&khangman; is a game based on the well-known hangman game. It is aimed at
children aged six and over. The game has four levels of difficulty: Animals (animals
words), Easy, Medium and Hard. A word is picked at random, the letters are
hidden, and you must guess the word by trying one letter after another. Each
time you guess a wrong letter, part of a picture of a hangman is drawn. You
must guess the word before being hanged! You have 10 tries.
</para>
</chapter>
<chapter id="using-khangman">
<title>Using &khangman;</title>
<screenshot>
<screeninfo>Here's a screenshot of &khangman; when you start it for the first time</screeninfo>
<mediaobject>
<imageobject>
<imagedata fileref="khangman1.png" format="PNG"/>
</imageobject>
<textobject>
<phrase>&khangman; screenshot</phrase>
</textobject>
</mediaobject>
</screenshot>
<para>
Here you can see &khangman; as it is the first time you run it. Level is Animals,
language is default (English here, the default is your current &kde; language if
the data exists), the theme is "Sea". Any changes in level, language or theme
(background) are written in the configuration file and restored in your next
game.
</para>
<para>
Please note how easy it is to change the level and the theme, just
click on the combo boxes on the toolbar. Getting a new word and quitting the
game are also easily done by clicking on the corresponding buttons on the
toolbar.
</para>
<sect1 id="general-usage">
<title>General usage</title>
<!-- FIXME: A word cannot really be displayed and hidden at the same time, -->
<!-- although I cannot think of a better way to phrase this -->
<para>A word is chosen and its letters are displayed as an underscore (_) symbol. You know how many letters there are in the
word. You have to guess the word by trying one letter after another. You enter the letter in the text box and you either press the Enter key or click on the Guess button to see if the letter belongs or not to the word. </para>
<para>The word is picked at random and it is not the same as the previous word.
</para>
<important><para>All the words are nouns (there are no verbs or adjectives, &etc;).</para></important>
<para>
Usually, it is not important whether you type in lowercase or uppercase. The program
converts all input into lowercase (except for German words beginning with an uppercase letter). The program does that automatically.
</para>
<para>
The current level and current language are displayed in the statusbar.
</para>
<para>
Each time you guess a letter that is not in the word, another part of the
hangman is drawn. You have 10 tries to guess the word. After that, the correct
answer is displayed.
</para>
<para>
There are 4 levels: easy, medium, hard and animals, plus levels for other
topics in some languages. The program scans for all data files in all
languages.
</para>
<para>
In the easy level, the words are quite simple and related to everyday life. It
is suitable for children from 6 to 9. The animals level contains only names of
animals so they are easier to find. Some of them are easy, others are more
difficult. In the medium level, the words are longer and more difficult. It is
suitable for ages 9+. The hard level is just that, hard, &ie; the words are
difficult to spell and not very well known. This level is challenging, even for
adults.
</para>
<para>After a word is guessed (or the hangman is completed), you are
prompted for another word and you can either use the
<keycap>Y</keycap> or <keycap>N</keycap> keys or the mouse to answer
yes or no. If you say <guilabel>No</guilabel>, the game quits. If you
say <guilabel>Yes</guilabel>, another word is ready to be guessed.
</para>
<para>You type the letter you want to try in the text box (the mouse cursor is
ready in the text box) and you hit the &Enter; key. If the letter belongs to the
word, it takes its place, as many times as it appears in the word. If the
letter does not belong to the word, it goes in the Misses field and a further
part of the hangman is drawn on the right. You have ten tries and after that
you lose and the correct word is displayed.
</para>
<para>During the game, you can choose to start a new game by going in the
<guimenu>Game</guimenu> menu and choosing <guimenuitem>New</guimenuitem> or
clicking on the <guiicon>New</guiicon> icon on the toolbar. You can also change
the level with the level button on the toolbar (this will bring you a new word
for the new level).</para>
<para>
Future improvement (in &kde; 4) will allow you to create your own words file.
</para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="languages">
<title>Playing in different languages</title>
<para>
You can play &khangman; in twenty-four languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English,
Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Irish (Gaelic), Italian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Norwegian (Nynorsk), Portuguese, Spanish, Serbian (Latin and Cyrillic), Slovenian, Tajik, Swedish, Russian and Turkish.
