Java Glyphs

OVERVIEW:
This is a Java implementation of the Letters childrens'
game, inspired by JiLetters (see the file COPYING.txt
for details).  It provides a framework that allows easy
additions to the images, and catagorization of these
images.

I use the term "glyph" because most versions of this
game use the western alphabet letters, while this
program (in theory at least) can accomodate any
language set (provided you can have a filename with the
language's characters on your hard drive), and even
multiple letter combinations easily.  Although
unimplemented it may also be used to teach numbers and
counting; see IMAGE ADDITIONS for details.

INSTALATION:
Please see the file "INSTALL.txt".

RUNNING:
Open a command line.
Enter the directory where the jar file is located.
This will either be the place where the downloaded file
was unziped, or the directory the game was installed
into.
Type "java -jar JGlyphs-0.1.jar [options]".
For basic help on options, type "java -jar
JGlyphs-0.1.jar --help".
Alternately, you can double click the launch file from
Windows (the name is JGLYPHS.BAT), or run the shell
script jglyphs in *nix.

IMAGE ADDITIONS:
(I appologize if the directions are not very clear...)

Images are seperated by directory into "catagories".

There are three locations where catagories are searched
for.

The first is a directory specified on the command line
using the "-i" option.

The second is a directory in your home directory;
for Windows NT/2000/XP this is typically C:\Documents
and Settings\"username"\appdata\jglyphs -- replace
"username" with your login username.  Windows 9x/ME
variants have no concept of a user's home directory so
this is skipped.  Unfortunately, I don't know anything
about the Macintosh directory structure, so this is
skipped on Macs as well :(.  On *nix it is ~/.jglyphs .

The final directory is jglyphs.dat which needs to be in
the same folder as the jar file (JGlyphs-0.1.jar).
Typically this will be in the system wide installation
directory, and not normally editable by regular users.
For version 0.1 of this program, the only catagory
distributed with the program is "default".

Catagories in the directory specified with the command
line option (-i) override catagories of the same name
in the user's home directory, which in turn override
catagories in the distribution folder.  This means that
if you have a folder in your home directory named
"default"
(C:\Documents and
Settings\"username"\appdata\jglyphs\default on Windows
NT, or /home/"username"/.jglyphs/default on *nix), only
images in that directory will be used for the "default"
catagory.

NAMING IMAGE FILES:
For most files, simply use the name of the object
depicted in the image as the file name; for instance, a
picture of dominoes is saved as "dominoes.jpg".  The
image name is "dominoes" and the "glyph" is the letter
"d".  This works for most things, but some letters are
problematic; for instance not many things start with
"x".  To use an image for a glyph where the image name
does not start with that glyph, prefix the filename
with the glyph and a drop ("_"): ie, "x_fox.jpg".  This
allows easy incorporation of multicharacter sequences
for glyphs as well; suppose you want to use an image of
a church, but instead of associating it with the glyph
"c" you want to use "ch": simply save the file as
"ch_chruch.jpg".  NOTE: do not use drops ("_") in
filenames for any other reason, as this may cause
inconsitencies between the image and its name, use
spaces instead.  In the "x_fox.jpg" case, the image
name is "fox" and the associated glyph is "x"; whilst
for "ch_church.jpg", the image name is "church" and the
glyph is "ch".


Also note: when using "all catagories",
images in a catagory from a directory specified on the
command line will override images in any other catagory
in the user's home or the default location if the image
name and the glyph are the same irrespective of case.
Likewise,  images with the same name and glyph in the
user's home override those in the default location.

As for images in two different catagories but in the
same catagory location (ie: (etc
etc)\appdata\jglyphs\animals\fox.jpg and (etc
etc)\appdata\jglyphs\dogs\fox.jpg ), which one gets
loaded is almost up to chance.  The work around is to
name one file something different (perhaps by adding a
description to the filename).

