CREATIVE BINGO 1.0
October 2010
By Lis / staranise.dreamwidth.org
This program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License. It can be freely edited and redistributed, but you cannot profit off it.
I. About this project
1. Background and purpose
2.
II. HOW TO USE THIS PROGRAM
1. Getting it to run
2. Editing it
3. All I want to do is add prompts!
I. About this project
1. Background and purpose
2. Future plans, bugs, and development
For years creators of fanworks like fanart, fanfiction, and fannish vids have been performing "bingo" challenges, where participants are assigned a five-by-five square with different promps. They then try to score a bingo by getting a line, blackout, or other arrangement by creating something for each prompt.
This process has been quite tedious. Various challenge organizers have used random number generators or simply picked prompts off a list to assign them, and have then typed the prompts into an image file of the card or hand-coded them into HTML. Producing cards has been labour-intensive and time-consuming.
This project's aim is to make bingo cards quick and easy to create. This will reduce the work challenge organizers have to do. It was written in Perl by someone with a month of an introductory computer science under her belt.
It is also hoped that making HTML cards quick and easy will discourage the use of images for bingo cards. A person with visibility impairments or someone who uses a screenreader cannot easily tell what is written on an image for a bingo card, which makes it harder for them to participate in and run such challenges.
This project is extensively (some might think, excessively) documented and commented. It is intended for use by those with no knowledge of coding. The documentation is intended to give them the tools they need to run and edit according to their needs.
2. Future plans, bugs, and development
I want to implement a number of new features, especially a web interface that makes the program accessible to more people. If you have ideas for new features, spot a bug, or come up with an improvement, email me at staranise@dreamwidth.org or go to the project's Sourceforge page at https://sourceforge.net/projects/creativebingo/
II. HOW TO USE THIS PROGRAM
1. Getting it to run
i) Your computer will need Perl on it. Most modern Macs come with Perl pre-loaded. If you do not have it pre-loaded, you can download it from http://www.activestate.com/activeperl/downloads
ii) Use the Terminal or Command prompt. In Windows, this is called the Command Prompt and its file name is cmd.exe. In Windows XP or older, select "Run" from the Start Bar and type in "cmd.exe". On Vista or newer, type "cmd.exe" into the program search in the Start Bar and hit enter. On a Mac, it is called "Terminal". Use Finder to locate it.
iii) Locate and run your file. To make this process easy, store you file somewhere easy to get to.
* On Windows, type "dir" to display the contents of your current directory. See if your file (bingo.pl) is on that list. If it is not, select the folder where your file is and type "cd foldername". If it is in a subfolder, you will have to repeat this process. If you get lost, type "cd .." to back up. Once you find the file in your "dir" list, type the command to run the perl file. This means typing "perl bingo.pl".
*On a Mac or Linux machine, type "ls" to display the contents of your current directory. See if your file (bingo.pl) is on that list. If it is not, select the folder where your file is and type "cd foldername". If it is in a subfolder, you will have to repeat this process. If you get lost, type "cd .." to back up. Once you find the file in your "ls" list, type the command to run the perl file. This means typing "perl bingo.pl".
iv) Sometimes the program will entirely snarl up. If this happens, try closing the Terminal/Command prompt and starting over. If the problem persists, please email me at staranise@dreamwidth.org
2. Editing it
i) Editing a program is done through a text editor. Mac's Text Editor is not bad, while Windows's Notepad tends to leave a path of broken code in its wake. Two free programs designed specifically for writing and editing code are Komodo Edit and Notepad ++.
ii) In your text editor, open the .pl file and read through the code. The comments are anything written after a pound sign: #. They are intended to explain the program to the user. Some areas are bookended with =pod and =cut. If =pod and =cut are removed, they become functioning parts of the program. For example, to begin with the program only uses one list of prompts. The code that allows for multiple lists is surrounded by =pod and =cut, and it can be activated using instructions in the program's comments.
iii) deserves its own heading.
3. All I want to do is add prompts!
This will be the very simplest thing you do: inserting a list of prompts to make bingo cards with.
First, format your prompts. Prompts have to be surrounded by quotation marks (but not smart quotes), and separated by commas. This is acceptable:
"prompt 1", "prompt 2", "prompt 3"
Prompts can contain HTML, but use your discretion. It might not show up how you want it to show up. Prompts can also be separated by a new line as well as a comma:
"prompt 1",
"prompt 2",
"prompt 3"
Make sure you have enough prompts to completely fill your bingo card! Once that's done, you can add them to your program. Now, open the file in your text editor.
The VERY FIRST LINE of actual code after the title is this:
my @prompts; #This is the list that, while in the program, will hold all the prompts you want
@prompts=();
You add the prompts in the parentheses. Let's look at that again:
@prompts=(PROMPTS GO RIGHT HERE);
Either of these is appropriate:
@prompts=("prompt 1", "prompt 2", "prompt 3");
@prompts=("prompt 1",
"prompt 2",
"prompt 3");