By default, after the first installation of &khangman;, only English and your &kde; language if it is one of the above and if you have the corresponding tde-i18n package will be installed. For example if you are a Danish user and if you have &kde; in Danish, in <guimenu>Languages</guimenu> you will see two items: English and Danish and Danish will be the default.
<phrase>The Get New Words dialog for &khangman;</phrase>
</textobject>
</mediaobject>
</screenshot>
<para>
Click on the language name you want to install and then on the <guibutton>Install</guibutton> button. If the language is successfully installed, a green tick is displayed in front of the language name. You click on the <guibutton>Close</guibutton> button to close the Get New Words dialog (if you want another language, you get repeat these steps).
</para>
<para>
You can then easily change the language by going in the <guimenu>Languages</guimenu> and choose the new language.
</para>
<para>
Please note that you can now type the special characters in a language by displaying the <interface>Special Characters Toolbar</interface>.
This toolbar holds buttons with an icon of each special character per language like é in French for example. Clicking on such a
button will write the corresponding letter in the input line and you validate your choice with Enter. You can of course also use the keyboard layout corresponding to the language. This toolbar can be shown or hidden. The setting is restored next time you play &khangman;.
</para>
<important><para>
Please note that you need Arial and URW Bookman fonts in order to display the special characters correctly in some languages. Provided you have those fonts installed, &khangman; will automatically use them. If you see small squares instead of letters, then you may not have one of these fonts installed. Type <command>fonts:/</command> into the &konqueror; address bar to check which fonts you have installed.
</para></important>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="few-tips">
<title>A few tips</title>
<para>
Try to guess the vowels first. Then have a go with the most common consonants:
l, t, r, n, s
</para>
<para>corresponding:
when you see <quote>io</quote>, try n after that, in French and English.
</para>
<para>
In Brazilian Portuguese, Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese, the accented
vowels can be discovered when you type the non accented corresponding
vowel. For example, all the accented <quote>a</quote> are displayed in
the word when you type <quote>a</quote>. This is when <guilabel>Type accented
letters</guilabel> on the <guilabel>Languages</guilabel> page of &khangman;'s
configuration dialog is not checked. When <guilabel>Type accented
letters</guilabel> is checked, then you have to type
the accented letters yourself. When you type <quote>a</quote>, only
<quote>a</quote> is displayed and you have to type for example
ã for this letter to be displayed.
</para>
<para>
Did you know? In English, the most common letter is e (12.7%), followed by t
(9.1%) then a (8.2%), i (7.0%) and n (6.7%).
</para>
</sect1>
</chapter>
<chapter id="menus">
<title>Menubar and toolbars</title>
<sect1 id="mainwindow">
<title>The Main &khangman; Window</title>
<para>The <guimenu>Game</guimenu> menu has 3 items:
<guimenuitem>New</guimenuitem>, <guimenuitem>Get Words in New Language...</guimenuitem> and
<guimenuitem>Quit</guimenuitem>.</para>
<para><guimenuitem>New</guimenuitem> brings you a new game, &ie; a new
word to guess, in the same level you already
are. <guimenuitem>Get Words in New Language...</guimenuitem> will display the Get New Stuff dialog to allow you to download data in a new language. <guimenuitem>Quit</guimenuitem> quits the game by closing the
main window and writing the actual settings in the configuration
file.</para>
<para>
The <guimenu>Level</guimenu> menu allows you to choose the level, &ie; the difficulty of the word to guess.
</para>
<para>
The <guimenu>Languages</guimenu> menu allows you to change the language the words are displayed in.
</para>
<para>
The <guimenu>Look</guimenu> menu proposes two themes: the <guimenuitem>Sea Theme</guimenuitem> and the <guimenuitem>Desert Theme</guimenuitem>. The background and the font colors changes for each theme.
</para>
<para>
The <guimenuitem>Settings</guimenuitem> menu allows you to configure
&khangman; easily. First, <guimenuitem>Toolbars</guimenuitem> and
<guimenuitem>Show Statusbar</guimenuitem> give you the possibility to
hide/show the toolbars and statusbar.
