Sudoku Addin for OneNote beta is available
Carlos Rivera has been working feverishly over the last few weeks to polish Sudoku for OneNote addin, and I'm proud to announce he has released his beta version today! You can get it here (the link is also below), or over at the codeplex site (www.codeplex.com/onom) if you want the code.
Remember, the purpose of this addin was to use object model code we have shared at the codeplex site above to see if it was "ready for prime time." I learned some lessons from this - namely, we need a lot more documentation, and some of the objects (like tables in this case) need some work. In spite of these needs, Carlos managed to put together quite a fun little addin which uses the OM!
To install, follow these steps:
- Exit OneNote completely (use task manager to verify it is not running, or reboot Windows if you are unsure)
- Run the setup program
- You may get prompted to install the .Net framework 3.5. It is needed for this addin.
- This took a l-o-n-g time for me for some reason, but it did eventually finish.
- You may need to reboot after installing the framework.
- Start OneNote
You will get 2 buttons on the standard toolbar now. "New Sudoku" makes a new 9x9 table of Sudoku for you and varies the complexity between hard, medium and easy. When you think you have a correct entry, you can press the "Check" button to verify. Excellent!
(If you click one of the buttons and it gets grayed out, verify you have the ".net programmability support" added for OneNote. In control panel \ programs, open the entry for Microsoft Office (or OneNote) and make sure the ".net programmability support" is checked under the OneNote entry.
There is room for improvement if anyone wants to jump in. Being able to choose the level of difficulty is obvious, and being able to convert inked answers to numerals before submission would be a great addition for tablet owners.
And some design considerations were raised on the OneNote side. For instance, each 3x3 square in a normal Sudoku puzzle is separated by darker lines than the rest of the cells, and that is not possible to do in OneNote. Also, if you have many addins installed, the Check and New Sudoku buttons may not be side by side.
If you want to test this, be sure to compare this implementation to the specification at http://www.codeplex.com/onom/WorkItem/View.aspx?WorkItemId=4345. Report bugs as Issues at the codeplex site!
Give it a whirl!
Questions, comments, concerns and criticisms always welcome,
John
