mirror of
https://git.zap.org.au/git/trader.git
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352 lines
15 KiB
Plaintext
352 lines
15 KiB
Plaintext
.. -*- mode: rst; coding: utf-8 -*-
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.. role:: filename(literal)
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.. default-role:: filename
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============================================
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Star Traders: A Game of Interstellar Trading
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============================================
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Star Traders is a simple game of interstellar trading, where the
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objective is to create companies, buy and sell shares, borrow and repay
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money, in order to become the wealthiest player (the winner).
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The following history is presented in reverse chronological order. If
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you would like to see a list of detailed changes to this project, you
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should browse the `Star Traders Git repository`__ on `The ZAP Group
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Australia web server`__.
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__ https://www.zap.org.au/git-browser/trader.git
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__ https://www.zap.org.au/
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.. contents::
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Version 7.18 (3rd August, 2022)
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-------------------------------
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Minor bug fix: remove the ``<icon>`` line from `trader.appdata.xml.in` so
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that the icon is taken from the `trader.desktop` file instead, otherwise
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Fedora builds fail with a message from ``appstream-util validate-relax``
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that “tag-invalid: stock icon is not valid [trader.svg]”.
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Version 7.17 (3rd August, 2022)
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-------------------------------
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Fixed two TOCTOU (time-of-check / time-of-use) bugs that arose between
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checking for the traditional data directory and creating a data directory
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later. Also fixed a bug when the ``HOME`` environment variable is empty:
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use the current directory instead.
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Updated the Brazilian Portuguese, Norwegian Bokmål, Swedish, French,
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Esperanto, Serbian, German and English translations (in that order), with
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thanks to Rafael Fontenelle, Johnny A. Solbu, Anders Jonsson, Frédéric
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Marchal, Felipe Castro, Мирослав Николић and Roland Illig respectively.
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Updated the minimum version of GNU Autoconf required, giving the option
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of compiling with C17 or C11 instead of C99. Updated to the latest
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snapshot of the Gnulib GNU Portability Library.
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Version 7.16 (19th January, 2021)
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---------------------------------
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Added code to allow the ``TEXTDOMAINDIR`` environment variable to specify
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where compiled translations are located. Updated the documentation to
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mention this new feature.
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Added an application metadata file that conforms to the AppStream 0.12
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specification. Updated all translations to suit, using parts of existing
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strings.
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Updated the German translation, with thanks to Mario Blättermann.
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Version 7.15 (12th January, 2021)
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---------------------------------
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Changed the default location where game files are saved from `~/.trader`
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to `~/.local/share/trader`, so as to follow the `XDG Base Directory
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Specification`__. If set to an absolute path, the ``XDG_DATA_HOME``
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environment variable will override this location. If the `~/.trader`
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directory is already present, it will continue to be used. Updated the
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manual page to suit.
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__ https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html
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Updated the Russian translation to use the uppercase polite singular
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forms «Вы» and «Ваш», as is customary in written documents.
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Updated to GNU Gettext 0.20 or later. Updated to the latest snapshot of
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the Gnulib GNU Portability Library. Also updated the `INSTALL` file to
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list the latest tested versions of operating systems, including a new
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listing for Haiku R1/beta2.
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Version 7.14 (9th January, 2020)
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--------------------------------
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Added the Brazilian Portuguese translation, with thanks to Rafael
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Fontenelle. Updated the French, Hungarian and Esperanto translations, in
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that order, with thanks to Frédéric Marchal, Balázs Úr and Felipe Castro.
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Updated to the latest snapshot of the Gnulib GNU Portability Library.
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Also updated the `INSTALL` file to list macOS 10.15 (Catalina) and the
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64-bit version of Cygwin under Microsoft Windows 10 as being tested
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platforms.
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Version 7.13 (13th November, 2019)
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----------------------------------
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Converted all text files to reStructuredText (ReST) format. This format
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is still quite readable as raw text, and is much more capable than the
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myriad all-slightly-incompatible variants of Markdown.
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Modified the source code to work more reliably on non-GNU C Library
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(``glibc``) platforms, particularly FreeBSD, Solaris and Cygwin, when
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using the standard POSIX locale. Extensively tested the build procedure
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on multiple operating systems and compilers, and submitted code upstream
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to the Autoconf Archive project to make this work more robustly. Listed
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tested operating system and compiler combinations in the `INSTALL` file.
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Updated the Esperanto translation, with thanks to Felipe Castro.
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Updated one string in the game for consistency with other labels; updated
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all PO translations to suit. Also added strings from obsolete versions
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of the GNU C Library so that Star Traders can provide translations for
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them.
