Fwd: Re: xletters patch + packaging question

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

Donovan: could you grab the package (it's small), apply the patch,
and build an srpm and glibc rpm? I'll build a libc rpm as soon as
you point me to the srpm. Thanks (and sorry for volunteering you
like this :)

seul-edu: this program looks like a good first step for an
educational suite. i remember back in high school we only had
a couple actually useful educational programs, and a typing
game like this was one of them. Note that while he says his code
is badly written, it's really quite good. On the other hand,
I think he has several bugs and missing features; it ought to be
versioned at .4 or so. But it's pretty easily salvagable -- if I
spent an afternoon with it, I'd end up with a really spiffy program.
One day.

--Roger

------- Forwarded Message

From: madore@clipper.ens.fr (David Madore)
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 12:09:27 +0100 (MET)
To: arma@MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: xletters patch + packaging question

> I checked out your xletters program at
> http://www.eleves.ens.fr:8080/home/madore/xletters.tgz. I had
> problems compiling it, because apparently my kernel (2.0.29)
> includes fail to mention MAP_FAILED (though they mention
> MAP_SHARED and other standard defines). I did a simple patch of
> 
> #ifndef MAP_FAILED
> #define MAP_FAILED ((void*)-1)
> #endif
> 
> in config.h and it compiled cleanly. You might want to consider
> including that patch in the distribution (it can only help :)

Yup.  I learned about that problem very soon after releasing version
1.1.0.  I thought I was safe when I compiled the program without error
under Linux, Solaris and SunOS4, but I had forgotten about the libc5
vs glibc2 (aka libc6) fight.  The glibc2 header files define
MAP_FAILED but the libc5 ones don't, for some reason.  For my defense,
it wasn't I who wrote this part of the program but Peter Horvai.

Anyway, I'll correct that in version 1.1.1 (there are one or two other
stupid things I want to fix - such as the fact that the high score
table gets printed on the standard output, which is dead stupid in
duel mode).

> Anyway..nice program! It looks much more professional than other
> linux typing tutors I've seen. Do you have plans to make it more
> complex (words moving sideways that are worth extra points, etc)?

Thanks.  Unfortunately it's not as good-looking from the inside as it
is from the outside :-(  Initially I wrote a quick'n'dirty program for
a friend who was trying to learn the layout of the keys on the qwerty
keyboard (not an easy thing in a country where all the keyboards have
this stupid damn azerty layout), and, well, it didn't stay quick but
it did stay dirty ;-)

So adding new features is mainly conditioned by whether Peter and I
can manage to make the program cleaner and more readable (by splitting
it in several files, etc.)  If you have any suggestions, do send them
to us, though.

> Also, do you have rpm's available for it? If not, would you mind
> if we packaged it for inclusion in the Independence distribution
> (www.independence.seul.org)?

Please don't hesitate to do that.  I'd be honored.  No, I don't have
any rpm - I don't even know how to make one.

--
     David A. Madore
    (david.madore@ens.fr,
     http://www.eleves.ens.fr:8080/home/madore/)

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