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poslfit: poslwj

This web page briefly documents poslwj, a Perl script meeting the requirements of the National Scrabble Association for word judging (software self-lookup) software.

Installation

This documentation describes how to install poslwj for use with Apple's OS/X operating system. Other documentation may be written upon persistent request. Some reasonable fluency with system administration is expected of the reader.

First, download the script. Some browsers used to get confused about line break conventions with .pl files. If yours is one of those, then you might find it easier to download this identical copy of the script which pretends that it is a text file.

Then save it somewhere publicly accessible on your machine. We'll assume you save it as "/Applications/poslwj.pl", though on my own machine, it's "~/bin/poslwj".

For the sake of standalone robustness, we're going to try to make something as close to a "kiosk" environment as possible on your machine. Use the "Accounts" panel under "System Preferences" to create a new user whose "Limitations" are set to "Simple Finder", and specify that they are only allowed to use the "Terminal" application that should be in the "Utilities" subfolder of your "Applications" folder. We'll assume you call the account "poslwj"

Open up a Terminal window on an administrator account, and enter the following incantations:

chmod a+rx /Applications/poslwj.pl
sudo chsh -s /Applications/poslwj.pl poslwj

which tells the system that (1) anyone can run poslwj.pl, and (2) whenever you log on as account "poslwj", the only thing you're allowed to run in the Terminal window is poslwj.pl.

To test it, log on as "poslwj", click on the "My Applications" folder in the Dock, run Terminal (which should be the only visible app), Fiddle with the Terminal Window Settings until you get maximum legibility. I recommend 40 columns, 20 rows, and around 30-point type. Turning off the buffer is a good idea too, to prevent people from scrolling back to see past challenges. Don't forget to save those as default settings.

Usage

See Installation, above. Or try running it and following the prompts. There is no way to quit the program, other than to close its window or quit Terminal.