Re: PySol...

[Shlomi Fish <shlomif iglu org il>]

Hi Timothy,

On Wednesday 23 Feb 2011 21:57:10 Timothy S. Nelson wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Feb 2011, Shlomi Fish wrote:
> > Now, I've been using PySol for many years, being a long time enthusiast
> > of Freecell back from when it was the demo Win32 program for Win32s on
> > Windows 3.11 (don't know if anyone still remembers it) and also
> > eventually having
> 
>  	I remember that, I think.

:-). But I suppose a lot of people no longer do, though it is believed that 
Microsoft Windows FreeCell ( 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeCell_%28Windows%29 ) is still the most 
commonly used implementation of Freecell, and most people are unaware of the 
rich online culture surrounding it, like that of 
http://solitairelaboratory.com/fcfaq.html and http://fc-solve.berlios.de/ . It 
is also possible that Freecell is now on the decline after Microsoft started 
providing some other challenging games in Windows XP besides the original 4 
included in Windows 95/98 .

> 
> > that caused a flurry of online forks, including UltraSol which ended up
> 
> > culminating with PySolFC:
>  	...which is what I'm using.
> 

Yes, no one in their right mind should use a different PySolFC implementation.

> > talked with prefer KDE's KPatience for various reasons (like better
> > graphics and animations due to the SVG cards), but I still prefer
> > PySolFC.
> 
>  	I actually use both, depending on what I want.  For example, some
> games I like slightly modified versions of, so I use Aisleriot for those,
> because I prefer Scheme over Python, for the most part.  So if I feel like
> beautiful cards, or a new game, then I use PySolFC with the Joan d'Arc
> cards. But if I prefer fast play or one of my modified games (this is
> usually the case), then I use Aisleriot.

Recent versions of PySolFC have a Solitaire wizard inspired by that of "Pretty 
Good Solitaire" which can generate such games. Scheme is nice and all, but you 
can also get used to Python, which is very easy to learn (and, for the record, 
I still prefer Perl 5 and use it for most stuff I write). An experienced Perl 
programmer told me that back when he did not know Python, except for the fact 
that it used scoping for indentation, he once saw some Python code he needed 
to tweak, and after taking a brief look, was able to understand it and change 
it immediately (and it ended up working after some trial and error).

> 
> > So you could take a look there to incorporate some code into AisleRiot.
> 
>  	What I'd suggest is:
> 
> -	Could we merge the game documentation for Aisleriot/KPatience/PySolFC 
?
>  	(I'm referring here to the documentation for individual games, such as
>  	Klondike, rather than the overall program documentation)

That would be nice. Note that last time I checked, some of the PySolFC 
documentation just said something like "Like FreeCell, only sequences are 
built by suit." (= Baker's Game), etc. which is useful for a Quick 
introduction for people who know Freecell, but isn't very useful for people 
who play a random game without knowing most Solitaire variants.

KPatience has much fewer games (only about 12) than either PySolFC or 
AisleRiot and the logic there is written in C++ (though one may provide 
kdebindings bindings for them). Anyway, since the documentation for all three 
games is free-as-in-freedom (though possibly under different, incompatible, 
licences), we may be able to concentrate everything in one place, or perhaps 
even reuse some of the documentation from 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solitaire_card_games .

> -	Talk to them, and work out an API that everyone could live with, and
>  	then converge towards that (this could include Mahjong Solitaire as
>  	well as Aisleriot).  Then their Python code and our Scheme code could
>  	make the same calls.
> 
>  	Unfortunately, I've just started studies again, so it might have to
> wait for some holidays for me.
> 

Well, a generic, cross-programming-language API for Solitaire seem like it 
would be quite complex. If you can write something like that for C or C++, 
that would still be nice. I've been playing with idea of writing the core 
PySolFC code in C/C++ with an SDL backend which may also hopefully allow some 
really smooth animations like in the proprietary Eric Ultimate Solitaire game, 
which I recall were very nice. Naturally, merging or converging all three of 
KPatience, AisleRiot and PySolFC would be a massive undertaking and will also 
get you into a political and sociological problems.

> > Larry Wall gets the colon.
> 
>  	«»
> 
>  	:)
> 

Yes, that's just one of my random quotes at the E-mail signature block which I 
decided to randomise now out of a fortune file. Here are the rest of the Larry 
Wall "facts":

http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/facts/Larry-Wall/

Someone I know who did not know Perl very well, did not understand any of 
them, though, so YMMV. There's my own invented Chuck Norris factoid below.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

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Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
My Aphorisms - http://www.shlomifish.org/humour.html

Chuck Norris is the greatest man in history. He killed all the great men who
could ever pose a competition.

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