-*- text -*-
-+--------+-----------------*-
-+-  HangIt for DOS/Linux  -+-
-+- By Michael Olson et al -+-
-*--------------------------*-


DESCRIPTION:
------------
  This program is a hangman game, based on that fun game that most of
you have probably played on the chalkboard to kill time during 
school.  It tries to recreate this simple environment by using white on
black graphics and simple text-based art.  One of the goals of this
project is portability, which means that it not only works with the
best operating system ever made, Linux, but also with the ever-popular
dos/windows operating system.


FEATURES:
---------
- Categorical lists of words, like 'Star Wars names' and different
  levels of difficulty.
- 1 Player or 2 Player mode (soon).
- External word database (soon).


LICENSE:
--------
  This program is available under the terms of the GNU General Public
License, see 'COPYING' for more info.  Basically it means that you
may use the program freely and copy freely, giving the same rights to
those after you as I am giving you.


INSTALLATION:
-------------
  If you are concerned with building the code or installing the
program from Linux, please see 'INSTALL'.


HISTORY:
--------
  HangIt started its life as a simple hangman clone based primarily on
a version of hangman made in the Python programming language by Sverre
Nilsen.  I (Mike Olson) ported it to C in order to fulfill a project
requirement in my Programming 3 class in high school.  A few students
in the class have been helpful in looking at the code, but they had
their own projects to look after.  Happily, my programming teacher is
allowing me to continue in the development of HangIt instead of having
to turn in all this incomplete code.  I am trying to 'do it right' by
getting all the bugs sifted out, using 'makefiles', and allowing for
easy cross-platform use.  Eventually HangIt will even have its own web
page, when I get the most pressing bugs ironed out.

  See 'ChangeLog' for specific changes made to the source code.
'NEWS' contains changes that the user can appreciate.


VERSIONS:
---------

Stable: v0.5.0
Devel:  v0.5.0


BUGS:
-----
  See 'BUGS' for user-visible buglist.


FUTURE:
-------
During v0.5.x (devel):
  - Fix all inconveniences listed in BUGS.
  - Make interface more intuitive.
  - Improve the custom 'snprintf' routine with some glibc source.
  + Improve web documentation.
  - 2 PLAYER MODE!
  - Introduce to my homebase class for their input.
  - Apply changes suggested from ncurses tutorial (specifically,
    allow for terminal to be resized).


HOW CAN YOU CONTRIBUTE?
-----------------------
Developers:
- 'TODO' is a list of current needs that this project has.
- If you wish to support the hangit project with source code:
  + E-mail me at <bigmike160@yahoo.com> with a zip file, gz file, bz2
    file, tar file, whatever.  I usually check my e-mail about once
    every 2 or 3 days.
  + Add your name and e-mail address to the AUTHORS file in your
    modified version's folder (if it's not there already).
  + Modify the THANKS file in your folder to give a shout out
    to whoever you want.
  + Please describe the version that you downloaded to work on, so I
    know what to compare the changes against.
  + Please log your changes in the 'ChangeLog' file. This will also
    be a great help to me!

Users:
- Send in bug reports / beta test info if you desire to via e-mail.


THANKS GO OUT TO:
-----------------
See the 'THANKS' file for outpourings of gratitude.


CONTACT INFO:
-------------
Maintainer - Michael Olson <bigmike160@yahoo.com>
See 'AUTHORS' for the rest of them.

New releases will appear at <http://sourceforge.net/projects/hangit>.

A web page is available at <http://hangit.sourceforge.net>.
