Re: Replacement for Abiword: LyX? Openoffice?
On Mon, Oct 06, 2003 at 12:17:26PM +0200, ray@nabuli.de wrote:
> On Mon, 6 Oct 2003, Ben Armstrong wrote:
> > > LyX is not kids software in my humble opinion.
> >
> > Maybe not. But neither are emacs nor vim. With some guidance, children of
> > different ages can use all three. It depends, I guess, on what your goals
> > are.
>
> May I jump in here, please? I just wonder why emacs (or vim) would
> not be kids software?
I'd like to make an important distinction. To say "this is not kids'
software" does not imply "kids should not use this software". This
statement is just an acknowledgement that a fair amount more guidance is
needed in order for most children to take advantage of the software than
one might be prepared to invest unless one had specific goals in mind for
introducing the software to them, in spite of the difficulties.
When I hear the phrase "kids' software" I think of software that, if left on
their own, with a small amount of guidance to get them started, most
children could use. Hopefully all designed-for-children software (tuxpaint,
gcompris, etc.) is in this category. On the other end of the spectrum is
software that leaves children in tears of frustration, or which they
immediately lose interest in and never return to again. In between, there
is software which, although it is probably not designed with children in
mind, can be taught to children with varying degrees of extra guidance,
depending on the child's age, style of learning, interests, and the skill of
the guide.
> Oh, don't get me wrong here, I am not to argue
> ... this is a real question for me, since our son has entered school
> this year and I think within the next year he will have learned
> writing ... and he may want do some writings on the PC. Why would
> let's say AbiWord be better than using emacs, AucTeX and friends? Or
> OpenOffice?
I think using a simple, fairly self-explanatory text-editor such as nano
(which all of my children use) is not such a bad place to start. The
problem with "self-explanatory," of course, is that if a child is just
beginning to learn to read, the inscriptions on the bottom of nano's screen
can be a bit tricky to decipher. But even if they can't read or understand
how to use all of the keystrokes on their own, after practicing a few of the
most important special keystrokes (such as how to move around in the file,
delete characters a key at a time, and save-and-exit) with guidance several
times until they have mastered them, they will probably get by just fine.
Using a word processor designed for adults is beyond most very young
children.
Ben
--
,-. nSLUG http://www.nslug.ns.ca synrg@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca
\`' Debian http://www.debian.org synrg@debian.org
` [ gpg 395C F3A4 35D3 D247 1387 2D9E 5A94 F3CA 0B27 13C8 ]
[ pgp 7F DA 09 4B BA 2C 0D E0 1B B1 31 ED C6 A9 39 4F ]
Reply to: