Try it out; if you like what it does, US$149.00 (excl. tax\/GST) will buy you a license for a year, allowing you to generate an unlimited amount of unique, copyright-free puzzles.<\/p>\n
We provide optional customization services too:<\/p>\n
- \n
- We can assist you with customization and integration of this functionality into an existing workflow<\/li>\n
- We can build custom template layouts for you<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Please send your customization requests to\u00a0sales@rorohiko.com<\/a><\/p>\n
On top of being an able Sudoku puzzle generator, SudokuGenerator<\/em> offers a the following additional features:<\/em><\/p>\n
- \n
- Generates symmetrical puzzles (user-selectable symmetry: horizontal, vertical, diagonal, or a combination thereof).<\/li>\n
- Generation of multiple puzzles<\/li>\n
- Can generate 6×6 and 16×16 Sudoku<\/li>\n
- Can generate Sudoku using different glyphs instead of\u00a01<\/em> to\u00a09<\/em>.<\/li>\n
- Can optionally ‘cover’ the non-hint cells with a frame, instead of leaving them white.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The generated Sudoku are stored in two InDesign tables – one with the pattern of digits or glyphs, and another one ‘in front’ which obscures some of the solution.<\/p>\n
The solution to the puzzle is provided in a separate solution frame. Alternatively, you can also expose the solution by removing the frontmost ‘obscuring’ table.<\/p>\n
This is a symmetrical Sudoku generated using the default style of one of the provided template files:<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rorohiko.com\/lightningsudoku\/puzzle.gif\")
<\/p>\nInteresting detail: It consists of two tables piled on top of each other; the top one has some transparent cells and some opaque cells. You can move the top table away:<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rorohiko.com\/lightningsudoku\/reveal.gif\")
<\/p>\nUnderneath is the complete solution:<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rorohiko.com\/lightningsudoku\/solution.gif\")
<\/p>\n<\/a><\/h3>\n
Install<\/strong><\/p>\n
The complete set of three plug-ins allows the automated creation of Sudoku puzzles in InDesign documents. It is well suited for generating single-page Sudoku puzzles as well as multi-page Sudoku puzzle booklets or books.<\/p>\n
Please make sure you have a copy of the\u00a0APID ToolAssistant<\/a><\/em> plug-in installed.<\/p>\n
Make sure you install the proper plug-in for your version of InDesign.<\/p>\n
If you already have an\u00a0APID ToolAssistant<\/em> plug-in installed (e.g. because you use one of our other plug-ins), make sure it is up-to-date.<\/p>\n
SudokuGenerator will continue to work when the APID ToolAssistant<\/em> demo expires.
\ni.e You do NOT need to purchase an additional license for APID ToolAssistant<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhen installing plug-ins make sure you copy plug-in files<\/em>, not the folders they are contained in.<\/p>\n
The LightningSudoku.spln<\/em> file might not have a plug-in icon – and that’s OK.<\/p>\n
Usage<\/h3>\n
The SudokuGenerator<\/em> will only work after you open a properly prepared template file. Inside the template file you can put one or more placeholders for puzzles and puzzle solutions – the generator will automatically replace these with real puzzles and the corresponding solutions.<\/p>\n
A few example templates are provided in the\u00a0Example Booklet Files<\/em> folder. Don’t try to use the CS to CS4 templates with CS5 – it won’t work.<\/p>\n
Open sudokuAutoBookletExample.indd<\/em> in the ‘Example Booklet Files’ folder. Select the ‘API – Generate Sudoku…’ menu item. A dialog should come up. If you click\u00a0OK<\/em>, it will go ahead and replace all placeholders with freshly generated puzzles.<\/p>\n
Be patient – generating the puzzles is hard work, and can take a substantial amount of time – a larger booklet can easily take 15 minutes to generate.<\/p>\n
Also, for larger puzzle collections, InDesign might complain about not being able to undo – if that happens you should simply tell it to go ahead without undo; the warning is harmless and is caused by the massive amount of document changes performed by the generator.<\/p>\n
You can adjust the templates to your liking. Re-save as another template under a different name after modifying it.<\/p>\n
There are currently five example templates. The templates with ‘…OneByOne…’ in their name will present you with a dialog for each Sudoku puzzle that is being generated. The ‘…Auto…’ templates simply generate the puzzles without interaction. See further how you can control that behavior.<\/p>\n
Some puzzles take some time to generate (especially the 16×16) – be patient, also especially if there are many puzzles to be generated.<\/p>\n
You can adjust the templates in many ways (change fonts, colors, positions, orientations, add more puzzle placeholders): the trick to making a puzzle placeholder out of a standard 9×9 or 16×16 table is through use of the so-called InDesign script label.<\/p>\n
Use the\u00a0Window – Automation – Script Label<\/em> menu (in InDesign CS2 and up) or the\u00a0Window – Scripting – Script Label <\/em>menu (in InDesign CS) to bring up a palette where you can define a label for the frame.<\/p>\n
