[Tux4kids-tuxtype-dev] Hi - GSoC

[David Bruce]

Hello Sarah,

Sorry I haven't spent much time with you on your project.  One of the
other students needed help, and I have gotten pretty involved with
getting his project moving in the right direction.

Anyway, I looked at what you have in svn and built and installed the
program.  So far you have been trying to get the word list editing
code from last year working correctly.  It looks like it still has
some significant issues.

Some observations:
1.  pkglocalstatedir (i.e. "/usr/local/var/tuxtype" by default) was
being created with 755 permissions, so only the owner (root) could
write.  I changed the Makefile.am so this dir is created 777 (everyone
can do everything).
2.  If this directory is empty, tuxtype just displays a confusing
blank screen if we select "Edit Word Lists".
3.  It is intended behavior for the first line of the word list to be
the title (or at least that's how it has always worked, not
necessarily  that we need to keep this behavior).
4.  If I put a text file in /usr/local/var/tuxtype, I can definitely
alter it with the editing feature, but it is difficult or impossible
to do it entirely correctly.  It is not at all obvious how to create a
new word, and there is no cursor or other indicator of where the user
is working.
5. When the altered file is saved, garbage characters get added at the
start of the file.
6. There isn't any way to create a new word file.
7. The modifiable word files do not show up in the menu to be selected
by the user at the start of a cascade or comet game.

I realize you have had to deal with what had previously been done in
tuxtype.  Unfortunately, the previously existing code in titlescreen.c
is quite messy and hard to follow.  I think it may be more work than
anticipated to get the in-game editing feature working well enough for
the average person to use without getting frustrated.  The other
approach is to move forward with the Qt-based config program,
tux4kids-admin.  Tux4kids-admin is being set up to have separate
plugins for tuxmath and for tuxtype.  So far, it is really just a
skeleton placeholder.  What are your thoughts on this?

I should have some time this week to put into your project.

Best,

David