PictureLogic 7.1 is a puzzle program for the Palm Computing® platform. A puzzle solver, a tutorial, and puzzle creation and editing features are included. (These puzzles are also known as paint by number puzzles, nonograms, or picross puzzles.) Compatible with Palm OS 2.0 +, with a PalmPilot Professional, Palm III, Palm IIIe, Palm IIIx, Palm V, Palm Vx, Palm VII, Palm VIIx, PalmIIIxe, PalmIIIc, and Palm m100. The following information is also at my Web site: http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~cfkdw/pictlogi.html Get your registered version ($12) from Pilotgear at http://store.yahoo.com/pilotgearsw/keithwolcott.html Pilotgear will immediately give you the download link for the registered version. The unregistered version can only use the original puzzle collection and cannot import puzzles from MemoPad. If you are reading this with Notepad, select "WordWrap" from the Edit menu. A Japanese translation, ReadMe-j.txt, of this ReadMe (although not as up-to-date) is included in the zip file. ********************************************************************* Installation: There is no need to delete previous versions of PictureLogic. Install PictLogi.prc, PLSolver.prc (you only need to install these two files if you are upgrading), PLTutorial.pdb, PLSolver.prc and at least the puzzle collection, (PL)Collection1.pdb. If you do not wish to use PLSolver to solve puzzles or to test your logic on rows and columns, there is no need to install PLSolver.prc. The unregistered version of PictureLogic can only use the puzzles in Collection1. ********************************************************************* Register: Get your registered version ($12) from Palmgear at http://store.yahoo.com/pilotgearsw/keithwolcott.html Pilotgear will immediately give you the registered version. Or Phone: (800) 741-9070 Fax: (817) 640-6614 -------------------------------------- Or mail a check (US $12) directly to Keith Wolcott 1041 Westgate Dr. Charleston, IL 61920 (Please include your email address) ********************************************************************* New in PictureLogic 7.1: --An "Automatic error checking" preference has been added. If you have found yourself regularly using "Check" to be sure that you haven't made a mistake, turn on Automatic error checking so that you can be alerted if you have tapped an incorrect square. --The menu item "Check" has been improved so that if there is a mistake, you have the option of revealing a mistaken square, just revealing the row or column which contains the mistake, or revealing nothing. --The menu item "Hint" has been improved so that you have the option of revealing a square or just revealing a row or column in which it is possible to deduce some information. --Now compatible with Lefty and LeftHack. ********************************************************************* How to play: Use the numbers to create a picture. The numbers on each row tell you the length of the blocks which are filled in, but not how many spaces are between them. For example, 2 4, beside a row means that starting at the left there are possibly some spaces, then 2 consecutive squares filled in, then at least one space and then 4 consecutive squares filled in. The columns work the same way. The goal is to fill in the picture to match the numbers. Use logic to solve these puzzles rather than guessing. For example, if there is a 7 in a row of 10, the center 4 squares must be filled in. Select Puzzle Tutor, from the PictureLogic menu and/or see the web site for more information. ********************************************************************* ********************************************************************* PictureLogic Features: --Color for the PalmIIIc. --Scrollbars with board sizes of up to 25 by 25. The numbers for the puzzle appear on all sides of the puzzle. Menu option View allows viewing the entire picture at once. --Over 400 puzzles are available at the Shared Puzzle Collection page at my web site. --A puzzle tutor which describes the rules of play and includes 21 one-row puzzles with hints, can be used to develop and hone your PictureLogic puzzling skills. --Create your own puzzles. --Create your own puzzle collections. Full database handling capability. View the list of puzzles in a collection, start a new puzzle collection, rename a collection, or delete a collection. Puzzle collections are backed up when you hotsync, so that we can share puzzle collections. --Input the numbers for a puzzle into MemoPad and then open it with PictureLogic. This feature gives us access to many puzzles from other sources. --Hint, Check solution (It flashes the square of the first mistake it finds.) and show solution. --Drag the stylus to draw. --Tap on a square to cycle between a filled in square, a dot (when you deduce the square is not filled in), and clear. --Four pen types. (The current pen is shown in the upper left of the screen. The Up/down hardware buttons cycle through the pen types.) You can use the additional pens to experiment with possible solutions. The extra pens really help on tough puzzles such as "Eagle". I like to use the black pen for cells that I know are filled in and the gray pen for guesses. I use the X pen to mark the beginning of a new attempt so that I don't forget where I started. --Mark off numbers. When the position of the cells for a number are determined, you may tap on the number to invert it (white to black). Tap again to return to normal. Clearing a pen type also clears any numbers that were marked off while the pen was active. Clear All, clears all marked off numbers. --Clear current pen type by tapping C. --Clear All. --Clear all dots. When you finish a puzzle you can view the picture without dots. --Redraw the puzzle with the current pen. When you find that a guess with a second pen is correct you can redraw the picture with one pen. --Save work in progress by choosing "Save Work in Progress" from the menu. Use "Open Work in Progress" to recover your previous position. --Next and Random allow you to work a puzzle without seeing the name of the puzzle. Random can choose from among all puzzle collections, from the current category of a puzzle collection and from among checked or unchecked puzzles. --Preferences screen gives the choice of: 1) Restriction of each pen so that it cannot change the markings of any of the other pens. (With this option on, you won't accidentally change other pen markings.) 