Re: Aisleriot ideas

[Francisco Yuste <fran yuste com>]

Hi, Christian and Tim.

El mié, 08-12-2010 a las 11:34 +1100, Timothy S. Nelson escribió:
> On Wed, 8 Dec 2010, Christian Persch wrote:
> 
> > Hi;
> >
> > Am Mon, 6 Dec 2010 13:40:10 +1100 (EST)
> > schrieb "Timothy S. Nelson" <wayland wayland id au>:
> >>  	Hi all.  I've got some ideas about Aisleriot, and I wanted
> >> to put them out there and see what people think.
> >>
> >>  	Most of these ideas are aiming to achieve one of the
> >> following:
> >> -	Make it easier for people to add new games without having to
> >> know as much
> >> -	Make it easier for people to find Solitaire games that they
> >> like
> >>
> >> A.	Move the XML out of window.c
> >>
> >>  	In window.c lines 2326-2458 contain an XML file.  It has
> >> preprocessing data in it.  I think it would be nice to have this as a
> >> separate file.  The pre-processing statements could be left in, and
> >> it could be preprocessed with "gcc -E".
> >
> > It could be done that way, but setting up extra Makefile rules vs. just
> > including it verbatim in the code didn't seem worthwhile. (Note that to
> > add new games, it's not necessary to change this xml.)
> 
>  	Yes, I realise that.  I guess I just had my idea about XML, and then 
> saw more xml, and thought "Oh, we could pull them both out".
> >> B.	Have an XML file for data associated with each game
> >>
> >>  	It could include data like:
> >> - The name of the game (allows punctuation, etc)
> >> - The Category/Subcategory of the game (is it like Klondike?
> >> FreeCell? Spider?)
> >> - The number of decks (single/double deck)
> >> - The type of deck (ie. have some cards been removed?

I fully agree with this feature. 
As Scheme coder, with regard to rentoy project[1], I'm strongly
interested on having the option to choose any Spanish deck[2]. 

I don't have any problem on replacing my own deck[3], that by the way
doesn't work with the version of aisleriot in Ubuntu Maverick.

> >> - The number of redeals

If you meant to remove every card on the board and deal them again, I
already manage this inside my scheme code, 

> >
> > I'd also add a rough estimate how difficult the game is.
> 
>  	Good idea :).
> 

As user, it wouldn't help me so much. I would prefer much more to
install a package with difficult aisleriot games instead.
[...]
> >> C.	Reorganise filesystem by game
> >>
> >>  	I wonder if it wouldn't be useful to have a directory called
> >> "games" that contains a directory for each game, and each game's
> >> files there.  So you'd end up with things like:
> >>
> >> games/gaps/rules.scm
> >> games/gaps/C/data.xml
> >> games/gaps/C/help.xml
> >> games/backbone/rules.scm
> >> games/backbone/C/data.xml
> >> games/backbone/C/help.xml
> >>
> >>  	I'm not sure I've understood the internationalisation stuff
> >> well enough to have done that properly.  But this should enable the
> >> translation of individual games, and the like.
> >
> > I don't think that's necessary (and actually not easy to do without
> > creating more work for translators). Games are already
> > translatable, and the game help text is also translatable. And the
> > proposed new xml (or keyfile) data would just be installed in another
> > directory, and translated trough the usual means.
> >

As aisleriot game developer (and possible package maintainer), I would
like to make work my program just by copying files, without editing the
common framework files of aisleriot. 

> >> D.	More .desktop files.
> >>
> >>  	Might it be useful to have the "Aisleriot Solitaire" item on
> >> the Gnome menus be a submenu instead, and then list all the Solitaire
> >> games (categorised, of course) directly on the Gnome menus?
> >
> > Not opposed to that, but not really convinced either. I think you
> > should put that idea to the gnome-shell design team, since these menus
> > are their area. (It'll be easy to implement for us, in the event that
> > they like the idea.)
> 
>  	I'm not particularly convinced either way either -- just thought I'd 
> mention it :).
> 

I think that package maintainer can easily include her own .desktop.

> >>  	How would it be to display the score in the "end of game"
> >> box?  And also say what the maximum possible score is, so that people
> >> know how they did?
> >
> > The end-of-game dialogue is certainly due for a makeover, see e.g. bug
> > #324613; the blocking issue here again is after having a good UI design,
> > implementing it is easy.
> >
> > About the score issue I'm actually not sure that scores and meaningful
> > in aisleriot (e.g. spider always finishes with the same score on
> > success), but if the design team thinks we should put more emphasis on
> > scoring, that could certainly be done.
> >
> > So to summarise, there is a need to come up with an UI design;
> > non-coders can help with that, and by providing the game data.
> 
>  	I'm probably not the best UI designer.  But as a not-very-UI designer, 
> I'd tend to approach it from an incremental point of view -- put out 
> something, and improve as we go.

I used the status bar in 2005 to show the current scores. Now I'm
continuing my work in [3]. I will try to provide a better English
support.

[1] http://forja.guadalinex.org/svn/rentoy/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deck_%28cards%29
[3]
http://forja.guadalinex.org/frs/download.php/105/screenshot_rentoy.jpg


PS: Please, be careful with the Makefile. It erases a help directory in
order to install rentoy help for 'es' localization.