Tux Paint
Open Source Drawing Software for Children

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From the gallery:
Untitled
By: Nuria

Tux Paint is free computer art software for children.





 
Web tuxpaint.org
“I can't tell you how many school districts in Michigan have problems with KidPix. I downloaded the Tux Paint installer and stamps and was happily creating in minutes.” — Bullock Creek Schools


Open Source CMS

Help Us

There are many ways in which you can help the Tux Paint project: promoting it to your friends and neighbors, contributing artwork, submitting source code patches, and more.

Thank you for considering to help our project!

Promoting Tux Paint

If you'd like to help get the word out about Tux Paint, you can print brochures, make business cards to hand out to parents, burn a CDROM with Tux Paint on it, or contact local newspapers or magazines to tell them about the project!

Translating Tux Paint

If you're interested in translating Tux Paint into another language, it's easy! You should probably join the "tuxpaint-i18n" mailing list, in case you have questions. Most other volunteers working on translating Tux Paint are subscribed to it.

You can see the current state of existing translations, and also download the ".po" gettext catalogs on the "Help Us Translate" page.

To translate the core Tux Paint application or the standard Tux Paint Stamps collection:

  1. For best results, download the latest pre-release version of Tux Paint or the Stamps collection from the CVS repository (preferred).

    Alternatively, you can get the latest "tuxpaint.pot" translation template file for Tux Paint, or the latest "tuxpaint-stamps.pot" for the Stamps collection.
  2. Install poEdit, a 'gettext catalog' (".po" file) editor for Windows, Mac, Linux and Unix.
  3. Load "tuxpaint.pot", "tuxpaint-stamps.pot" or "tuxpaint-config.pot" into poEdit and translate the various strings.

    Note: If you are translating the Stamps description strings, but have not yet downloaded the Stamps collection, you can preview the imagery online in the Stamps Browser.
  4. Save the updated file and e-mail the gettext catalog file to us!

To translate Tux Paint's documentation:

  1. For best results, download the latest pre-release version of Tux Paint from the CVS repository (preferred).
  2. Translate the various documentation files (if an HTML version is available, it's typically best to translate that, rather than a plain-text version).
  3. If you have received developer's access to the CVS repository, simply add the files to an appropriate sub-directory under Tux Paint's "docs/" directory, and commit your changes! Otherwise, simply e-mail the translated documentation to us.

To translate parts of the Tux Paint website:

  1. For best results, download the PHP and HTML source code to the website from from the CVS repository (preferred).

    Note: It's a lot more difficult for us to accept translated HTML files (i.e., if you clicked "Save As..." in your web browser), since we have to then extract your translations and re-integrate them into the (much simpler) PHP that the website uses.

    Note: It's also a lot more difficult to work with translations if you used a WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") HTML edtior. We prefer you use a plain text editor, which won't introduce unnecessary HTML sequences!
  2. Translate the various pages and other text of the website.
  3. If you have received developer's access to the CVS repository, simply add the files to the page's "trans/" subdirectory, update the "index.php3" file to use your translation, and commit your changes! Otherwise, simply e-mail the translated pages to us.

Creating Artwork

One of the most popular feature of Tux Paint is the "Stamps" tool, and the collection of 'rubber-stamp' images which can be placed into a drawing.

If you'd like to contribute your own artwork or photography, we'd love to accept it! Since Tux Paint is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), we would ask that you contribute your art under the same license (or one that is compatible), so that as many people as possible may benefit from Tux Paint.

Obviously, you must own the copyright to whatever artwork or photography you contribute. (In other words, you cannot take someone else's photos or clipart and send it to us!)

Stamp artwork must be in the PNG or SVG graphics file format. For PNGs, use of an alpha channel is necessary to remove borders around non-rectangular shapes.

Additional data may be contributed with a stamp image: stamps may include localized descriptive text and sounds, sound effects, and various option settings (like the ability to tint the image before stamping it). Sounds should be in Ogg Vorbis (preferred), WAV or MP3 format.

For more information, see Tux Paint's documentation. We also encourage artwork contributors to subscribe to the "tuxpaint-stamps" mailing-list.

Creating Classroom Curriculum

While some classroom content is already available (see the Links page), we would love to be able to dedicate an entire section to this website for various classroom activities that teachers can use freely.

If you're interested in helping, contact Bill Kendrick at: bill@newbreedsoftware.com.

Improving Tux Paint

If you're interested in improving the Tux Paint software, please subscribe to the "tuxpaint-dev" mailing-list. This is where developers discuss potential changes, ask questions, and solve problems.

If you're not sure where to start, see the list of bug reports and feature requests. It contains a list of ideas, suggestions, and bugs which we would like to see worked on (or at least considered).

All of Tux Paint's contributors can be seen in the "AUTHORS.txt" document, as well as on the "Developers" page of the Tux Paint website.