</para>
<para>There are two toolbars: the main one which is the one on top
with the buttons and combo boxes and the
<guilabel>Special Characters</guilabel> toolbar which, when it is shown, is
on the bottom. This toolbar has buttons with the special characters
for each language: accented letters and other special characters. This
allows users to easily play in another language without having to configure
a new keyboard layout. You click on a special letter and it is
displayed as the letter to try. Pressing &Enter; will make the program
see if the letter is present in the word or not. The toolbar can be
hidden if you don't want it. This is saved in the configuration file
so if the toolbar is hidden, it will be hidden next time you run
&khangman;.
</para>
<tip>
<para>
It is of course possible to move the toolbars around. Put the mouse
cursor on the small handle on the left of the toolbar, press the &LMB;
and drag the toolbar to position it on the screen where you want
it. If you point the mouse on one of the toolbars and press the right
mouse button, a context menu appears to let you choose different
options for the toolbar.
</para>
</tip>
<para>
<guimenuitem>Configure Shortcuts...</guimenuitem> is a standard &kde; setting dialog that allows you to
choose different shortcut keys for different actions. For example,
<keycombo action="simul">&Ctrl;<keycap>Q</keycap></keycombo> is the
standard shortcut for <guimenuitem>Quit</guimenuitem>.</para>
<para><guimenuitem>Configure Toolbars...</guimenuitem> is also a
standard &kde; menu item that allows you to add or suppress items from
the toolbar.</para>
<screenshot>
<screeninfo>&khangman; Desert theme</screeninfo>
<mediaobject>
<imageobject>
<imagedata fileref="khangman2.png" format="PNG"/>
</imageobject>
<textobject>
<phrase>&khangman; Desert theme</phrase>
</textobject>
</mediaobject>
</screenshot>
<para> Here you have &khangman; with the Desert theme, Catalan language and level Easy. The
<interface>Characters</interface> toolbar is shown here.</para>
<para>The level is chosen with a combo box in the toolbar or via the <guimenu>Level</guimenu> menu in the menubar. The available levels are <guimenuitem>Easy</guimenuitem>, <guimenuitem>Medium</guimenuitem>, <guimenuitem>Animals</guimenuitem> and <guimenuitem>Hard</guimenuitem>. Easy is related to common objects a child aged six
or seven knows. Medium regards nouns a bit more challenging, hard is
quite difficult and animals is only animals nouns. </para>
<para> All words are nouns. No verbs, no adjectives. The chosen level
is then displayed on the statusbar.</para>
<para>Only letters are allowed to be typed in the text box.</para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="settings">
<title>Available Settings</title>
<para>
A toolbar is provided for quick access to some settings. You can click on a button to have a new game (i.e. a new word), or to quit the game. The level and the theme are easily changed via 2 combo boxes on the toolbar.
</para>
<para>
In <guimenu>Settings</guimenu>, <guimenu>Configure &khangman;...</guimenu> you will find tree pages. The first one is for <guilabel>General</guilabel> settings.
</para>
<sect2 id="general-settings">
<title>General Settings</title>
<screenshot>
<screeninfo>&khangman; General settings</screeninfo>
<mediaobject>
<imageobject>
<imagedata fileref="settings1.png" format="PNG"/>
</imageobject>
<textobject>
<phrase>&khangman; General settings</phrase>
</textobject>
</mediaobject>
</screenshot>
<para><guilabel>Require more guesses for duplicate letters</guilabel>: this is unchecked as default. When unchecked, if you try the letter "a" and the word has several as, they will be all displayed. For example if the word is "potato" and you try "o", both os will be diaplayed. If you check this option however, only the first "o" will be displayed and you will have to try it one more time to display the second "o" in "potato". This increases the difficulty.
</para>
<para><guilabel>Do not display the 'Congratulations! You won!' dialog</guilabel>: the default is unchecked, that means that when you win a game, a message box will be displayed to tell you that you won and ask you if you want to play again. If you check this option, this dialog is not displayed anymore, instead a new game starts directly after 3 seconds.
</para>
<para>
In the Sounds section, if you check <guilabel>Enable sounds</guilabel> then a sound will be played on new game and another sound will be played when you win a game.
