[Kde-games-devel] do not translate this part of the handbook

[Wolfgang Rohdewald]

(CC to kdegames-devel: My original question was if it is possible to
mark a technical part of the handbook as "does not have to be translated")

Am Samstag, 31. März 2012, 09:19:34 schrieb Anne-Marie Mahfouf:
> Having the rules of the game in the handbook seems a natural thing to 
> have, this is for new users wanting to try it. Mah Jong is a complicate 
> game so it has complicate rules.

this is not about the playing rules but about defining your own rules.

and - Mah Jongg is not complicated at all. Some of its rules are - but
beginners have the option to use only the simple rules. Actually that
is something I should do in Kajongg: add a beginner's ruleset.

> However the handbook should only explain the rules for Kajongg. Your 
> chapter starts with mentioning "as played in Germany" so the first 
> question I ask myself: is it how Kajongg plays it?

Worldwide, many different rulesets exist for Mah Jongg. Right now
Kajongg only supports one of them. I intend to change that.

Classical Chinese is one of the main variants, others being Riichi,
international tournament rules etc. About every country has its own
ruleset. And if you play against others, you normally first decide which
rules you want to play with - you always have the freedom to say "Today
we do not want this particular rule". When starting games over the
net, kajongg will tell players what rules will be used on which table,
and players can compare those rules with their own local copies - 
there might be differences. They can chat and discuss which rules
they want to play by - and then close the table and open a new table
with rules accepted by all.

> Most parts of  handbook will not be relevant for many users, they are 
> relevant for users wanting help about the program.

Yes - the part about defining rulesets.

I just started working on adding another ruleset: classical chinese
as played in Great Britain. And I am getting into serious trouble with
defining all rules by regular expressions. This would also mean more
text in the handbook - that is why I asked. But right now I believe I will
get rid of all regexes and rewrite them in Python. After that, users
will no longer be able to change the meaning of a rule, add a new rule,
remove a rule. The only thing they still can do is changing the impact
of a rule (how much it scores) and probably editing rule specific
options.

This gives me the freedom to do much more flexible things in
Python instead of regex, it should also speed up AI things. If people
want new rules, somebody will have to write them in Python
(instead of a regex) - but until now I only heard "I would like to
implement my country's ruleset but the regex scares me" -
so IMHO nothing will be lost.

And this would make that whole part of the manual obsolete, so
I will just delete it - unless I change my opinion about rule 
implementation again.
 
-- 
Wolfgang