13 December 2005
Version 2.6 of Sudoku has been released. This is mainly for those who don't like the bold pencil marks, but also has a few other improvements:
- Added a configuration option to control whether pencil marks are shown in a bold font or not. It's on the Colours tab of the options form.
- Speeded up the identification of forcing chains.
- Slightly modified the colouring solver to check for contradictions before double-exclusions.
- Modified the grading function so that the grade form is visible while the puzzle is being graded. This makes it more obvious that something is happening if the puzzle takes some time to solve.
- Corrected a bug that caused automatic pencil marks to not be calculated when opening a new puzzle.
9 December 2005
Version 2.5 of Sudoku has been released. This has the following changes:
- Added ability to paste puzzle text containing candidate lists of the form (348)(346)(469)(7)(2)(1)(5)(389)(39) or (348)(346)(469)7215(389)(39) and other variations, that use any of the brackets (), {} or [] to surround the candidates and/or cell content.
- Improved the forcing chain mechanism so that it now identifies both chains. For a very few puzzles, this can adversely affect the solving speed.
- When copying the puzzle text to the clipboard, the format is now configurable.
- The Control and Alt keys now allow the entering of a big number when the pencil-mark button is down, and vice versa. (Previously, the control key alone would allow entry of a pencil-mark when the big-number button was selected, but not the other way around.)
- Disabled single-step and ten-step actions if the allowed solving techniques includes trial and error. This is because the board could be left in an inconsistent state after the allowed number of steps.
- Modified the number selector so you can also select the cell colour.
- Reduced the flicker of the number selector when double-clicking a cell with a single candidate.
- Pencil marks are now shown in bold font.
- Fixed a bug that could sometimes prevent a colouring chain being listed when two apparently separate chains are joined because they are mutually exclusive.
- User colours are now saved to file, and so are loaded back in with the puzzle.
- User colour operations are now added to the undo stack, meaning they can be undone.
- When undoing a step, the selected cell remains selected.
- Corrected a bug that could result in many cells being reported as forming a Swordfish. (The swordfish was correctly found, but incorrectly reported.)
- Corrected a bug that could prevent XWings or swordfish from being found.
24 October 2005
Version 2.4.1 of Sudoku has been released. This is a minor fix to remove the pink background to the number selector when running on Windows 95, 98, NT4 or ME.
20 October 2005
Version 3.1 of Search has been released. This fixes a Windows bug that says file extensions match when they don't.
17 October 2005
Version 2.4 of Sudoku has been released. This has the following changes:
- Implemented optical character recognition (OCR). It's not perfect, but it does a reasonable job on many images. Simply open, or drag and drop an image file containing Sudoku puzzles, or you can also paste images from the clipboard. If the OCR finds a single puzzle, it will be imported. If the image contains several puzzles, you can select the one you want to import. It the OCR doesn't find a puzzle, you can help it by selecting the puzzle within the image - this is usually when the puzzle forms only a small part of the overall image. The OCR isn't perfect, so please check the imported puzzle against the original image.
- Added a new number selector. For those who prefer to use the mouse, this is much slicker than the pop-up menus. Left click for a big number, and right-click for a pencil mark. For those that prefer the pop-up menu, the selector can be disabled from the Options dialog. And of course, the keyboard can still be used.
- Added a menu option to save the puzzle as an image file - PNG, GIF, JPG or BMP formats are supported.
- Added a menu option to copy the puzzle to the clipboard as an image.
- The "effects" display now reflects the current state of the pencil marks, rather than the simple effects of numbers already present. This means the effects are updated as you eliminate cell candidates.
- When opening a file with "auto-calculate pencil marks" enabled, the pencil marks are only calculated if none are already present. This prevents any manually adjusted pencil marks in the file from being overwritten by the auto-calculated ones.
1 October 2005
Version 1.4 of Fives and Threes has been released. The only change is that main window can now be resized. More »
26 September 2005
Version 2.3 of Sudoku has been released. This has the following changes:
- support for manual colouring,
- no longer resets the pencil marks for each press of the "Solve" buttons,
- single-stepping will indicate which cell was filled,
- the internal log viewer can remain open while the puzzle is solved.