</para>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="languages-settings">
<title>Languages Settings</title>
<para>The <guilabel>Languages</guilabel> Settings tab allows you to set some settings specific to some languages. If the settings are not available for the language you are playing in then those settings will be grayed and disabled so you cannot choose them.
</para>
<screenshot>
<screeninfo>&khangman; Languages Settings</screeninfo>
<mediaobject>
<imageobject>
<imagedata fileref="settings2.png" format="PNG"/>
</imageobject>
<textobject>
<phrase>&khangman; Languages Settings</phrase>
</textobject>
</mediaobject>
</screenshot>
<para>
Some languages also have hints to help you guess the word. The hint is shown by a right-click and gives a short definition of the word to guess. If this setting is enabled and if you check the option <guilabel>Show hints</guilabel>, you can &RMB; click anywhere on the game and get a hint shown for four seconds. This hint should help you to guess the word more easily.
</para>
<para><guilabel>Type accented letters</guilabel> is available for Brazilian Portuguese, Catalan, Portuguese and Spanish in &khangman;'s configuration dialog. If you check <guilabel>Type accented letters</guilabel> then you will have to type all accented vowels (like ã). If this remains unchecked, when you type any vowel, all accented vowels will be displayed as well.
</para>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="timers-settings">
<title>Timers Settings</title>
<para>The <guilabel>Timers</guilabel> Settings tab allows you to <guilabel>Set the time for displaying the hint</guilabel> and to <guilabel>Set the time for Already Guessed Letter</guilabel> tooltip.
<guilabel>Set the time for displaying the hint:</guilabel> allows you to set a greater time for showing the hint label. It is necessary to increase the time for younger children for example as they read more slowly than adults.
</para>
<para><guilabel>Set the time for displaying the Already Guessed Letter</guilabel> allows you to increase or decrease the time for displaying the Already Guessed Letter tooltip. This tooltip is a label which appears when you tried a letter that was already tried. Some people will want not to see it for long while children will need time to understand it and thus will need to set the display for a longer duration.
<listitem><para><action>Display</action> the &khangman; settings dialog
</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
</sect2>
<sect2>
<title>The <guimenu>Help</guimenu> Menu</title>
&help.menu.documentation;
</sect2>
</sect1>
</chapter>
<chapter id="developers">
<title>Developer's Guide to &khangman;</title>
<sect1 id="changing-words">
<title>How to add words in a new language for the game</title>
<para>Thanks to Stefan Asserhäll, it is very easy to add a new language
directly to the game. The procedure described here can also be
found in the <filename class="directory">khangman</filename> source folder
in the file <filename>README.languages</filename>. Please follow the procedure and then send me the files tarred and gzipped to annemarie.mahfouf@free.fr.
</para>
<para>
The twenty four available languages so far by code are: bg ca cs da de en es fr fi ga hu it nb nl nn pt pt_BR ru sl sr sr@Ltn sv tg and tr. If your language code is not among those, you can proceed further.
</para>
<para>Most of this data should be completed to include <emphasis>hints</emphasis>, please see below. Complete data: bg de fr en it only have hints so the other above languages must be updated as soon as possible.
</para>
<para>Be sure you are working with the latest svn trunk sources of &khangman; by
<para>Here you must replace <replaceable>language_code</replaceable>
with your language code.</para>
</step>
<step>
<para>The files now use the kvtml format. The tag <sgmltag class="starttag">o</sgmltag> is for the word and the tag <sgmltag class="starttag">t</sgmltag> is for the hint. Try to match the hint with the level of difficulty. The level 'Easy' will require an easy hint but the level 'Hard' will require the definition in the dictionary. Try not to use words of the same family in the hint, that would give the word away too easily! </para>
<para>An example of a kvtml file is as follow:</para>
<programlisting><markup>
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE kvtml SYSTEM "kvoctrain.dtd">
<kvtml>
<e>
<o>cane</o>
<t>è il tuo animale domestico preferito</t>
</e>
...
...
</kvtml>
</markup></programlisting>
</step>
<step>
<para>Edit all indicated text files in the new folder with a text editor,
and replace each word inside the <sgmltag class="starttag">o</sgmltag> tag with a translated word and each hint inside a <sgmltag class="starttag">t</sgmltag> with a translated hint. It is not really important
that the exact meaning is preserved, but try to keep the length and
level of difficulty roughly the same.
