[Tux4kids-tuxtype-dev] Some wishes to help run tuxtype for toddlers

[Sini Ruohomaa]

Greetings,

I just found Tuxtype via a Linuxjournal article series. I'm running it
on Ubuntu Maverick (version 1.8.1 from repository). VERY nice!

Thing is, my 2-year-old likes the fish cascade. (He particularly likes
it when fish go splat. He goes "Splat, splat, splat, done!" (= out of
lives).)

He doesn't read, obviously, but he can use the mouse (learned this
week...) and type letters he sees. He plays e.g. Gcompris with minimal
intervention from me now. The alphabet list is fine for him, and short
words are reasonably ok on easy.

I would like to most humbly request three minor modifications to the
game to make it easier for him to run Fish Cascade and Comet Zap:

1) Make the "Alphabet" word list option the first option of the word
lists to choose from in both games: then I can instruct him to always
click on the top option. For example sorting all word lists
alphabetically by name might accomplish this (they're not particularly
intuitively sorted anyway as far as I could tell).

This is actually the only real issue I have: it's quite challenging to
tell him to go pick a given word from the second page of a list of
words. It got better when I realized that the Finnish translation has
fewer word lists, and didn't need to change pages anymore. If I could
edit the existing word lists I could of course delete the unnecessary
lists too, but that's an unoptimal workaround.

2) Make it possible to force a difficulty level on both games from
command-line options or settings, reducing the number of questions
asked. And why not choose word lists too that way? (Ask me vs. fixed
to:.)

3) Give a (mouse-selectable) option to re-run whatever game (+ word list
+ difficulty) you just game-overed in, so that the process does not have
to be repeated so often.

A "0" or "god mode" difficulty level where lives aren't lost by missed
words would be cool too, but as noted, it seems the toddler isn't
particularly frustrated by causing distress to the penguin.

On a random note, there's an encoding issue (ä shows up as a boxed X on
my screen in the menu - one name of a wordlist is affected) and a minor
grammar issue (näppäilyharjoituksia - the misencoded wordlist name - is
one word) in the Finnish translation. Ä works fine in the word lists.

Thanks for this fine addition to our game selection!

Best regards,

--Sini

PS. The in-game About screen gives the sourceforge list as bug contact,
the website doesn't mention it. Whom to believe! (I'm not on either
list, sorry.)