of all things interactive-text.

www.ifcomp.org
The site for the annual Interactive Fiction competition. I entered the 2003 competition, but nearly every reviewer thought my game was really pathetic. Unfortunately, I agree with some of the complaints to a certain extent, so I'm revising my game before I post it on my site.

rec.arts.int-fiction
rec.games.int-fiction

Two newsgroups devoted to discussion of IF. The first is for those interested in programming games, and the second for those interested in playing and reviewing games.

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Copyright 2013, Tom J. Lechner