*** XQUARTO version 2.5 - July 2000 ***

Description:
------------
Xquarto is a board game designed for the X windows environment.
The game is a two-player game, although for the moment,it
is only possible to play against the computer. The board is
composed of 4x4 squares and 16 pieces. Each piece has four 
properties: black or brown, horizontal or vertical, solid or hollow,
round or square. This makes up 16 possible combinations and there
is exactly one piece for each possibility.

Initially, the board is empty and it is successively filled with
pieces. The game is over when a row, a column or a diagonal
has four pieces carrying a common property in it, e.g. four
black (brown) pieces, four square (round) pieces, four filled
(hollow) pieces, four horizontal (vertical) pieces. In the original
quarto rules, the player who is the first to complete a row, column
or diagonal as described above wins. This is the implicit mode under
which xquarto runs. A variant of the game (tic rules) consists rather
of avoiding alignments, i.e. the player who is forced to complete
an alignment loses.

The game is a two-player game. Player 1 chooses one of the 16
pieces. Player 2 then places this piece on one of the 16 squares of
the board and chooses a piece out of the remaining 15 pieces which he
gives to player 1, who places this piece on one of the remaining 15
squares on the board, etc...

Xquarto supports three different player combinations: human vs
computer, computer vs human and human vs human (possibly through the
local network in the latter case). The default combination is human vs
computer, i.e. the human player starts the game against the
computer. This can be changed by clicking on the "Actions" menu (see
below for more details).

The rules are really very simple - believe me!

In any case, there is a more extensive description of the rules
in the manual file src/xquarto.man in the distribution directory.
To read the manual without installing it, try nroff -man xquarto.man

Requirements:
-------------
To install and play the game you need:

1) The XPM library, installed at a reasonable place. If you don't
   have it you can get it at many anonymous ftp sites.

2) A Color X display and the MIT X11 Server. X11R6 might be necessary.

3) xmkmf/imake correctly installed and in your path.

Versions:
---------
Xquarto 1.0: January 1998, by 
   Mattias Jonsson, mattiasj@umich.edu
   Department of Mathematics
   University of Michigan
   Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1109
   USA
(main author)

Xquarto 2.*: July 2000, by 
   Jean-Pierre Demailly
   Universit\'e de Grenoble I
   demailly@fourier.ujf-grenoble.fr
(UI improvements, network features, internationalization)


Where to get these:
-------------------

* Version 1.0: at the home page of the main author:
http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~mattiasj/games/xquarto/

* Versions 2.x: at the Grenoble Educational Linux site:
ftp://ftp.ac-grenoble.fr/ge/educational_games


Platforms:
----------
Xquarto has been tested on a number of platforms, including

SUN SparcStation with SUNOS 4.1.3 and Solaris 2.5

I have tried to design the program and the installation files 
in a machine-independent way. No guarantee, though :-(


Installation:
-------------
First you have to unpack the software. The distribution comes in two files:

xquarto-2.5.tar.gz  -  GNU gzipped tar file. Unpack/-tar with:
	               zcat xquarto-2.5.tar.gz | tar xfv -

After untarring you will get a directory called xquarto-2.5 containing all the
relevant files. Now begin the installation and start by reading the
file INSTALL. Hopefully everything works out fine :-)


Usage:
------
If the installation works out fine you can just start the game by entering
"xquarto" if you have the appropriate directory (e.g. /usr/local/X11/bin)
in your path. Otherwise, step into the directory xquarto/src and type
"xquarto".There is the usual hassle with the X11 colormap, unless you
have much more than 256 colors. You may notice this if you are running
e.g. netscape.


Thanks:
-------
I want to thank Karl-Johan Johnsson for helping me with the 
Xt/Xaw-programming and everyone responsible for excellent libraries
such as XPM.

Licence:
--------
GPL, see enclosed file COPYING 

Comments etc.:
--------------
Any suggestions, bug reports, complaints etc. should be sent to
the authors. Feedback is appreciated!
