Tux Paint


Tux Paint is a free and open source raster graphics editor geared towards young children. The project was started in 2002 by Bill Kendrick who continues to maintain and improve it, with help from numerous volunteers. Tux Paint is seen by many as a free software alternative to Kid Pix, a similar proprietary educational software product.

History

Tux Paint was initially created for the Linux operating system, as there was no suitable drawing program for young children available for Linux at that time. It is written in the C programming language and uses various free and open source helper libraries, including the Simple DirectMedia Layer, and has since been made available for Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS, Android, Haiku, and other platforms.
Selected milestone releases:
  • 2002.06.16 – initial release, two days after coding started.
  • 2002.06.30 – first Magic Tools added.
  • 2002.07.31 – localization support added.
  • 0.9.11 – right-to-left support, UTF-8 support in Text tool.
  • 0.9.14 – Tux Paint Config. configuration tool released, Starter image support.
  • 0.9.16 – slideshow feature, animated and directional brushes.
  • 0.9.17 – arbitrary screen size and orientation support, SVG support, input method support.
  • 0.9.18 – Magic Tools turned into plug-ins, Pango text rendering.
  • 0.9.25 – support for exporting individual drawings and slideshows.
  • 0.9.28 – 20-year milestone release, adds the ability to use any colour by setting hue and saturation instead of a static palette.
  • 0.9.29 – introduces fifteen new Plugins, improvements to the Stamp and Shapes tool and a new quick start guide.

    Features

Tux Paint stands apart from typical graphics editing software that it was designed to be usable by children as young as 3 years of age. The user interface is meant to be intuitive, and utilizes icons, audible feedback and textual hints to help explain how the software works. The brightly colored interface, sound effects and cartoon mascot are meant to engage children.
Tux Paints normal interface is split into five sections:
  • Toolbox, containing the various basic tools and application controls.
  • Canvas, where the images are drawn and edited.
  • Color palette, where colors can be chosen.
  • Selector, providing various selectable objects.
  • Information area, where instructions, tips and encouragement are provided.
A simple slideshow feature allows previously saved images to be displayed as a basic flip-book animation or as a slide presentation.

Basic drawing tools

Like most popular graphics editing and composition tools, Tux Paint includes a paintbrush, an eraser, and tools to draw lines, polygonal shapes and text. Tux Paint provides multiple levels of undo and redo, allowing accidental or unwanted changes to be removed while editing a picture.

Files and printing

Tux Paint was designed in such a way that the user does not need to understand the underlying operating system or how to deal with files. The "Save" and "Open" commands were designed to mimic those of software for personal digital assistant devices, such as the Palm handheld. When one saves a picture in Tux Paint, they do not need to provide a file name or browse for where to place it. When one goes to open a previously saved picture, a collection of thumbnails of saved images is shown.
Similarly, printing is typically a 'no questions asked' process, as well.
Beginning with version 0.9.25, Tux Paint offers the ability to export individual drawings, as well as slideshow animations in animated GIF format.

Advanced drawing tools

Tux Paint includes a number of 'filters' and 'special effects' which can be applied to a drawing, such as blurring, fading, and making the picture look as though it was drawn in chalk on pavement. These are available through the 'Magic' tool in Tux Paint. Starting with version 0.9.18, Tux Paints 'Magic' tools are built as plugins that are loaded at runtime and use a C API specifically for creating such tools.
A large collection of artwork and photographic imagery are also available, and may be placed inside drawings using Tux Paints "Rubber Stamp" tool. Stamps can be in either raster format, or as vector graphics on many platforms Tux Paint supports. As of mid-2008, over 800 stamps are included in the stamps collection.

Parental and teacher controls

As features are added to Tux Paint, configuration options have been added that allow parents and teachers to disable features and alter the behavior to better suit their children's or students' needs, or to better integrate the software in their home or school computing environment. Typical options, such as enabling or disabling sound effects and full-screen mode are available. There are also options that help make Tux Paint suitable for younger or disabled children, such as displaying text using only uppercase letters or ignoring the distinction between buttons on the mouse.

Localization

Tux Paint has been translated into numerous languages, and has support for the display of text in languages that use non-Latin character sets, such as Japanese, Greek, or Telugu. As of November 2021, 130 languages are supported. Correct support for complex languages requires Pango. Sound effects and descriptive sounds for stamp imagery can also be localized. Tux Paint includes its own form of input method support, allowing entry of non-Latin characters using the 'Text' tool. Japanese, Korean and Traditional Chinese are currently supported.

Accessibility

Tux Paint offers built-in accessibility features, including an on-screen keyboard for use with the text entry tools, keyboard and joystick/gamepad control of the pointer, options to increase the size of UI elements, and an option to play sounds monaurally.