From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Dec 12 2:27:14 2000 From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Dec 12 02:27:11 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from fw.wintelcom.net (ns1.wintelcom.net [209.1.153.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id ABC6237B400 for ; Tue, 12 Dec 2000 02:27:11 -0800 (PST) Received: (from bright@localhost) by fw.wintelcom.net (8.10.0/8.10.0) id eBCARAU04867; Tue, 12 Dec 2000 02:27:10 -0800 (PST) Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 02:27:10 -0800 From: Alfred Perlstein To: Cliff Sarginson Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: It's that time of year. GIF files. Message-ID: <20001212022710.B16205@fw.wintelcom.net> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: ; from cliff@raggedclown.net on Tue, Dec 12, 2000 at 10:13:39AM +0000 Sender: bright@fw.wintelcom.net Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG * Cliff Sarginson [001212 02:13] wrote: > > * Cliff Sarginson [001212 01:34] wrote: > > > Hello, > > > I am educating my son in the ways of non-MS software :) > > > Is there a port of anything available for making > > > animated GIFs ? I guess you can do it with the GIMP, but that is way too > > > complex for him (and for me!) > > > > When I read "It's that time of year. GIF files." I thought you > > were referrnig to "Burn all GIFs day". > > > > Unfortunetly the GIF encoding scheme is patetended by a company > > called Unisys, which didn't enforce the patent until it was in use > > everywhere. > > > > It's not thier fault, apparently they didn't know the compression > > scheme was thiers until everyone was using it, however they also > > didn't mention it when the designer had an article up about it > > that there was a patent pending. > > > > Tell your kid to "just say no to GIFs". I'm sure there's a better > > format out there, avi maybe? > > > Patents .. patents bah ! > They even want to patent my genes :( > > Ok, i told him to say no to heroin etc. > I will add GIF's to the list.. > What else is good for animations ? I'm not sure how old your kid is, but if you want to dazzle him you might want to try installing a programming langugage that makes it easy to make graphics, something like tcl/tk or some perl interface to graphics like perl-tk. Trust me, when I was 8 this was amazing stuff. :) I don't know how much of a programmer you are if at all, but tcl/perl is not that difficult to learn and you'll both have a good time. Just find an editor that's easy to use, I think vi and especially emacs could lead a small child to tears. Try 'edit' or look around in the ports tree for something easy to use. best of luck, -- -Alfred Perlstein - [bright@wintelcom.net|alfred@freebsd.org] To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message