Kid Pix templates - anyone have any?

A school contacted me yesterday saying that they're forced to move
away from Kid Pix, since they're switching their computer lab to
thin clients, which Kid Pix apparently can't work on.  They're looking
at Tux Paint, but wanted to make sure they can keep using the templates
they had made in Kid Pix.

Knowing nothing about Kid Pix, I asked them what the templates in Kid Pix do,
and it sounds a lot like "Starters" in Tux Paint.  I searched the web a
little to see if I could find examples of templates, but mostly found
"Error 404: Page not found", and some small GIF files.

I asked the teacher if she could send me some example templates, and
she sent along some files with the extension ".kpx".  Examining them,
I discovered they're just JPEGs with some extra wrapper info and
a thumbnail -- at least, the one's she sent.

I was wondering if anyone out here on 'tuxpaint-users' has any Kid Pix
templates they'd be willing to share, so I can take a peek and see if there's
any variation in what they look like on the inside.

In the meantime, based on the four or five KPX files that this teacher sent,
I was able to add KPX support to Tux Paint's "Starters" feature, which will
be available in the next release!  (Which won't be any time soon.)

I've also asked around for a stop-gap solution: a way for this school to,
on Windows, extract the JPEGs from inside their KPXs files and convert
them to PNGs for Tux Paint.  (If anyone here has some technical skill on
Windows and would like to help, let me know!)

--
-bill!
Sent from my computer

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[Gloria Taylor Weinberg]

Bill, you are a fine human being.
Gloria

On Oct 8, 2009, at 12:06 PM, Bill Kendrick wrote:

>
> A school contacted me yesterday saying that they're forced to move
> away from Kid Pix, since they're switching their computer lab to
> thin clients, which Kid Pix apparently can't work on.  They're looking
> at Tux Paint, but wanted to make sure they can keep using the  
> templates
> they had made in Kid Pix.
>
> Knowing nothing about Kid Pix, I asked them what the templates in  
> Kid Pix do,
> and it sounds a lot like "Starters" in Tux Paint.  I searched the  
> web a
> little to see if I could find examples of templates, but mostly found
> "Error 404: Page not found", and some small GIF files.
>
> I asked the teacher if she could send me some example templates, and
> she sent along some files with the extension ".kpx".  Examining them,
> I discovered they're just JPEGs with some extra wrapper info and
> a thumbnail -- at least, the one's she sent.
>
> I was wondering if anyone out here on 'tuxpaint-users' has any Kid Pix
> templates they'd be willing to share, so I can take a peek and see  
> if there's
> any variation in what they look like on the inside.
>
> In the meantime, based on the four or five KPX files that this  
> teacher sent,
> I was able to add KPX support to Tux Paint's "Starters" feature,  
> which will
> be available in the next release!  (Which won't be any time soon.)
>
> I've also asked around for a stop-gap solution: a way for this  
> school to,
> on Windows, extract the JPEGs from inside their KPXs files and convert
> them to PNGs for Tux Paint.  (If anyone here has some technical  
> skill on
> Windows and would like to help, let me know!)
>
> --
> -bill!
> Sent from my computer
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA
> is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart  
> your
> developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and  
> stay
> ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now!
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference
> _______________________________________________
> Tuxpaint-users mailing list
> Tuxpaint-users@...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/tuxpaint-users

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[John Popplewell]

On Thu, Oct 08, 2009 at 09:06:52AM -0700, Bill Kendrick wrote:
>
><snip!>
> I've also asked around for a stop-gap solution: a way for this school to,
> on Windows, extract the JPEGs from inside their KPXs files and convert
> them to PNGs for Tux Paint.  (If anyone here has some technical skill on
> Windows and would like to help, let me know!)
>

Hi,

Oh, go on then :-) Send them to me with any info you've gleaned about
the format and I'll have a crack at it. I've recently been fiddling with
saving PNG files out on Windows and I'm sure I can peek at some JPEG
loading code from somewhere.

Would a command-line program that converted all *.kpx files in a
directory be sufficient?

cheers,
John
PS I'd bundle the source and any associated files for it, with it


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On Thu, Oct 08, 2009 at 06:00:23PM +0100, John Popplewell wrote:
> Oh, go on then :-) Send them to me with any info you've gleaned about
> the format and I'll have a crack at it. I've recently been fiddling with
> saving PNG files out on Windows and I'm sure I can peek at some JPEG
> loading code from somewhere.

I posted about it to the 'tuxpaint-devel' mailing list yesterday, but
it pretty much looks like:

  * 60 bytes of header junk that can be thrown away
    (looks like Apple Mac OS resource fork stuff)
  * a JPEG image
  * more stuff (e.g., a thumbnail, also as a JPEG) that can safely thrown away

So I just remove the first 60 bytes, loaded the file as a JPEG, and saved
it back out as a PNG.  (Or, in the case of what I'm doing internally in
Tux Paint now, to support KPX files: I simply pass the JPEG along to the
image-loading routines, and it loads it as a Starter image!)


> Would a command-line program that converted all *.kpx files in a
> directory be sufficient?

I believe so!  I think, for this school at least, they'd be happy enough
with a one-time conversion, and then they can move to Tux Paint.


> PS I'd bundle the source and any associated files for it, with it

That'd be awesome.  Thanks!

-bill!

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On Thu, Oct 08, 2009 at 12:17:57PM -0400, Gloria Taylor Weinberg wrote:
> Bill, you are a fine human being.

As is John Popplewell! :)  He whipped together an app for Windows
(well, it's a DOS program) that converts KPX to PNG.

I've placed it, along with my shell script for Linux users, here:

  ftp://ftp.tuxpaint.org/unix/x/tuxpaint/kpx2png/

-bill!

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