Hello everyone, I'm hereby announcing Palabra 0.1.4, a free crossword editor! Features include: grid editor, undo/redo, grid transformations, grid symmetry options, inserting words using wordlists, cell styling, grid pattern generation, adding clues, a statistics window, pattern files, etc. The software is licensed under the GNU General Public License.
I'm looking for people who are want to help me in making the software better. In doing so, you're contributing to a free crossword editor that can be used by everyone on multiple platforms. If you like crosswords and you are interested in crossword software, then I would love to hear from you to improve Palabra. In many ways, Palabra can be improved so your input is quite valuable to make it better. It doesn't matter if you're a user or a software developer, all feedback is welcome!
Proper recognition will be given for your contributions.
- If you're running Linux, please try the software and tell me what you think. If something doesn't work, do let me know, although I'm aware of certain speed issues.
- If you're running something other than Linux and you can lend a hand to get it running there, great! Once again, just let me know.
- If you can program and you want to help, please send me an email (see Help > About or the README) and we'll get started. The software is written in Python/C using GTK+. Development is currently easiest on Linux but the underlying technologies are portable, we can provide installers for other platforms later on. A test suite exists to verify parts of the code. Whole areas of the program are not available yet, like management of word/clue/pattern files, web integration, automated and/or assisted filling of the grid. You're free to design and develop them as you wish and we'll work together to integrate it into the rest. If you have any questions or suggestions about the current code base, just let me know - we can rewrite any part if that is desirable.
- If you can do graphical design, we can work on an icon for the software and for buttons/menuitems.
- If you can write, we can write a manual for the software.
- If you can help in other ways, just let me know.
Palabra can be found at
http://bitbucket.org/svisser/palabra/ and development also takes place there. Go to Downloads and under Tags & Snapshots, use one of the links for version 0.1.4. You should also install python-lxml from a repository and then follow the instructions in the README. Software developers should install Mercurial and use the clone command at the top to get the latest code.
Bugs or feature requests? Please add them here:
http://bitbucket.org/svisser/palabra/issues so we can keep track of them.
Short manual
- Click a cell to select it and the word
- Placing blocks, press . or hold shift and click a cell
- Removing blocks, hold shift and right-click a cell
- Use tab to change typing direction or double-click the selected cell
Cheers,
Simeon Visser
