[pbmserv-dev] Scramble languages self-implemented.

[Douglas Zander <dzander@solaria.sol.net>]

I was thinking of this for a long time, and I might have asked about it
here once before.  Let me know what you think of this idea. 
Allow anyone to start a board of Scramble in any language!  The server
stores the words that are played in a dictionary of that particular language.
(Of course it would be played as -nostrict by default)  We assume that the
people who play in the new language will use genuine legal words.  (When
the board is started a new option like -language=russian  or
-language=esperanto must be used)  After a long time, a dictionary of words
will be built up in that language and the players may decide to try to use
the -strict option.  I think this would be a great way to allow *anyone*
to play the game in their native language.  Of course, we would allow the 
players to include on the "challenge" line an option to designate the letters
of their alphabet like: -language=esperanto
-letters=a,b,c,cx,d,e,f,g,gx,h,hx,i,jx,k,l,m,n,o,...  I forget the rest of
the alphabet at the moment  :-) 
(now I see that this would need to be included in the body of the email
since it would be so long)  also, I do not know how to represent the letter
c with a caret above it.  My screen only shows American letters, not the
international alphabet.  We would need to allow letter combinations like
cx and gx for the special letters for those users of older mail readers.
We could also have an option to use the original binary values for users 
who can see the international alphabet (see Quoridor for the "grid=" option
to display the binary dots or the non-binary crosses.)   The users would
also be able to designate the point value and distribution count of each
letter in their language in the body of the challenge command.  The program
would keep track of this and again after awhile, it would use the most
common point values/distribution as the default.  The main thing is that
the server would keep the words and build a dictionary for each language
after the game was played.  After awhile I envision that the only thing
a challenger would need to do is specify their language. (most languages
are given an international three-letter designation, correct?  Or am I
thinking about airports? :-)

--
 Douglas Zander 
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