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List:       kde-edu-devel
Subject:    [Kde-edu-devel] Announcing KTopo: a topography program for KDE
From:       Matthijs Sypkens Smit <matthijs () helena ! tux ! nu>
Date:       2001-12-27 21:25:56
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Hi everybody,
 
I have been working on ktopo, a topography program for KDE, for a couple
 of weeks now and since it has surpassed the just-an-idea stage, I would
 like to tell you about it.
 
What is KTopo?
 It's a program for learning topography. It aims to help the student
 exploring a map and learning important features of the region and to test the
 aquired knowledge of the student. These features would most likely be
 cities or area's, but any feature found on a map should be a possibility.
 KTopo is covered by the GPL license.
 
How does/should it work?
 There are three modes of operation: 1) Exploration, 2) Test and 3) Race.
 1) In Exploration mode, the student has to find all items (further
 referred to as 'cities') multiple times by clicking them. When the cursor is 
over
 a city it's name is shown automatically. When the student can't find the
 city he can ask to have the city hilighted. 2) In Test mode the student is
 tested for his knowledge. He has to find all cities when asked for and is
 assigned a score afterwards, depending on the number of cities he found.
 3) Race mode is specifically added to make the use of the program more
 enjoyable and to motivate the student to learn their topography well. It
 works the same as test mode, but now the cursor is a UFO and cities need
 not be clicked, just 'flown over'. The student is awarded a score solely
 depending on the time needed to fly over all the cities and the number
 of cities. For competitive purposes the best scores are saved as a high
 score.  All modes are basically implemented at the moment, but some 
information
 is only printed to stdout in stead of being handled in the GUI.
 
What's wrong with it?
 I would like to stress that ktopo is still in a very early stage. It's
 not even close to being feature-complete. Things that are missing at the
 moment:
 - Support for area's (This will probably be added soon enough)
 - Just a single map at the moment and no way to select a map
 - No specific format for describing maps
 - Generally the UI is not finished yet, as little details are lacking.
 - No documentation
 - No autoconf/automake, but just a simple Makefile
 - Very little comments in the code
 
Can I try it?
 Yes you can. KTopo has a small homepage at http://matthijs.tux.nu/ktopo/ .
 You can download the program from there. You would have to check the
 Makefile so that it reflects the configuration of your system. Then type
 'make'. It should build without errors or warnings. There's no 'make
 install' so you can run it with './ktopo'. It won't work if you copy the
 executable to somewhere else, since the program relies on some files in the
 build-directory.
 
Does the author appreciate comments?
 Definitely yes! This is both my first real Qt/KDE project as well as my
 first real C++ program. If you have anything to remark, just mail me.
 I'd really like to hear if I'm doing something that's generally considered
 stupid or bad style. Ideas about the program (what's good/what's bad/
 what would be cool) are always welcome as well. Don't think for a moment
 that your opinion wouldn't interest me. In the very worst case I might
 not agree with you, but I wouldn't hate you for it ;-)
 

 -- 
Matthijs
 
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