XPAT2(6)
NAME
xpat2 - generic patience game for X11
SYNOPSIS
xpat2 [ options ] [ seed ] [ saved game ]
DESCRIPTION
xpat2 is the successor of xpat, a generic patience game
which can be used with different rule sets. It does
understand the rules of the well-known Spider game, as
well as Klondike and others. It features a flexible lay-
out which responds to window resize commands and possibil-
ities to customize the existing rules. xpat2 has either a
bitmap-based card drawing routine or a pixmap based rou-
tine (selectable at compile time). With the pixmap based
drawing routine, antialiased colour images of the rank and
suit symbols are supplied. The bitmap card images are
black and red by default, but users can supply images of
complete colour cards in XPM format.
xpat2 may be compiled with the Athena widget set (or its
nicer replacement, the Xaw3d widget set), or with a stan-
dard Xlib interface. The command line parameters and X
resource names of these versions differ. This manual page
describes only the Athena widget version, for the Xlib
options please refer to the xpat manual page.
RULE CUSTOMIZATION OPTIONS
-rules rule name
(Resource: Tableau.rules)
This option specifies the initial rule set for xpat.
Valid rule names are Gypsy, Spider, FreeCell,
Klondike, and Seahaven, Monte Carlo, Calculation, Can-
field, Baker's Dozen, and others. Supply an invalid
rule name to see a complete listing.
The initial rule set may also be given by the name of
the executable (capitalisation is important). A prede-
fined rule set may be customized by the following
options, but not all options apply to every rule set.
-slots slots
(Resource: Tableau.slots)
Use a different number of slots.
-tmps tmps
(Resource: Tableau.tmps)
Use a different number of temporary storage places.
-decks decks
(Resource: Tableau.decks)
Use a different number of decks. Every deck has a full
set of 52 cards. This option does also set the number
of stacks. (To 4 times the number of decks, natu-
rally.)
-facedown number
(Resource: Tableau.facedown)
Specifies the number of cards per slot which are ini-
tially dealt face-down (i.e. invisible).
-faceup number
(Resource: Tableau.faceup)
Specifies the number of cards per slot which are ini-
tially dealt face-up.
-jokers number
(Resource: Tableau.jokers)
Specifies the number of jokers in the game (increasing
the number of cards). With jokers, you have to put
all ordinary cards onto the stacks and keep the jokers
on the slots.
-relaxed number
-flips number -turn number -rotations number
(Resource: Tableau.relaxed to Tableau.rotations)
Defines game specific customisation parameters.
-rng number
(Resource: Tableau.rng)
This option affects the random number generator. rng 0
(used up to version 1.03 of xpat2) has been found to
generate not uniformly distributed permutations. You
may activate it to be able to replay old saved games.
The default is rng 1.
GRAPHIC OPTIONS
All standard X toolkit parameters may be given, such as
-display display
Specifies on which display to run.
-geometry geometry
(Resource: geometry) Specifies the initial geometry.
Other options are:
-cards cardset
(Resource: Tableau.cardset)
cardset is the filename of an external bitmap card set
which will be used instead of the built-in cardset.
There are two card sets, namely small and french.
You can also give the full pathname of a cardset here.
This option works with the bitmap drawing routine
only.
-xpmdir xpmdir
(Resource: Tableau.xpmdir)
Tells xpat2 to search xpmdir for colour replacements
of the card images. The filenames searched for are
Joker.xpm and Rank.Suit.xpm, where Rank is one of Two
to Ten, or one of Jack, Queen, King, Ace. The display
must be capable of displaying all images at the same
time. For a 256-colour display, no more than 128
colours should be used for all card images together.
An additional file, Cardback.xpm, may give you nice
cardbacks.
If the directory name xpmdir does not start with a dot
or a slash, it is interpreted as a subdirectory of
/usr/games/lib/xpat.
-tb color
(Resource: Tableau.background)
Sets the background color to color. The default is
LightSlateGrey.
-cb color
(Resource: Tableau.cardbackColor)
Sets the background color of the cards to color. The
default is SlateGrey. This option is not in effect
when an XPM replacement for the cardback is used.
-markwidth width
(Resource: Tableau.markWidth)
Sets the width of the dashed frame which marks
selected cards. If this width is at least half of the
card width, marked cards will be shaded. The default
is to shade the cards.
-markcolor color
(Resource: markColor)
Sets the color of the marking frame.
-sound, -nosound
(Resource: Sound.state)
Enables or Disables sound.
NATIVE LANGUAGE SUPPORT
xpat2 has simple support for different languages. All mes-
sages which appear in the X11 window may be overloaded by
files, as well as the key bindings. The typical support
consists of an application-defaults file, a message file,
and a keyboard file. Possibly translated online-help files
are also there. To select a different language, call
xpat2 after setting the environment variable LANG to the
desired value. Currently, italian and german versions are
available, and fragments of a french and russian version.
The russian version requires a special cyrillic font,
sq01. The bdf-file is distributed with xpat2, you have to
convert it into a format supported by your X-server (pcf,
snf, ...)
FILES
(Directories may differ on your system.)
/usr/games/bin/xpat2
/var/games/xpat.log
/usr/doc/xpat/COPYRIGHT.{GNU,spider,xpm}
/usr/games/lib/xpat/small.cards
/usr/games/lib/xpat/french.cards
/usr/games/lib/xpat/audio/success.au
/usr/games/lib/xpat/audio/giveup.au
/usr/games/lib/xpat/audio/goodbye.au
/usr/games/lib/xpat/audio/cannotsave.au
/usr/games/lib/xpat/help.*
/usr/games/lib/xpat/hlp*
and a number of subdirs of /usr/games/lib/xpat, containing
sets of colour cards.
DIAGNOSTICS
Almost none. (Type 'v' to see the version number. This is
the man-page of xpat2 version 1.04.)
BUGS
Correct cheat counting is not implemented in all rules.
Only a few rule custonisations are checked and meaningful.
The Motif interface doesn't work. Any volunteers?
There is a problem with X-servers which are short on
memory. In this case, some parts of the xpat2 window may
be left blank after a resize event. You have to hit
<ctrl-L> to get the window redrawn correctly.
Please mail bug reports to mbi@mo.math.nat.tu-bs.de.
Fixes are especially welcome.
SEE ALSO
xpat(6x) spider(1) xsol(1)
AUTHORS
Heiko Eissfeldt and Michael Bischoff
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 1994 by Heiko Eissfeldt and Michael Bischoff
heiko@colossus.escape.de and mbi@mo.math.nat.tu-bs.de
Copyright (c) 1990 by David Lemke & Network Computing
Devices, Inc.
lemke@ncd.com
Copyright 1990 Heather Rose and Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Copyright (c) 1989, Donald R. Woods and Sun Microsystems,
Inc.
Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this soft-
ware and its documentation for any purpose and without fee
is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright
notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright
notice and this permission notice appear in supporting
documentation.
xpat and xpat2 were developed under Linux, the free UNIX
for the IBM-PC and compatibles. xpat is based on the game
spider. All new code which is not covered by spider copy-
rights is distributed by terms of the GNU General public
license (GNU Copyleft).