Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Help Scratch gain HTML5 support and be free!

[Rudolf]

Perhaps the solution here is to import Scratch projects into Snap and export them to Canvas/HTML5? How well is that supported because I would think the Scratch team would be supportive of that kind of solution.

-rudolf

On Sun, Apr 3, 2016 at 4:39 PM Fabian Rodriguez <magicfab@member.fsf.rg> wrote:

Why bother? I follow a few CS/Education resources and I see teachers are
now moving to Snap!:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap!_%28programming_language%29

- Can import Scratch 2 projects
- Free under AGPL
- implemented in _javascript_ using an HTML5 Canvas API (so, no Flash)
- etc.

F.

Le 2016-04-03 07:15, Fabio Pesari a écrit :
> Scratch by MIT Media Lab ([0]) is a free Smalltalk-based visual
> programming language and environment aimed at teaching programming.
>
> The Scratch website lists 13,909,161 projects, all under the libre
> CC BY-SA license ([1]). That's a *huge* amount of free programs, even if
> a lot of them are a "remix", and not all of them are interactive!
>
> Sadly, right now it uses Adobe AIR/Flash to play those programs and
> animations in web browsers, and it seems that the official team doesn't
> think porting the exporter to HTML5 has a high priority ([2]), and
> although some independent developers started development, they stopped
> at around 40% on May 8, 2015 ([3]).
>
> I think it's good that so many schools, libraries and museums adopted a
> free program, but most people use mobile devices nowadays, and Flash
> doesn't work on all of them, so this could likely put an end to
> Scratch's adoption, which will likely mean a proprietary program will be
> used instead.
>
> A free replacement for Scratch could be GDevelop ([4]), which is however
> aimed at game development (but even if it's suited for professional use,
> that doesn't mean it's harder to use).
>
> I am not even a Scratch user, as I dismissed it back when it was under a
> weird license and haven't really used it much after its GPLv2 release,
> but I am a fan of Smalltalk, free software, free standards and
> education, so I encourage everybody who has the skills or the funds to
> contribute to this project, or at least spread around the word to
> someone who might.
>
> [0]: https://scratch.mit.edu/
> [1]: https://scratch.mit.edu/info/faq/#remix
> [2]: http://wiki.scratch.mit.edu/wiki/HTML5_Player
> [3]: https://github.com/LLK/scratch-html5
> [4]: http://www.compilgames.net/
>


--
Fabián Rodríguez
http://openstreetmap.magicfab.ca