Click any of the puzzle placeholder frames in the example templates with the normal selection tool – the script label palette will show some info.<\/p>\n
Be careful when editing labels: you need hit the tab key, or click your pasteboard after changing the label in the palette or else sometimes your change won’t ‘take’ and will be ignored by InDesign.<\/p>\n
Each puzzle is a loose group of one, two, or three frames. The frames are labeled with special labels (which are case sensitive – e.g. the label\u00a0PuzzleBox<\/em> is not the same as\u00a0puzzleBox<\/em>).<\/p>\n
The first (required) frame is the placeholder for the actual puzzle, which is a 9×9 or 16×16 table. This first frame of the group must have a label that starts with the magic prefix ‘puzzleBox<\/em>‘ – for example:\u00a0puzzleBox_1<\/em>,\u00a0puzzleBox_2<\/em>,…<\/p>\n
The first row of cells in the puzzle table decides what glyphs to use – you can use other glyphs than simply 1,2,3…9. The other cells can remain empty.<\/p>\n
The optional second frame is the frame for showing the difficulty level – it must have a script label that starts with ‘difficultyLevelBox<\/em>‘ – for example\u00a0difficultyLevelBox_1<\/em>,difficultyLevelBox_2<\/em>,…<\/p>\n
The optional third frame is the frame for showing the solution. It must have a script label that starts with ‘solutionBox<\/em>‘ – for example,\u00a0solutionBox_1,<\/em> solutionBox_2<\/em>,…<\/p>\n
Frames with the same suffix go together – for example:<\/p>\n
puzzleBox_1, difficultyLevelBox_1, solutionBox_1
\npuzzleBox_2
\npuzzleBox_3, difficultyLevelBox_3, solutionBox_3<\/em><\/p>\nand so on… (the second puzzle does not have a difficulty level frame or solution frame in this example – that’s allowed).<\/p>\n
You can put the solution frame on a different page than the corresponding puzzle frame. You can also apply transformations to the solution frame, e.g. rotate it 180 degrees.<\/p>\n
To allow finer control over how puzzles are generated, you can put more than one line in the label of the puzzle frames – the additional lines will contain information that directs the puzzle generator.<\/p>\n
The first line must always be the frame name (e.g.\u00a0puzzleBox_1<\/em>).<\/p>\n
If there are no additional lines (i.e. the script label only has the puzzle frane label and nothing else, then a dialog will be shown for the user to decide what kind of puzzle to generate (difficulty, symmetry).<\/p>\n
If there are at least two lines in the script label, no dialog will be shown (unless one of the additional lines is ‘dialog<\/em>‘).<\/p>\n
The key words that can appear on the additional lines are:<\/p>\n
horizontal
\nvertical
\ncenter
\ndiagonal
\nbackdiagonal<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
easy
\nmoderate
\nhard
\ndiabolical<\/p>\nlevel1:some descriptive text
\nlevel2:some descriptive text
\nlevel3:some descriptive text
\nlevel4:some descriptive text
\n…
\nlevel15:some descriptive text<\/p>\ndialog<\/em><\/p>\n
The first 5 key words influence the symmetry of the Sudoku puzzle. Don’t pick more than two symmetry options at any one time for best results. Use at least one symmetry option – puzzles without symmetry tend to be markedly more difficult than the ones with some symmetry of the same difficulty level.<\/p>\n
The next 4 keywords are for the difficulty level<\/p>\n
The ‘level…’ keywords are similar – they also set the difficulty level, but also allow custom descriptions – for example, if you want to generate an easy puzzle in French you would say:<\/p>\n
level1:Fa\u00e7ile<\/em><\/p>\n
The descriptive text will appear in the corresponding\u00a0difficultyLevelBox<\/em>.<\/p>\n
“easy” corresponds to level 2, “medium” to level 5, “hard” to level 7, and “diabolical” to level 10<\/p>\n
Have a look at the sudokuAutoBookletExample.indd and then inspect the labels of the various puzzle frames.<\/p>\n
The word\u00a0dialog<\/em> forces a dialog to appear for the puzzle when it is being generated – normally if a puzzle frame that has additional options in its label it won’t show a dialog to the user, but adding the word dialog will offer the user a dialog where the options can be overridden<\/p>\n
Finally, you can also ‘cover up’ any non-hint cells with a copy of a particular frame. Create a small frame (text or image) that’s about the same size as a puzzle cell, for example somewhere on the pasteboard. Then use the the\u00a0Window – Automation – Script Label<\/em> menu (in InDesign CS2 and up) or the\u00a0Window – Scripting – Script Label<\/em> menu (in InDesign CS) to bring up the palette where you can define a label for the frame, and assign the label\u00a0cover<\/em> to it (all lowercase, no spaces before or after).<\/p>\n
While the puzzles are being generated, this frame will be copied on top of any ‘non-hint’ cells (i.e. it will cover the white, empty cells).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you’re publishing a newspaper, magazine, newsletter… this will enable you to generate Sudoku puzzles directly into an InDesign document – for example, for your ‘Puzzle Page’, or to generate whole booklets with Sudoku puzzles. You’re in control of the … Continue reading
- Can optionally ‘cover’ the non-hint cells with a frame, instead of leaving them white.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n