Read ETexts Activity

[James Simmons]

Edward,

I was not planning on anything so fancy.  Basically, I was frustrated 
that I had a device that would be wonderfully suited to reading 
Gutenberg etexts and no suitable program to do it with.  I have written 
such an Activity and am putting the finishing touches on it.  As I see 
it, the selling points of the Activity will be that it can display 
etexts one page at a time in a readable proportional font and remember 
what page you were on when you resume the activity.  The child can find 
his book using the Gutenberg site, save the Zip file version to the 
Journal, rename it, resume it, and start reading.  It will also be good 
sample code for new Activity developers to look at, even children, 
because it is easy to understand yet it does something that is actually 
useful.  I have written another Activity which lets you browse through a 
bunch of image files stored in a Zip file, and it also would be good 
sample code for a new developer, as well as being useful.

I have been programming professionally for almost 30 years and I still 
had a hard time learning everything I needed to know to make an 
Activity.  Once you know it, it's simple, but collecting that knowledge 
a bit at a time is frustrating.  The existing tutorials seem to quit 
just when things are getting interesting.

I don't see myself competing with the Read activity or trying to teach 
anyone to read.  I wouldn't know how.  I might be of use teaching 
children to write simple computer programs.

James Simmons


Edward Cherlin wrote:

>Will it include Text-to-Speech, for the purposes we have discussed on
>this list? If so, could we get some sort of cursor or coloring effect
>to show the illiterate or semi-literate where they are in the text?
>
>  
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