2) While dragging, restrict to horizontal or vertical lines. A large puzzle in view mode has fairly small squares which can make it hard to draw a horizontal line without getting off a bit. This feature makes it easy. 3) While dragging, don't let dots overwrite filled squares and vice-versa. Once you have found the filled squares in a row, this makes it easy to fill in the remaining dots. Just drag them across the entire row. 4) Show lengths. As you drag to fill squares, this feature shows the length of the filled squares. The vertical dimension is shown in the upper right and the horizontal dimension is shown in the lower left. These are only shown if there is space on the board to display them. In View mode they can always be shown. In ViewOff mode, they are shown if there are scroll bars. 5) Allow marking off numbers. 6) Intelligent scrolling. Instead of scrolling one row at the time, the scroll arrows move the puzzle to the next major division. 7) Allow the program to automatically check off a puzzle when you select "Check Solution" and the puzzle is correct. 8) No scrolling mode. If you don't like doing puzzles with scrolling and prefer the enhanced View mode, check this feature and all puzzles that require scrolling will be opened in View mode. 9) A left-handed option moves the scroll bars to the left side of the screen and reverses the View mode. 10) Automatic error checking. If you have found yourself regularly using "Check" to be sure that you haven't made a mistake, turn on Automatic error checking so that you can be alerted if you have tapped an incorrect square. ********************************************************************* PLSolver 7.0 features: This program is useful for creating new puzzles and for testing your logical skills. (PLSolver.prc is included in the PictureLogic zip file) --PLSolver (PictureLogic Solver) is provided as a separate program so that you don't necessarily have to install it. Its size is about 24 kB. --PictureLogic has menu options, Solve a row, Solve a column, and Solve, which are used to start PLSolver. To use these menu options you must have PLSolver.prc installed. --The Solve menu option will solve any puzzle but may take some time. Most puzzles solve in a few seconds and appear on the screen as they are solved. The hardest puzzles are in the Fujiwara collection. Number 12 is the hardest one of these and PLSolver takes a little over 3 minutes to both find a solution and check that it is the only solution. Any cell that the PLSolver deduces for sure is drawn with the black pen and any trial and error guess is drawn with the gray pen. Thus, as PLSolver works, you can see what is deduced, and which trial and error cases are being attempted. --The Solve a row feature is useful for getting better at solving the puzzles. When you have deduced as much as you can on a row, choose Solve a row, and see if it deduces anything further. If not, you are doing great. If it does, think about how you could have deduced the extra information. Remark: Solve a row and Solve a column always use the black pen, so if you use one of the other pens it is easy to see any changes. --If you create your own puzzles you can quickly test them with PLSolver. It will tell you if there is more than one solution or if the solution is unique. It will also indicate if solving requires a deeper analysis than just looking at rows and columns individually. If a puzzle can be solved by just looking at rows and columns individually, PLSolver indicates how many times all rows and columns are solved until finished. The larger this number is, the more difficult the puzzle tends to be. ********************************************************************* ********************************************************************* How to input the numbers for a puzzle into MemoPad: Now you can input the numbers for a puzzle into MemoPad and then open it in PictureLogic by selecting a new menu option "MemoPad Puzzles". Here's how to do it. Input puzzle files of the following form. (PL)Example Puzzle 5,7 4,1 4 4 4 4,1 1,1,1 1,1,1 1,1,1 5 1,1 1,1 2,2 The first line is the title. The first 4 characters must be "(PL)". The remaining part of the title can have any length and consist of any characters and/or numbers. The 5,7 above are the number of rows of data and the number of columns of data. (This puzzle is 5 high by 7 wide.) The row data is then listed with each row on a different line (Starting at the top row from left to right). Then the column data is listed with each column on a different line (Starting at the leftmost column read from top to bottom). Instead of commas separating the numbers you may separate them with any ascii character that you wish (just not 0-9). I like to use blanks when entering on the Pilot since it is just one stroke rather than two for a comma. Extra lines, characters(not 0-9), or blanks may be inserted any place that you wish. As in the example, I like to put two lines between the row data and the column data, and put an extra line for every five lines of data to make it easier to read. Cut and paste the above example to MemoPad on your desktop, hotsync to get it on your Pilot, and select MemoPad puzzles to play it. Remark: Show Solution and Hint are not available for MemoPad puzzles since no solution is saved. Work the puzzle (or use PLSolver to solve it) and save it in a puzzle collection in order to get these features. ********************************************************************* Legal Stuff: This software and the puzzle collections are copyrighted (©1998) by Keith D. Wolcott. Furthermore, I make no warranty with respect to the quality of this software, nor do I warrant that its operation will be error-free. The author claims no liability for data loss or any other problems caused directly or indirectly by use of this application. Keith Wolcott 1041 Westgate Dr. Charleston, IL 61920 email: cfkdw@eiu.edu web site: http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~cfkdw/pictlogi.html Thank you.