20 August 2005
Version 2.2 of Sudoku has been released. This version again has improved puzzle generation time, a new solving technique "colouring", and configurable format for reporting cell coordinates.
2 August 2005
Version 2.1 of Sudoku has been released. This version has improved puzzle generation time, and a change to some of the solving technique terminology.
1 August 2005
Two new demos have been added to TResourceAllocationChart. They show different examples of owner-drawn date/time labels.
28 July 2005
Version 2.0 of Sudoku has been released. This now has the ability to create puzzles based on a required level of difficulty, or on the techniques required to solve it. See the history.txt after installation to see details of the other improvements.
4 July 2005
Version 1.9 of Sudoku has been released. This has a new solving method - "forcing chains", as well as the re-instated trial-and-error method used when all others fail. It can also count the number of solutions, and show you each one.
1 July 2005
Version 1.8 of Sudoku has been released. This version has been optimised to solve much faster. It also gives you control over which solving techniques are used, has better number highlighting, and a few other bells and whistles have been added.
18 June 2005
Version 1.7 of Sudoku has been released. It now has full undo/redo capability, and can optionally automatically update the pencil marks after entering numbers.
17 June 2005
Version 3.0 of Search has been released, all registered users should have received notification via email. This has an internal editor that highlights the matched strings and/or lines, and can open the matched files in any associated applications. It can also be integrated into the Windows shell. See the history.txt in the download for full details of the improvements.
13 June 2005
A new version of the TControlSizer Delphi component has been released. This version has an additional property that causes the move and/or resize operation to be limited to the parent's client rect.
10 June 2005
Version 1.6 of Sudoku has been released. This version has more configuration options and a slightly improved user-interface.
24 May 2005
Version 1.5 of Sudoku has been released. This version has a new solving technique, that is similar to the previously implemented disjoint subset technique, but opposite. Kind of.
13 May 2005
Version 1.4 of Sudoku has been released. But I'm afraid it's not all good news; from this version onwards, Sudoku is no longer free. It's only almost free at a very affordable $11.95.
12 May 2005
A new demo has been added to TResourceAllocationChart. This one demonstrates how to print a chart and also implements a simple print preview.
10 May 2005
Version 1.3 of Sudoku has been released. This version corrects a bug that could prevent pencil marks from being saved occasionally, and has some minor improvements to the user interface.
6 May 2005
Version 1.2 of Sudoku has been released. This version has some improvements that allow for easier entering of the puzzle clues.
26 April 2005
Version 1.1 of Sudoku has been released. This version addresses a minor bug that could prevent a solution being found in some circumstances.
16 April 2005
All our products are now supplied in self-extracting setup programs, instead of setup kits packaged in zip files. This should simplify the install process, and, since the new setup programs are considerably smaller, the application-only zip files have been discontinued.
15 April 2005
A new demo has been added to TResourceAllocationChart. This one shows how to display bitmaps instead of the resource name.
10 April 2005
We now have an RSS feed to make it easier for you to keep up with changes to SadMan Software applications and the web site, without having to check back regularly. Add this URL to your news aggregator
sadmansoftware.com/rss.xml, or copy the URL from the image.
1 April 2005
The web site has been redesigned, and now makes extensive use of CSS. It's the way to go. It should be far easier to maintain, and perhaps a little easier on the eye too. If you spot any glitches, please let me know along with the particulars of your browser - thanks.
30 March 2005
Version 3.0 of Search is in beta release - you're welcome to try it. This has an internal editor that highlights the matched strings and/or lines, and can open the matched files in any associated applications. It can also be integrated into the Windows shell. See the history.txt in the download for full details of the improvements. All registered users will receive an email when the final version is ready.
19 March 2005
I heard about Sudoku puzzles on a BBC Radio 4 program. This intrigued me enough to write my own program to solve, or simply assist in the solving, these fascinating puzzles. This is still a work in progress and is liable to be updated occasionally for some time yet.
28 February 2005
Version 2.13 of TResourceAllocationChart has been released. See the component history page, (or History.Txt in the download package) for full details of the changes. Registered users should have already received the latest source code by email - if not, please contact us.
31 January 2005
XChangeCL has been updated to be slightly more efficient when working with large files, and to report individual steps during the processing of each file.
31 January 2005
XChange has been updated to be slightly more efficient when working with large files.
