Specifying oxyd shuffling patterns, was: [Enigma-devel] Level "Crossfire in the making"

[Johannes Hüsing]

The spec you linked to seemed less complete than the one you
posted before, so I think this is the more recent version:

Am 13.04.2008 um 19:37 schrieb Ronald Lamprecht:
> > > > To guarantee fair distributions and levels that are solvable the
> > > > author can declare minimum and maximum conditions and groups of
> > > > oxyds like:
> > > >
> > > > wo:shuffleOxyd({grp1, max=0}, {grp1, grp2, min=2},    {grp1, grp3, 
> > > > min=1, max=1})
> > > >
> > > > As a shortcut groups of oxyds can be declared to be positioned 
> > > > either
> > > > circular or linear. This declaration expands to all rules necessary 
> > > > to
> > > > avoid any neighbour oxyd pairs.
> > > >
> > > > wo:shuffleOxyd({grp(ox1, ox2, ox3, ox4, ox5, ox6), circular=true},
> > > >    {grp2, linear=true})

I am not getting what you are driving at here.

There are several ways to restrict permutations. A more obvious one 
would be
to block the permutation, i.e. to form subgroups within which free 
permutation
is allowed. I don't know if this is what you mean by "groups".

Another method, but in most cases unfeasible, would be to list all 
admissible
permutations.

A more geeky one would be to list the elements of a generating system
of the permutation group, if the set of admissible permutations is a 
group.

What do you mean my maximum and minimum conditions? Are these the
maximum and minimum number of oxyd pairs in each group? It may be
unfortunate to formulate restrictions on permutations without a 
construction
rule -- the proportion of admissible arrangements may be so small that
one cannot rely on reshuffling until conditions are met.

What do you mean by linear and circular groups?

> Even though I agree with you, that solving is more important than the 
> time itself, I nearly missed the clue of your level.

You mean "the salient point" as in "der Clou des Levels"?

Maybe I'll just leave out shuffling until the new API is done.

Many thanks for sharing your thoughts.