How To Program

Computer Stuff


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


My Software Projects


Space station

VR experiments with space stations

This outlines various VR experiments using Godot.
Laidout Logo Laidout Screenshot

Laidout

This is a desktop publishing program for Linux I've been very slowly making since about 2005, which I use to lay out my cartoon books. It can lay out pictures and lines in folded booklets, and even on top of arbitrary polyhedra (see also my Polyptych component). It's supposed to be great for zines and books and such. At least that's what I use to make all my books! Visit Laidout's webpage.


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.
A Bezier Curve
Here is a write-up I wrote for the Laxkit documentation about bezier lines and cubic tensor product patches.
Tool Sharing

Tool Sharing

This is a companion writeup from a 2013 talk at the Libre Graphics Meeting here. Sharing tool interfaces between graphics applications would be really nice theoretically, but very difficult to implement in practice! Read more here.






Various other software links:

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


Links for Artists

Last updated haphazardly March 2023

Links to more artsy Linux stuff
Alexadre Prokoudine's provocative Libre Graphics World librearts.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 labs.fedoraproject.org/en/design-suite
3D Modeling
Blender, 3d, blender kind of does everything blender.org

Game Engines
Godot, way cool game engine that does so much and installs so easily godotengine.org


Desktop Publishing
Laidout (my own software!) laidout.org
Scribus scribus.net
TeX (linux package, includes Metafont and Metapost) tug.org
Lyx lyx.org/
LibreOffice libreoffice.org

Graphics
Mypaint (painting and sketching) github.com/mypaint
Krita (image editing/painting) krita.org
Inkscape, svg editor inkscape.org
The Gnu Image Manipulation Program (Gimp) gimp.org
darktable (raw photo processing) darktable.org
FontForge (font design) fontforge.org
Synfig (animation) synfig.com
GraphicsMagick image utilities graphicsmagick.org
Imagemagick image utilities imagemagick.org
qcad qcad.org
dia (fancy diagrams) projects.gnome.org/dia/
Generic Mapping Tools generic-mapping-tools.org

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

Animation
Blender, 3d, blender kind of does everything blender.org
Krita, 2d animation krita.org
Synfig, 2d animation synfig.com
Tupi, 2d animation tupitube.com/

Video Editing
Kdenlive, promising new editor, multi track video and audio kdenlive.org
ffmpeg, command line video+audio stream convertor ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu
MPlayer and Mencoder, command line mplayerhq.hu/homepage
Natron, a node based compositor natron.fr
Recordmydesktop, screen recorder for making video tutorials! recordmydesktop.sourceforge.net

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

Astronomy
Stellarium, very nice, planetarium-like stellarium.org
Celestia, space flight simulator celestia.space
Xephem (star charting) github.com/XEphem


Other
Project Gutenberg
putting old books online
gutenberg.org




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


Some flavors of Linux
Debian debian.org
Fedora fedoraproject.org
Ubuntu ubuntu.com
Pop!_OS
yes, it's really spelled like that
pop.system76.com
Knoppix Live CD knoppix.org


Kind of related organizations
The Free Software Foundation fsf.org
The GNU project gnu.org
Fossasia
promotes free software with, among many other things, an annual conference in Singapore
fossasia.org
Freegeek, Portland, Oregon area
you can get a computer by volunteering
freegeek.org



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.

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

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.