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Updated to the latest snapshot of the Gnulib GNU Portability Library. In
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addition, updated the list of prerequisites in the `INSTALL` file and
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listed some more command line options for the ``configure`` script.
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Version 7.12 (24th August, 2017)
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--------------------------------
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Updated the Serbian translation, with thanks to Мирослав Николић.
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Version 7.11 (18th June, 2017)
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------------------------------
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Bug fix: some architectures (such as ARM, PowerPC and S390) treat
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:code:`char` as :code:`unsigned char`, and this caused
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:code:`b64decode()` to fail while loading a saved game. Changed the
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relevant type from :code:`char` to :code:`int` to fix this.
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Version 7.10 (2nd June, 2017)
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-----------------------------
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Added a `data` directory that contains a desktop file and appropriate
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icons. Adjusted the game constants for more dynamic play: allow the
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share prices and returns to change a bit more frequently and more
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rapidly. Tweaked the colours in the example monochrome retro-computing
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command lines, including adding an amber monitor version.
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Added a Serbian translation, with thanks to Мирослав Николић. Updated
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the Danish, French, Swedish, Hungarian, Norwegian Bokmål and German
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translations, in that order, with thanks to Joe Hansen, Frédéric Marchal,
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Anders Jonsson, Balázs Úr, Johnny A. Solbu and Philipp Thomas
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respectively.
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Updated translatable strings to overcome a limitation of ``msgfmt``\(1):
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if a string starts or ends with a new-line character, its translation
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must do so as well. This has an impact on labels in particular. Also
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changed the help text string “Page *N* of *M*” to allow translations of
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the form “Of *M* pages, this is page *N*”, and all quoted strings using
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the obsolete GNU form ```like this'`` to ``'this'``. In addition, newer
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versions of `lib/getopt.c` have different strings. All translations have
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been updated as a result.
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Removed the obsolete Gnulib ``gettext`` module and updated to the latest
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Git snapshot of Gnulib. Updated the dependency version numbers for
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Autoconf, Automake and Gettext. Also updated all macros from the
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Autoconf Archive.
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Migrated the source code repository from Subversion to Git. Updated the
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documentation to suit, and also listed specific required version numbers
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for the Autoconf and Automake tools in the `INSTALL` file.
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Version 7.9 (5th January, 2016)
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-------------------------------
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Updated the Danish translation, with thanks to Joe Hansen.
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Version 7.8 (10th September, 2015)
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----------------------------------
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Changed the name of the seventh company from “Gemeni Inc” to “Gemini
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Inc”: a spelling mistake that has been present since 1990! Special
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thanks to Anders Jonsson for pointing this out.
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Added the Swedish translation, with thanks to Anders Jonsson. Minor code
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changes were made to accommodate this language. Incorporated changes
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made by the translators for German, French and Norwegian Bokmål, in that
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order, with thanks to Philipp Thomas, Frédéric Marchal and
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Johnny A. Solbu. Also updated all references to GNU Gettext to version
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0.19.5.
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Version 7.7 (18th August, 2015)
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-------------------------------
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Added the Hungarian translation, with thanks to Balázs Úr. Minor code
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changes were made to accommodate this language. Also added documentation
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in the file `INSTALL` to translate Star Traders into another language.
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Version 7.6 (13th August, 2014)
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-------------------------------
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A minor release to fix compilation bugs under Cygwin: the ``libiconv``
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library must be listed *after* the GNU Portability Library on that
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platform.
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In addition, the minimum and maximum share return values were changed
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from -10% to -15% and 20% to 25% respectively. This gives more incentive
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to borrow money from the Interstellar Trading Bank, whose interest rate
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can reach a maximum of 20%.
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Version 7.5 (24th May, 2014)
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----------------------------
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Rewrote the file input and output routines so that saved games are now
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stored in a much more reliable (scrambled) ASCII format. However, saved
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games from older versions will no longer load: the workaround is to start
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the older version of Star Traders with the ``--dont-encrypt`` command
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line option, load the relevant game and save it again straight away,
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change the second line in the game file from “``File API 7.2``” to
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“``File API 7.5``”, then run the new version of Star Traders.
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Added translations for Norwegian Bokmål, Danish and Esperanto (in that
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order), with thanks to Johnny A. Solbu, Joe Hansen and Felipe Castro.
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Updated auxiliary files to the latest versions available from the Gnulib
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GNU Portability Library and the GNU Autoconf project.
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Version 7.4 (9th May, 2012)
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---------------------------
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For the first time since the CP/M-80 version of Star Traders, the game
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algorithms have been carefully reviewed and revised. In particular,
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companies may now have negative returns, making players lose money on
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such shares. This may encourage players to use the “Sell shares” option
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at appropriate times… In addition, changes in share prices, returns and
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bank interest rates have been made much “smoother”, less prone to wild
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variations. These new algorithms were first modelled using Gnuplot and
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Perl before being implemented in C.
