PDA Software Library/pdasoftwarelib.iso/PILOT/APPS/CROSSBOW/README.TXT

Text File | 1996-11-07 | 17.5 KB | 513 lines

Welcome to CrossBow 1.03
------------------------

CrossBow allows you to display and fill in crosswords on
your Pilot.

This is the fourth non-beta release!  Thanks to all the people who
played with the various betas.

I was quite surprised how few bug reports people have passed on
to me; I hope this is an indication of the quality of the software,
rather than a lack of interest :-).

CrossBow is now shareware.  If you really like it and feel you
get something out of it, then please send $5 (or whatever you
think the program is worth) in your local currency to one of the
following addresses ...

    In the USA                In Australia
    ----------                ------------

    Jeannine Hammersley        Harry Ohlsen
    3852 Perie Lane,            GPO Box 4281,
    San Jose, CA,            Sydney, NSW
    95132                    2001


Changes in Version 1.03
-----------------------

I've fixed a bug that was pointed out by Sean Goldin. If you used
the page up/down keys to move through clues, your changes to other
clues weren't kept.

Also, Steve Orich preferred dashes to '?' for blank spots and
pointed out that my change to leave the answer field in the clues
form blank if you had not entered anything for a clue made it hard
to tell how many squares there were in the separate parts of multi-
part answers.

I've changed it back to always displaying something for each square.

There is now an entry in the Options menu to toggle between dashes
and '?'.  The default is '?', of course :-).

I've been hacking away a bit, but not getting very far with other
features. I think I'm going to make this the last release for a
while and carry on with something else.

Bugs will be fixed, of course, as they are pointed out to me.

If anyone has specific ideas or requests, feel free to drop me a
line.


Possibilities for Version 1.04
------------------------------

I still haven't put in a real about box yet; that will happen in one
of the next few versions.

I still want to allow hypertext-style jumping to related clues,
to aid in solving cryptics. At the moment, this looks like it will
only be for my own use, since I've heard nothing from anyone else
re this feature. Hence, I'm not rushing to get it in.

I've written some code to generate anagrams, but have decided that
it's not worth installing it into CrossBow, because without an
on-line dictionary the user would have to look through far too many
possibilities.

If anyone out there would particularly like this feature, send me
some mail and I'll re-evaluate my decision.

There are still the bugs to do with not re-drawing the form correctly
when: 1) the applications display is opened and closed; and 2) the
keyboard is opened and closed in the clues form.

I've tried fairly hard to sort those out, but to no avail.  For the
time being, I've decided to ignore them. If anyone can suggest how
to fix them, please let me know.

Let me know if you find any other bugs, or have suggestions for
improvements.


Changes In Version 1.02
-----------------------

Whoops!  A minor bug fix. When I replaced the timestamp,
that screwed up jumping back to the previous crossword.

Version 1.02 sorts that out.  My apologies to anyone who
was bitten by 1.01 !!


Changes in Version 1.01
-----------------------

The timestamp is back!  However, you'll only see it if you
look at a crossword inside memopad.  The reason it's back
is that now the displayed list of crosswords is sorted so
that the most recently accessed crosswords appear first.
This may be of no value to anyone else, but I tend to keep
working on crosswords until I get them out, or get really
stuck!  At the moment, I have about 20 I'm attacking, so
having them sorted is handy.

One person said they'd prefer to have the clues form stay
up, irrespective of whether you lift the cursor in the "Show
Clues" area.  There is now a toggle under the Options menu.

When you enter the last character of an answer, the cursor
now goes into virtual space, so that backspacing works as
you would expect.  I used to do this, but when you were at
an edge, the direction marker ended up drawing outside the
crossword. I've now fixed that, so this feature is back in.


Changes Since 0.13
------------------

This version provides all the features I wanted when I first
started work on CrossBow.  Therefore, I've decided it should
be the first non-beta release !!

There have been a number of minor fixes, and one new feature
has been added.

The crossword is now always stored, irrespective of whether
you have modified the text.  This is so that the current
across and down clue numbers in the clues form are remembered
across invocations. The amount of time it takes to store
the crossword is quite small, so I don't think this is a
problem.

Now, if you are sitting in the clues form, but haven't
actually modified the crossword, you will still be returned
to the correct place the next time you run CrossBow.

I've removed the timestamp, since it was originally there
only to differentiate between copies of the same crossword,
when I was creating a new memo for each save of the crossword.
That was fixed in beta 0.10, so I've decided the timestamp is
no longer necessary.  If anyone can see a reason for having
it, please let me know.

Finally, the battery voltage is displayed at the bottom left
of the screen. This is not to suggest that I think CrossBow
will drain your battery! However, I'd like to think that people
are going to spend a lot of time using it to solve their
crosswords :-).


Changes Since 0.12
-----------------------

The UI has been cleaned up significantly.

When you start CrossBow it returns to where it was last time.

"Edit Grid" has been made a menu item, since it won't often
be used.

When you bring up the clues form, the "Show Clues" area
changes to "Hide Clues" and "Done" disappears, since it is
not relevant in this mode.

