[Kde-games-devel] KGame: A few questions

[Martin Heni]

> nice vacation :-) ), but now I feel it is time go get going again so that I
> can have something to deliver as soon as KDE 3.3 is released.

It would be excellent if someone would work and improve libkdegames!!

> 1. How up-to-date is Martin Henis docs?  Is there anything that has changed
> that makes the documentation out of date or even wrong?
It has not been changed for a couple of years. But to my knowledge there
have been not many changes in the lib either. The player switching after
a turn had been changed and a few smaller additions have been made.
The basic structure is to my knowledge the same (although I did not have
time to look into it much lately)


> 2. There are two distinct meanings of the word "game":
> My language, Swedish, has two distinct words for the two, and in my
Interesting point. Might be worth a thought. At the moment you are right,
that KGame combines both.


> 3. Sometimes a game (in the sense b) above) can have viewers that should be
> able to comment to each other about the game. Should this be implemented as
> KPlayers, and, if so, what would be the best way to do it? The players in
> the game shouldn't be able to see the comments, at least not until the game
> is over.

The KPlayer concept supports this.

> 4. If I want to analyze a game (in the b) sense), I might want to look at
> variations, and then save them.  This doesn't seem to be supported by
> KGame.

All and any game situation can be saved and loaded by kgame. Therefore also 
variations. This should work.

> 5. What game file formats are supported?  There is a very general file
> format for board games that is called SGF, the Smart Game Format.  It would
> be good if libkdegames got support for it.  I am willing to provide the
> implementation.

It does not support any format internally. This is up to the programmer.
However, a unified game format could be added to the library. 


> 6. A case that makes the problem in question 2 above evident is this: If I
> meanings but others might not think so.  My question is: What are the
> general views on refactoring / changing the API of KGame et al? Are the
> classes "done", or is this work in progress?

All KDE is work in progress. The KGame libs seem to work allright. But 
refactoring them is in principle ok. However, you have to keep in mind
to guarantee compatibility (source&binary) depending on the KDE release 3.x 
etc. You have to read the KDE compatibility guides. Maybe target a major
change to KDE 4.0?