Re: GNOME Mastermind 0.3 string freeze (fwd)

[Filippo Argiolas <filippo argiolas gmail com>]

Il giorno mer, 23/05/2007 alle 23.04 +0100, Alan Horkan ha scritto:
> On Wed, 23 May 2007, [ISO-8859-1] Andreas Rsdal wrote:
> 
> > Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 21:04:06 +0200 (CEST)
> > From: "[ISO-8859-1] Andreas Rsdal" <andreasr gnome org>
> > To: Filippo Argiolas <filippo argiolas gmail com>
> > Cc: games-list gnome org
> > Subject: Re: GNOME Mastermind 0.3 string freeze (fwd)
> >
> > I'm forwarding this to the gnome-games mailing list to see that others
> > think about gnome-mastermind. Take a look at the bugzilla link for my
> > opinion.

Hi, I'm the author of the game. First of all thanks for this forward :P.
I have to say that I didn't propose my game for gnome-games yet for many
reasons, much of whom are the same that you list here :)
So lets answer to this points:

> The quit button on the toolbar would have to go for starters.  (Quit is a
> destructive action you cannot easily get back from and something you dont
> want to do accidently and we have the window decoration for that.  Or if
> you don't like that then the simpler reason is none of the other gnome
> games do it that way.)

Did you take a look at the game on the svn? I'm going to release soon
the new version so critics about the old one are not so useful :). 
In the new release the quit button on the toolbar has been removed and
replaced with undo-redo buttons.

> Getting more translations and documentation would certainly be a good
> start towards getting the game included in future.

Translation number is growing! There is also a simple but pretty
complete documentation, but at the moment it's translated only in french
and italian.

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastermind_(board_game)
> The game is licensed to Hasbro.  Would we get stuck by the usual issues of
> naming and copyrights if we held on to the name "Gnome Mastermind"?  I
> would hope the developers would - and all Gnome developers - have cleanly
> abstracted out the name so that it could be changed without any messing.

I've talked so much times with everyone about this point. 
I'm ready to change name at any time if Hasbro or other trademark holder
would tell me to do it. At the moment I've chosen this name to easily
gain popularity. I don't think that my game is a competitor of the board
game in any way so I don't think that hasbro would feel damaged by it
but, as i said, if it would, I'm ready to change it :P

> Themes use colour but no texture or shape which makes it not very friendly
> for users with visual difficulties.

It's not so difficult to add an accessible theme with for example
numbers instead of colors. So this is a pretty simple to solve issue.
I've already asked to a friend of mine that designed the icon to draw
this theme but he's a bit busy at the moment.

> "If you look at the code please don't care too much about style issues and
> some portion redundancy: it's still an early version so it still needs
> some love ;)"
> The author says the program needs further code review.  This should
> probably be addressed before proposing the game for inclusion in Gnome.
> Although I'm confident the author wants to continue to maintain his
> software it has happened many times before - and the reason why other
> programs had to be removed from Gnome Games - that he might be unable to
> do that through no fault of his own.

That's the main reason because I didn't proposed me for an inclusion yet
(if you look at bugzilla I'm not the author of the post).
At the moment the code is not intended to be easily to understand by any
other than me :P. Many variable names are not so friendly, maybe there
are some portions that could result difficult to read, etc.
Most style issues has been solved but the code still needs a further
review to be ready for a "collaborative" work.

At the moment I'm intentioned to maintain the game at least until it'll
become quite stable and I'll have no more ideas for features :)

> Good looking program though, may well earn a place in Gnome Games at some
> later date.

Thanks, I agree that the game still have to grow to enter gnome games,
but if you want I'll try to make it more contributor friendly for the
0.4 release. 
But what do you think about asking for a svn account at gnome svn on my
own to give to translators and documenters a more friendly platform?

Thanks again for considering my little game

Regards,
Filippo


PS. But what would happen if it will be included (even in -extra-data)?
Will i lose the role of main maintainer? I'd like to maintain a decision
power over my app, will I do?


-- 
Filippo Argiolas
Jabber: pippolino anche no
Irc: fargiolas (Freenode, GIMPNet)
Web: http://www.autistici.org/gnome-mastermind