MJS - Mah Jongg Scorer
For the Psion 3a
Copyright by Phil Davidson

Introduction

I have been playing Mah Jongg for a number of years now, one of the
problems that our faced was that of keep score of a game.  We'd quickly
work out what each hand had scored, but it took quite a few minutes
on paper to work out the adjusted scores, and then to update the 
ongoing score for the whole game.

At that time, I was blessed with my first Psion.  I soon recognised
the potential for developing a small application that would allow
me to track the scoring of a Mah Jongg game.

Out of that need, came this application.


Overview

The MJS application does not calculate what an individual hand scores
i.e. you can't tell it that you've got 2 pongs of minor tiles and
a pong of dragons, and have it tell you what that scores.  We found
that using the psion for this did not in anyway speed up our play,
we can work out hand scores quite quickly.

What it can do though, is let you input the four hand scores, and
will work out who owes who what, it will make the appropriate
adjustements, and give you the resulting score, along with the new
total score for the whole game.

I have tried to make the interface as intuitive as possible, but no doubt there are areas that can be improved.

Other features include:

	- Save/Load facility
	- Enter Penalties scores
	- Display hand scores
	- Display total game score
	- Dual format display (toggle with diamond key)
	- Menu & Hotkey driven
	- Tracks which is the current wind
	- Tracks which player is East wind

The registered version adds the following features

Statistics database

	- number of games played
	- number of games won
	- average score
	- best hand score
	- best/worst game scores 
	- average number of mahjongs
	- % win rate
	- etc...

Future Developments

	- History facility - keep a history of past games, who won,
	  scores etc.
	- Anything you want to suggest that I can be bothered coding ;-)
	- Ability to customise settings.  e.g. starting score - I've
	  assumed and hard coded a starting score of zero for games.
	- No testing for 3c compatibility has been done
	- If someone gives me a Siena I'll have a go at re-coding for
	  the smaller display (he says hopefully ;-)


How to get MJS

	- I have posted the zip file containing all required files to
	  comp.binaries.psion
	- The binaries are not currently available on the web, or via
	  ftp - I'm working on that.
	- You can always email me at the address given below, and I
	  will email you a copy back.

Installation

Copy the files into the apps directory and install as normal.  


Known Bugs, areas for improvement etc.

	- The ICON is crap!  I know it, you know it, but I'm no
	  graphic artist. However I am working on getting a decent
	  icon.  If you have one you wish to donate, I'll be more
	  than happy to use it. 
	- Cannot escape out of dialog boxes.  Sloppy coding on my part,
	  but for the time being, escape will not cancel a dialog
	  box, if you hit escape, things will progress as
	  normal.  This means you could end up accidently entering
	  a zero score for players. (Hint: save the game after
	  each time you enter a round).
	- Error checking.  Again, sloppy on my part, I really need to
	  tighten the error checking - mostly on imputing values.
	  There is nothing here though that should spoil your
	  enjoyment.  I've been using this application for months
	  now and have never lost a game half way through.
	- The statistics screen (not available in the shareware version)
	  only displays about a dozen entries on the screen,
	  it crashes if you try to have more.  I need to implement a
	  paging/scrolling facility for the statistics screens/
	- The score display.  I quite like the default score display,
	  but that doesn't everyone else will.  If you've got
	  suggestions - send them in.



Registration and how to contact me

Registration will bring you an updatesd version of the application
that gives you all the functionality of the shareware version plus
the statistics database functionality.  In addition you will get
free bug patches, upgrades etc. as and when they become available.

Registration costs seven pounds sterling, or ten US dollars.

My news feed doesn't carry a lot of the psion newsgroups traffic,
so I'll probably miss anything you post to usenet.

You can get me at the following address

Phil Davidson
70 Telford Road
Edinburgh
EH3 7JA
Scotland
UK

fil@mojo.europe.dg.com
or
davidson@dial.pipex.com