You can include words with white space or - in them, in that case the white space or the -
will be shown instead of the _.
Please contact &Anne-Marie.Mahfouf; <email>annemarie.mahfouf@free.fr</email> if there is anything special related to your language so I can adapt the code to it (especially the special and accented characters).</para>
<para>You can just translate the words but you can also adapt them
following the level and add new words if you want. For example,
<quote>table</quote> is in level easy in English but in your language,
it can be level medium. Feel free to adapt the files to your language
needs. The number of words in a file is not important, you can add
some if you want.</para>
<para>Remember that all words are nouns.</para>
<para> Note that you must use <emphasis role="bold">UTF-8 encoding</emphasis> when editing the
files. If your editor cannot do this, try using &kwrite; or &kate;. When
opening a file in &kwrite; or &kate; you can select utf8 encoding with
the combo box at the top of the file open dialog.</para>
<para>Please keep the actual English filenames in your
Please contact Anne-Marie by email if you need further information.</para>
<para>When you send me the files, please don't forget to mention any <emphasis role="bold">special characters</emphasis> used in your language (put them in a text file, one per line and add this file in the tarball) and please mention any other specificity.</para>
<para><emphasis>Please never commit files in a BRANCH as it might break the game.</emphasis></para>
</step>
</procedure>
<para>Many thanks for your contribution!</para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="internal">
<title>What is stored by &khangman; and where</title>
<para>
When you get a new language via <menuchoice><guimenu>Game</guimenu> <guimenuitem>Get Words in New Language...</guimenuitem></menuchoice>, the new language data is stored in <filename class="directory">$~/.kde/share/apps/khangman/data</filename> in the language code folder. The available language dir names are also stored in the &khangman; config file in <filename>~/.kde/share/config/khangmanrc</filename>.
The provider name (i.e. the address of the website where to download the new languages) is stored in <filename>$TDEDIR/share/apps/khangman/khangmanrc</filename>.
The English language (default) and the user language from his i18n package(s) (if available) are stored in <filename class="directory">$TDEDIR/share/apps/khangman</filename>.
In the configuration file, stored for each user in his <filename>~/.kde/share/config/khangmanrc</filename> are saved all the game settings such as the background, last level played, ... plus the files that were downloaded from the KNewStuff dialog.
</para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="planned-features">
<title>Planned Features for &khangman;</title>
<para>
A planned feature is of course to have more language data and also hints in every language. You can help for this in your own language if it is not done yet. Please contact me if you want to help with this, it's just a matter of translating the English words to your language (see <link linkend="changing-words">How to add words in a new language for the game</link>).
</para>
<para>
What can also be done is to use other kvtml files like the ones that are on the
&kde;-Edu website to play &khangman;. For example, imagine you can play the
capitals of the world, the hint will tell you the country and you have to guess
the capital. Or learn words in another language, the hint is the word in your
language, the word to guess is the translation in the new language.
</para>
</sect1>
</chapter>
<chapter id="faq">
<title>Questions and Answers</title>
&reporting.bugs;
&updating.documentation;
<qandaset id="faqlist">
<qandaentry>
<question>
<para>I have an error message telling me the pictures cannot be found.</para>
</question>
<answer>
<para>The game installs by default in <filename
class="directory">/usr/local/kde</filename> so add <filename
class="directory">/usr/local/kde/bin</filename> to your path and set
could vary widely, depending on the distribution and operating system
you.</para>
</answer>
</qandaentry>
<qandaentry>
<question>
<para>&khangman; does not start correctly after I upgraded from an earlier version to the &kde; 3.5 version</para>
</question>
<answer>
<para>
There might be a problem due to the change of the configuration file. Please remove the <filename>khangmanrc</filename> file in your <filename class="directory">$HOME/.kde/share/config</filename> folder.
</para>
</answer>
</qandaentry>
</qandaset>
</chapter>
<chapter id="credits">
<title>Credits and License</title>
<para>
&khangman;
</para>
<para>
Program copyright 2001-2006 &Anne-Marie.Mahfouf; &Anne-Marie.Mahfouf.mail;
