Re: Edubuntu's focus, and future.
> That idea is something I've tried to implement sometimes, but I've
> always crashed against the same wall: Most educative books include flash
> animations or pdf files. When they include flash animations, sometimes I
> even have the sources and a free license, but I have no idea of how to
> compile flash sources to get the swf files. Maybe using ming or mtasc it
> can be done, but that's a field I don't know. If someone knows how to do
> it, it would be a needed step to package educative books and upload them
> to Debian.
I can't comment on how to handle the flash stuff, but since I provide my math
textbook [1] as a PDF, I'll chime in on that. A lot of these textbooks are
written in LaTeX [2], and then compiled to a PDF. This is how Debian
should build
them...
However, this isn't as simple as it seems. As one works on a document, one
tends to get lock into a certain build process. For example, my math textbook
must follow the path: latex->dvips->ps2pdf. The fact that these paths vary
greatly means that authors need to provide a Makefile or instructions... Which
they often don't, it seems.
Hope my ramblings are useful,
Christopher
[1] http://christopherolah.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/math1.pdf
[2] http://www.latex-project.org/
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