[Edu-sig] OO in K-12

[Kirby Urner]

>An further direction for this would may be SVG which keeps it keep its
>object semantics intact.
>Being XML-based Python is well suited for the job.
>A good start is http://www.adobe.com/svg/main.html
>
>hth
>- Jason

Interesting links Jason (re Logo and bioforms/plants as well).

I think a more sophisticated studio-centric back end could
source a lot of interesting video clips (either as Flash
movies, or MPEGs or whatever) that would find their way into
the classroom (via Shockwave Plugin, DVD juke box or whatever),
a lot of them having Python somehow involved in their production.

Building frames of an animation programmatically is something
I've worked with a little in both Java and Python.  Because 
Java has its canvas built in, and doesn't require Tkinter, 
plus has the applet front end, I'm more inclined to use Java
than Python when it comes to showing animations directly.

However, if I have time to render frames off-line, and 
package them into runnable animations later (e.g. as AVIs 
or QuickTimes), then it doesn't matter to me about Python's
not having native displayability.  In those cases, it's more
a matter of having Python write text files which in turn
get passed to some kind of rendering engine (e.g. Povray).

This is where XML-storable vector graphics come in.  You
could write Python routines which spit out successive 
frames of an animation in XML, then render these on another
platform and package them for display over the internet
(even as JPGs running from within a Java applet).

Kirby

PS:  an example of an animated GIF built using Povray (not mine), 
see: http://www.inetarena.com/~pdx4d/synergetica/gctrain.html
(takes a long time to load -- in general not the best format 
for movies of this length and complexity).

For a lot of geometry cartoons in QuickTime format, check
http://www.newciv.org/Synergetic_Geometry/
Here's one of my favorites:
http://www.rt66.com/~charhawk/archexjbug.html