Feature requests/.gcg format I wonder if the Quackle developers are prepared to look into any of the following:
Put briefly - additional notes below 1. giving the player the option to enter words using the mouse instead of the keyboard 2. providing a configuration option for one click submission of play for those who would prefer this, with immediate on-screen display of score prior to submission 3. providing feature for export of data including all words made - .gcg format doesn't, so far as I can see, provide specifically for keeping a record of additional words made besides the word played 4. displaying word meanings (to the extent these are available from community sources), either floating on screen as a tooltip or in a dedicated window, when the mouse pointer hovers over a word 5. showing on screen and somewhere in the .gcg file the name of the dictionary in use Development activity I note that the most recent release was in February 2007. Do the developers give updates anywhere as to whether any and, if so, which new features/bug fixes are being worked on and, possibly, ideas about when the next release (if any) might happen? I can appreciate that developers may be reluctant to give target dates as they may then be pestered by users chasing for delivery. It's also possible that the developers feel that the program is good enough and see nothing pressingly in need of improvement - or just don't have time to continue development. SourceForge.net Really as an addendum to the preceding paragraph, I note that the Quackle SourceForge.net Project page, linked to from the bottom of the Quackle home page (www.quackle.org) doesn't seem to be used for anything visible to users. Choosing Project, Website doesn't alert viewers to www.quackle.org and choosing Mailing Lists doesn't alert viewers to this Yahoo! group. Only 2 feature requests, which are not shown as being worked on, are shown on the SourceForge site. Is there anything on the Quackle Project SourceForge site which serves to inform users about development activity? Expanding on some of the numbered suggestions above: 1. Most Scrabble programs give the option of drag and drop of tiles to the board. It's good that the rack of tiles is now graphically represented and that tiles can now be dragged within the rack. It's not ideal that one is forced to use the keyboard to enter words - although this can certainly be a faster input method - and that letters are not immediately removed from the rack when they are placed on the board. 3. Personally, I would like it to be easy to capture and export, to update an external, personal database, data on who made what words on such and such a date and time. I envisage that this external database would record, for each word encountered, date + time last played by self and date + time last played by an opponent and would include the facility for an individual to rate words on their familiarity. This would facilitate being able to call up, for review, words which met particular criteria re lack of familiarity and recency of last encounter. It would be feasible to extract lists of words played by self and opponent from .gcg files but words made incidentally to the word played don't seem to be currently recorded in .gcg files. It might be possible to write out extra data such as words incidentally made and date + time to e.g. #note lines in the .gcg file. 4. There are several nice features which could be added involving displaying information based on where a mouse pointer is hovering. I suggest displaying the meaning of a word hovered over would be one such nice enhancement. Additional enhancements might include different information displayed, perhaps based on duration of hover, or hover in combination with a mouse button down or keyboard press. Other information which could, perhaps, be displayed are front and back hooks/extensions for the word hovered over and anagrams of the word. Hovering over an empty square could call up, as a tooltip, any words which could be played through that square using the player's current rack. Thanks very much to the developers for the program so far. I'd be pleased if it was developed further but appreciate that it is a voluntary effort, that the developers may well have other priorities, and that there are always going to be people who would prefer something done differently or with ideas for enhancements. It's not possible to ever completely satisfy everyone. Graham Bonham