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The ``configure`` script now prints a prominent warning if a
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wide-character version of Curses, such as NcursesW, is not available when
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compiling the game. It is a warning and not an error as single-byte
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locales (such as US-ASCII and ISO8859-1) do not require NcursesW, even if
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the compilation environment itself is a multibyte one (such as UTF-8).
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The Russian translation has been updated, with thanks to Vladimir Tsarkov
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and Pavel Maryanov. Translations for French, German, Finnish and
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Croatian have been added (in that order), with thanks to Frédéric
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Marchal, Philipp Thomas, Jorma Karvonen and Tomislav Krznar. Special
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thanks also to the Translation Project, which brings free (open-source)
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software developers and translators together.
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Version 7.3 (16th March, 2012)
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------------------------------
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Star Traders has been translated into Russian. In addition, a number of
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bugs with internationalisation have been fixed. The “default value” key
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(originally “``=``” or “``;``” as the first key-press in any input field)
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has been incorporated into the language translation files.
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Version 7.2 (29th August, 2011)
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-------------------------------
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Star Traders has been internationalised! As part of this update, all
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input and output routines have been rewritten to handle multibyte
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strings. English (Australian, British, Canadian and US) translations
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have been included. Translations for other languages (and corrections to
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existing languages) are more than welcome!
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Game files are now stored in UTF-8 format (once decrypted!) and can be
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loaded under any locale with automatic character set translation. This
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does mean, however, that game files from versions 7.0 and 7.1 of Star
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Traders will not load under this release.
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The program now better handles terminal resizing events (for versions of
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Curses supporting such events). It also tries to restore the terminal
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environment correctly when receiving a terminating signal.
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Version 7.1 (29th July, 2011)
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-----------------------------
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A minor updated release to fix configuration problems on some platforms.
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In particular, some systems could not find the Curses libraries or header
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files, so the Autoconf macro that performed the search was rewritten and
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extended.
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Version 7.0 (25th July, 2011)
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-----------------------------
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Released the first version of Star Traders for Unix-like operating
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systems such as Linux. It requires a text console or window of at least
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80×24 in size. The code is written in the C99 programming language as a
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learning exercise for a number of software tools and libraries; the
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algorithms in the original Pascal and Visual Basic versions are reused
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for the game logic.
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Note that versions 7.0 and 7.1 of Star Traders did *not* handle locales
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with multibyte character sequences (such as UTF-8) correctly. Each byte
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in a such a sequence was treated as a separate character. Eight-bit
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locales (such as US-ASCII, ISO8859-1, etc.) worked correctly.
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Early history
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-------------
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The original (and very primitive) Star Traders game was written by S. J.
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Singer in 1984 using Altair Basic. This was modified for Microsoft Basic
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(MBASIC) running under the CP/M-80 operating system by John Zaitseff and
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released on 7th March, 1988.
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Star Traders was then completely rewritten in 1990 for the
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Australian-designed 8-bit MicroBee computer running CP/M-80 on a Zilog
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Z80 processor, using Turbo Pascal 3.01a. Essentially, only the name of
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the game and some of the ideas were retained in this version. Version
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4.1 of Star Traders was released on 1st August, 1991.
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In 1992, it was recompiled for the NEC Advanced Personal Computer (with
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8-inch floppy drives!) running CP/M-86 on an 8086 processor, using Turbo
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Pascal 2.0. This version had colour added to it in the form of ANSI
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escape sequences; version 4.4 was released on 2nd August, 1993.
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The next version came in 1993, when the program was recompiled to run on
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IBM-compatible machines running MS-DOS and ANSI.SYS. Turbo Pascal 6.0
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was used for this. The ANSI escape sequences were slightly different
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under MS-DOS than under the NEC, in that the NEC supported a number of
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extra character attributes. In other words, the MS-DOS version looked
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worse than the one running under CP/M-86!
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Star Traders was recompiled again in 1994 for IBM-compatible machines
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with VGA/EGA/CGA video graphics adapters. The output routines were
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recoded to use a “windowed” look. Borland Pascal 7.0 was used for this
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purpose, along with a number of text window manipulation modules.
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Version 5.4 was released on 1st June, 1994.
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In 1995, Star Traders was completely rewritten for the 16-bit Microsoft
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Windows 3.1 graphical environment. Microsoft Visual Basic 3.0 was used
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for this purpose. Although completely rewritten, the original algorithms
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were reused from previous versions. Version 6.0 of the game was released
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on 15th September, 1995.
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Star Traders was then to languish until almost 16 years later…
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