There are menu options to specify the standard or bold font.

There is a menu option to display the title of the crossword
you are working on.


Changes Since 0.11
------------------

You are no longer queried whether to save the crossword
when you press "Done".  It is automatically saved for
you if anything has changed.

I've given this a quick test, but not an exhaustive one,
so let me know if you think this mechanism isn't working.


Changes Since 0.10
------------------

Well, it took some careful reading of the documentation, and a
little experimentation, but CrossBow now replaces the current
memo when you save, rather than creating a new one.

The timestamp has also been changed to include the day of the
week.


Changes Since 0.06
------------------

There is now a converter for the USA Today puzzle, which is
easily accessible to all you people in the US via ...

    http://www.usatoday.com/life/puzzles/puzzle.htm

There is a link there to today's crossword and also one to
the index of crosswords for the last month.

All of the USA Today crosswords for October are contained in
the file ...

    http://wr.com.au/harryo/crossbow/usatoday.zip

The separate ".txt" files for each day are in  ...

    http://wr.com.au/harryo/crossbow/usatoday/

Now, it's back to hacking CrossBow itself.  Stay tuned for a
new version in the next day or so ...

Note that, unlike the browser helper application, the answers
are not included in these crosswords.  I'll do that at some
later stage ...


Changes Since 0.05
------------------

I've done some more cleaning up of the re-drawing, and done a
general clean-up up of the code.

There are now converters for The Times crossword that takes
the HTML from the crossword page and turns it into a memo
in the correct format for CrossBow.

The converter is at ...

    http://wr.com.au/harryo/crossbow/times.exe

It's a DOS command-line program. You give it a file with an
extension of ".html" and it generates one with the same name,
but an extension of ".txt".

I have provided a set of crosswords, mainly cryptic at the
moment, in the same directory as CrossBow.  There are a number
of separate zip files, each with one type of crossword ...

    http://wr.com.au/harryo/crossbow/smh.zip
    http://wr.com.au/harryo/crossbow/times.zip
    http://wr.com.au/harryo/crossbow/telegrph.zip
    http://wr.com.au/harryo/crossbow/suntimes.zip

SMH.ZIP contains one quick crossword and one cryptic.  All the
others are cryptics, I'm afraid.

If anyone out there is creating CrossBow-formatted crosswords,
I'd like to hear about it.  You can either mail them to me,
or make them available and I'll let people know where they
are.

I intend to set up a web page sometime soon that is kept
up-to-date with new crosswords, hopefully with at least one
new quick crossword and one new cryptic each day.

For the time being, there are separate directories containing
".txt" files for the different kinds of crosswords ...

    http://wr.com.au/harryo/crossbow/smh/
    http://wr.com.au/harryo/crossbow/times/
    http://wr.com.au/harryo/crossbow/telegrph/
    http://wr.com.au/harryo/crossbow/suntimes/

As I say, most of these are cryptic.


Changes Since 0.04
------------------

Finally, CrossBow has an icon!  Tim Warner kindly created
one for me, for which I thank him.  As it turned out, I
didn't use that one, because it was a .BMP file and I had
no idea how to get it into the resources. Hence, I ended
up drawing my own. I liked Tim's better and will attempt
to use it later, once I work out how to do so.

In the clues form, the up and down hardware keys perform
the same operation the Next and Prev buttons used to.  The
buttons will be replaced at some later time by more useful
functions. This idea came from Steve Orich. As I said to
him, I'm amazed how stupid I can be sometimes. I'd been
wanting to regain some screen real estate to put on some
other features in the clues form, but had not thought of
the obvious!

I've made the reading of clues a little more robust, so
they don't have to be on a single line in the memo. This
seems to work OK, but let me know if you find any problems
with the display of clues.

A number of problems with unnecessary drawing of grid
squares and text have been corrected.  There is still one
such problem: if you use the pop-up keyboard in the clues
form, the grid is not re-drawn.

I assume the keyboard form only saves the contents of the
currently active form. Since the grid is not active at
the time the keyboard is drawn, it doesn't get refreshed
when the keyboard disappears.

I would appreciate it if someone out there who knows more
about this would tell me assumptions are correct, in case
I'm doing something stupid that's causing this problem.

In any case, I'll try to sort that out in the next
version.


Plans for 0.06
--------------

I intend to allow hypertext-style jumps from one clue to
another, for use in cryptic crosswords, where clues often
refer to each other.

I'd also like to add a facility for generating anagrams,
which are useful in cryptics.

I intend to use the two buttons that have been freed up by
using the page up/down hardware buttons.

I'm not sure yet how the interface should work. If anyone
has an idea, please let me know at [e-mail],
below.

If possible, I'll change the startup so that CrossBow goes
back to the current crossword if you were in one when you
swapped applications.

I still want to clean up the saving of crosswords, so that
they go back into the same memo, rather than creating a
new one each time.  However, I have to do a bit of research
before I can do that.

