To-do!

This log holds my list of desired improvements to the LatinSquares web hierarchy. Do let me know if you've got suggestions for priorities.

• Explanations. A description of the algorithm used to obtain the uniqueness of solutions. The single statement, "... chosen uniformly at random from among all such...", bears explanation.
• Applets. Several applet applications come to mind. A simple solver -- enter the puzzle in some way, and click for a solution -- would be a help, as would a hint-generating facility. The next step is a complete, timed, scorekeeping "game" applet, along the lines of the lovely Pogo Jumble[tm] puzzles on Netscape's page. Finally, one reader has suggested a competitive two-player applet, along the lines of the old paper-and-pencil game Battleship.
• Bookkeeping. My archive of all possible puzzles is, in principle, complete. Currently, the puzzles displayed are chosen at random from among approximately half the total number. Some considerable bookkeeping effort -- a free weekend, say -- will be required to catalog the entire library of solutions. (10/3: I've made a lot of progress; look for results soon.)
  • Number of tilings: 15551
  • Number of settings per tiling: typically 100,000
  • Total number of puzzles: approximately half a billion (6 CD-ROMs)
• Expansion. Is anyone interested in 7x7? Surely we can't generate all of them; but perhaps some examples would be interesting. A preliminary question is how many distinct tilings to consider.
• Backgrounds. It's boring to see plain white on these pages. I'd like to do a PostScript thing with a collage of greyed-out tilted partially-completed puzzles.
• Colors. It's not hard to display each letter in its own color. The pdf especially would benefit. One reader routinely loads up the pdf into Adobe Illustrator and solves from there -- one stroke and you've got a nice large page and plenty of room for annotations.
• Layout. There are a few layout bugs that should get fixed.
  • The font doesn't reproduce well into pdf. I'm using "Narrow Bold Helvetica." Would Bold Helvetica look as good? Normal face looks wimpy to me.
  • Some readers complain that there isn't enough contrast between thin and thick lines.
  • The wording of the instructions is still getting mulled over. How do you feel about the suggestion "no guessing"?
  • Should I produce an HTML version of the puzzle? This shouldn't be too hard, though I don't know how to deal with all those lines and the micropositioning of text in HTML.
• Solutions. Should the published pages have solutions available, perhaps after a few days?
• Archives. Does anyone care about archives of older puzzles?
• Merchandising. One idea is pads of paper, each with a different puzzle.
• Links. I've found several links, some to puzzles, and some to other Latin-squares applications (biological experiment design, for example).

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