What would you like to see in the next version?

[Sudoku Grab]

What's currently missing?
What really bugs you?
What feature would make the app better?

[jeff.win...@gmail.com]

I've just seen the app in action on a mate's phone - unfortunately I'm
not an iPhone user. I don't suppose there's scope for a symbian / java
app in the pipeline?

J

[Chris Greening]

Hi Jeff,

I'm looking into doing a port over the android platform. In my day job
I do quite a lot of programming using J2ME which works on a lot of
phones - but it can be incredibly painful as the implementation is
normally pretty bad..

Performance of the image processing may be a bit tricky - java is not
the best language for it.

A native symbian app might be doable, but it's not really something
I've had to look into before.

Android is the most likely - but finding the time to do it is going to
be tricky - I'll let you know if I make any progress.

Cheers
Chris.


On 21 Mar, 23:15, "jeff.winterbou...@gmail.com"

[Confucious]

Having bought this app I've not played with it for long but it has the
makings of a great one!

Love the way it can capture games and am impressed.

So far the one suggestion I have is an OK button on reset! It doesn't
take much to miss the square in the top right and accidentally press
reset - an 'Are you sure?' dialogue could save a lot of heartache.

I have only tried capturing one so far from the internet (The Times
sudoku) and I was impressed. No doubt I will find minor things that
could be improved as I use it more but the concept is spot on and the
implementation is great.

While I'm typing I've just thought of another thing - how about an
'undo' feature?

Keep up the good work :)

[Confucious]

Another thing - support for Killer Sudoku?

Is it just me that can't find how to edit my previous post rather than
create a new one?

[Chris Greening]

All done for version 1.3 :)

I'm thinking of adding a 'quick solve' option for 1.4 that's does
everything in one go with no user interaction. Good for showing off to
people :)

Sent from my iPhone

[Chris Greening]

Not sure if you can edit posts. I've started thinking about killer.
I'll have to do some research to see if it's possible with the
iPhone's camera.

Cheers
Chris

Sent from my iPhone

[Confucious]

You're obviously thinking on the right lines!
But answering my questions before I've asked them is cheating! ;)

Just tried with a couple of old newspapers which were creased.
First one didn't recognise properly and I resized the image (it had
included the heading) - very easy to do.
It then had some numbers wrong and in red, I corrected the numbers in
red and it was still saying some numbers were wrong I thought there
was a bug until I spotted a number where there shouldn't have been one
and another number incorrectly recognised. Very easy to correct and
I'm liking this app more the more I use it :)
Not sure if you can make the errors show up more? When I had all the
numbers green I thought it was OK but there was no 'Done' button. Now
I know I need to double check. not a major problem but just a thought.

Defiantly a 5* app!

[Chris Greening]

Version 1.3 has a message that says "Some of the numbers are wrong"

I've been trying to work out how to detect reliably which ones are wrong - it's easy enough to flag up numbers that break the rules of a sudoku puzzle - e.g. two 6s on the same row.

It's a bit more difficult to flag numbers that are just creating a puzzle that can't be solved. I haven't really come up with a good algorithm for it yet.

If you get any good images that should work well but don't then feel free to email them to me for investigation.

Cheers
Chris.

[billf]

Thanks for a great app and at a great price. Love the ability to grab
todays puzzle from my newspaper! Sudoku grab has replaced all my other
(& more expensive) Sudoku versions.

Anyway to business. From the various posts etc I understand that the
problem with the reset button being too easy to hit is fixed in 1.3.
However I have the same problem with the 'Hints' button. I keep
hitting it instead of the '9'. I understand though that, unlike the
'reset' button, it probably does belong on the main screen. Perhaps
you could change it so that you need to hold it for a short period to
activate, rather than just touching it. Alternatively perhaps you
could add a menu option to disable it.

My other suggestion, which I would personally find useful, is allowing
copying of cells with pencil notes in them to other cells (perhaps
this should wait for Apple's 'copy & paste' function). The reason I
would like this is that when I work a puzzle, I enter all the missing
numbers in a row in each empty cell on the row, then eliminate the
numbers from each of these cells that don't fit with the rest of the
puzzle. This feature would save me from repeating a load of typing. I
will understand if I'm a bit weird in the way I work and it's not
worth doing because nobody else would find this useful, but perhaps
enough people would use this type of feature to make it worth coding.
I would see it working similar to your 'sticky' numbers i.e. hold it
for a bit to activate and then touch another cell to copy it there.

Once again thanks for a version of Sudoku with such great (and unique)
features.

On 22 Mar, 19:01, Chris Greening <cmgreen...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Version 1.3 has a message that says "Some of the numbers are wrong"
>
> I've been trying to work out how to detect reliably which ones are wrong -
> it's easy enough to flag up numbers that break the rules of a sudoku puzzle
> - e.g. two 6s on the same row.
>
> It's a bit more difficult to flag numbers that are just creating a puzzle
> that can't be solved. I haven't really come up with a good algorithm for it
> yet.
>
> If you get any good images that should work well but don't then feel free to
> email them to me for investigation.
>
> Cheers
> Chris.
>

[Chris Greening]

Thanks!

I'm working on version 1.4 at the moment - I should be able to add an option to move the hint button to the menu.

The copy pencil cells is definitely doable - I'll see if I can do a simple drag and drop type thing - maybe for version 1.5. That might work quite well for entering numbers as well.

Cheers
Chris.

[Confucious]

Just got 1.3 :)

Looking good so far.

[Chris Greening]

Great. Let me know if you have any problems.

[bc]

What a great app!
Feature requests:
1) A playing interface like Phase 2 Media uses with Sudoku Unlimited.
Draggable/enlargeable/transparent popup for pencil notes is
very cool.
2) Skins, especially Newspaper.....
3) The ability to enter your own puzzle might be fun as well...

Anyhow, a fantastic app, many thanks!

Brian