If anyone has any other ideas for features they'd like added,
or any kind of clean-up re the user interface or anything else,
let me know.

That's a big list, so some of them may end up in later
versions.  I intend to release new versions as I quickly as
possible, so people can (hopefully) enjoy the program more
and to get feedback as I make changes, in case people think
I'm going in the wrong direction.


Changes Since 0.03
------------------

The "Show only incomplete clues" checkbox's value is
remembered when the clues form is closed.

The characters no longer "bleed" over the top and
bottom of squares.

A number of the characters had strange alignment, due
to the Pilot using a proportional font. I've moved
some of them horizontally so they are more or less
centred in the squares.


Changes Since 0.02
------------------

Version 0.3 fixes a couple of bugs in the clues dialog box
and adds a checkbox to allow you to specify that you only
want to see clues for which you have not entered an answer.


Installing CrossBow
-------------------

Install the program into your pilot in the normal way (ie, by
running the application installer and then doing a HotSync).


Installing Crosswords
---------------------

In order to make it easy for anyone else to set up crosswords
they want to work on, CrossBow simply reads any memos it finds
in the category "Crosswords".

The format of each such memo is as follows (you might want to
take a look at one of the examples to see what I'm talking about) ...

    Title

    Grid
    BWBWBWBWBWBWBWB
    WWBBWBBWBWBWBBW
    etc.

    Across
    1 This is the clue for 1 across (5)
    3 This is the clue for 3 across (2,4)

    Down
    2 This is the clue for 2 down (6,3)
    4 This is the clue for 4 down (12)

Each clue should be on a single line (ie, let the memo pad
part of Pilot Desktop do any line-wrapping for you, don't type
any extra carriage returns ... this is just for now;  I intend
to handle multiple lines later).

Again, have a look at one of the samples to see what the format
is like.  You should just cut/paste the text of the sample
into a memo in Pilot Desktop, and put it in the category
"Crosswords".


Using CrossBow's Interface
--------------------------

When you start CrossBow, it displays a list of all the crosswords
it finds in the "Crosswords" memo pad category.  Clicking on one
gets you into that crossword.

Assuming there is nothing horribly wrong with your crossword's
definition, you should see what looks like a real crossword grid,
with black and white squares.

Clicking on a square allows you to write in it using Graffiti.  If
you look very carefully, you should see two small dots either to the
right of the square, or at the bottom of the square. The former says
you are writing across, the latter means down.  I intend to make this
better later, by making the clue you have clicked on a different gray
scale, but I'm waiting on Ed to get back to me on how he achieved
this in his demo. Stay tuned.

At the bottom of the sceen, there are three areas titled (1) "Edit Grid",
(2) "Show Clues" and (3) "Done".

(1) toggles between entering answers and editing the grid. If the little
square is filled, then clicking on squares changes their colour, otherwise
it just marks where you want to enter your answers.

(2) displays the clue associated with the current position of the cursor.
If you just click on (2) the clue appears until you lift the pen. However,
if you click and then drag the pen upwards (kind of similar to getting
the keyboard to appear using Graffiti) the clue box stays until you
click in (2) again.  While it is displayed, you can navigate through
the clues using the four buttons.  You can also enter text into the
answer field and it should (although I've had a couple of bugs in this
area) appear in the grid when you later exit the clue box.

(3) is used to finish working on a crossword.  If you answer "yes" to
the question that is asked, you will get a new memo created (I'm
working on it being an update, rather than a new memo) containing
 the current state of the grid.  If you say no, then any changes you
have made will be discarded.

Also, if you leave CrossBow by going to another application, the
current contents are saved to a new memo.

As I say, I have yet to work out how to replace the current memo,
so what I've done in the meantime is to make the title each new
crossword memo have a timestamp, so you can tell which one is
the latest.

Anyway, please let me know of any bugs you find, and any suggestions
for improvements, either to the user interface or just generally.

I intend to do some heavy work on CrossBow for the next week or
so, until I sort out all the glitches.

One thing to note is that the smallest font is still slightly too
big for a 15 X 15 grid (which is the only thing you can have at the
moment, but will change later), so when text is entered it bleeds
off the top and bottom of each square slightly.

I intend to write a font editor and create a 7-point font later.

One other thing about the user interface.  When you click on a square
that is part of both an across and a down clue, the default action
is for CrossBow to assume you are entering the across clue.  However,
if you drag the pen in the direction you want to go it picks that up.

The Included Crosswords
-----------------------

SMH5932 is a quick crossword from the Sydney Morning Herald
SMH14817 is a cryptic from the same day
ST3674 is a cryptic from the Sunday Times

I eventually intend to keep a page full of crosswords that will be
updated on a daily or weekly basis, and I'm hoping other people
will do the same.  I'd love to do the New York Times crossword
every now and then!

Well, have fun and send me some e-mail if you have any comments. You
could also take a look at my home page at ...

    http://wr.com.au/harryo

but it's in the process of being updated ... I want to make it the
main Australian Pilot page eventually :-).

Ciao for now ...

Harry O.
[e-mail]