[SGVLUG] portability with svga

[Jeff Keys]

     I appreciate you guys taking the time to mess with this stuff.  This program was written to support a recent 3rd grade edition of Houghton-Mifflin math and so reflects the limited range of material in that text.  If I ever get around to extending it to higher grade levels I will certainly have to do things like handling larger numbers and division problems with remainders expressed as fractions or decimals.
     The primary tarball has printable wall charts with instructions for each routine.  I will have to revisit those as well, given your very useful input on the screen instructions.  Don't know how the remainder conventions for division got by me, but I just inserted a section to cover that.  Also changed a couple of headings on the comparison and ordering section; still thinking about how to make the directions clearer.
     Modified the code so that < and > will work both with and without a shift.
     There is a secret interrupt:  typing EXIT (upper case) from the man menu will do it.  On some distros it exits and the cursor is missing; typing 'reset' will fix this.  (Thanks to Tom for that.)
Any shared version of this thing will have the ^C disabled; when I get it running in a classroom I don't want Arthur Upstart Jr. interrupting it on me.  Only the teacher should know how.  (Of course there's always some joker who will figure out to go to another terminal and use kill....)
     The chmod problem came about because I've been using a windows ftp program; every time I moved the binary through a FAT file my distro reset the permissions.  So I just now got wise and started using gftp;  it seems to preserve all the x's.  What I get for using windows in the first place.
     Thanks again.
John


>It ran on a virtual console under Knoppix 4.0 on a Gateway 450 notebook, but
>I had to chmod +x it first. I noticed that < and > didn't work with the
>shift key as I expected,  but did work without it.

>On David's 40/33 problem, I found that "1 r 7" gave the "Good  work"
>response, though the instructions didn't indicate that as a proper response.

>On More or Less, the instructions could be clearer for 3rd graders:
>referring to the games as comparison games and ordering games could be
>confusing to some kids.

>It needs a "Q for Quit" command. I  had to use ^c.

On 3/16/06, David Lawyer <dave at lafn.org> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Mar 14, 2006 at 07:45:51AM -0800, juanslayton at dialup4less.comwrote:
>
> >      If you're on the dev-sig mail list, you've already seen this; I
> >      just want a bit more coverage.    (Hit the 'delete', Mike.) I'd
> >      like to ask a favor of anyone who has time or interest.  I have
> >      written a short set of utility routines for 3rd grade students
> >      that I am now reworking for portability to other machines and
> >      distros.  A simple binary (titled 'preview') can be downloaded
> >      from http://www.dialup4less.com/~juanslayton and run on a
> >      terminal screen.  Some of the routines are dependent on
> >      ncurses, one uses the svga library.  The latter is the one that
> >      seems to have portability problems; it is titled "Say When" on
> >      the program menu.  I would greatly appreciate anyone who would
> >      try to run this and send me a bug report.  Such report is
> >      likely to be no more than "runs" or "won't run" on
> >      _____________(distro).  My direct e-mail address is
> >      juanslayton at dialup4less.com.
> >
> > John
>
> I had problems with this.  Unless you read "help" first, you have no
> idea of how to interact.  For example, it asks: What seems to be the
> problem? (And nothing else)  For, me, I've having problems
> interpreting the meaning of multiplier functions in a non-normal
> problem of Mayer.  But if I type in 40/33 it will not let me type in
> anthing but an integer for the answer and claims that 1 is wrong.  So
> I think there is a lot more wrong with this than possible problems
> with ncurses.  I'm using a CIT-101e dumb terminal.  At first the
> preview slowly scrolls, wasting my time.
>
> I don't know why, but the lynx browser thinks that preview is a text
> files and downloads it as text.  But the "file" command show what's
> downloaded to be a binary and it executes OK although I shortly gave
> up on it due to its other flaws..
>
>                         David Lawyer
>
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