Due: 10:00 A.M., Monday, 11/10/08

Our final three programming assignments will culminate in a GUI for playing chess. It does not have to know the rules for legal chess moves, other than the same rules we have been using in our checkers playing programs: you can't move a piece from an empty square or to an occupied square and so on. The only things you need to know about chess are the kinds of pieces and how they are arranged at the start of a game. If you don't know that, I can show you, or you can find out online, for example at Chess game setup

For these three assignments, you don't need to follow the design requirements of our earlier assignments. You can choose your own packaging and organization of your classes, and your handling of user errors. Of course, your program should follow the basic principles of good design and readability that are summarized here, and your program should handle user errors in an appropriate way. The only design restrictions are:

• Your main method should be in a class named TestChess.
• You must use the Java classes in java.awt and javax.swing to implement your GUI. Some of you may have systems that allow you to "write" GUI programs by using your mouse to create graphics objects, i.e., without writing code. Do not do this. All the code in your program should be text written by you. (Of course, you will need to import and use many Java classes.)

When the program starts, the user should be presented with a window that displays the commands. These will be the same as the commands in Programs 7 and 8, modified to work with a graphics interface. This will be done in Programs 10 and 11. For this program, all you need to do is create and display the graphics objects. Quite possibly, you will want to use different objects or change their appearance in the later programs, and that's fine.

For this program, the window should display the following components:

• A menu bar, with three menus:
  1. File. Clicking this menu should make a dropdown list appear with these items:
     • Start
     • Resume
     • Save
     • Quit
  2. Play. Clicking this menu should make a dropdown list appear with these items:
     • Move
     • Remove
     • Place
     • Show
     Notice that there is no Display command. This is because the next component will always display the board.
  3. Help. At this time, this menu does nothing.
• A rectangular region where the game board will be displayed in Program 11. For this program, it does not need to display anything.
• Any other graphics objects that you think would help someone use your program.

Your grade will be based on how well you design and implement the code, how thorough your error handling is, on good programming practices, and on thorough testing. Coding guidelines for Java programs are posted here.

Add comment documentation to your program (all classes) and use javadoc to extract the documentation into an HTML file. Include a javadoc comment for each class and each method. The class comment should include your name and the date (use the @author tag). Method comments should briefly describe the purpose of the method, its arguments, and what, if anything, it returns (using @param and @return as appropriate).

The physical location of the javadoc comments is critical. A class comment must immediately precede the line containing the keyword class, and method comments must immediately precede the method.

When you have commented your source files, run javadoc to create the .html files and view them in a browser of your choice.

• Turn in a hardcopy printout of your java source file TestChess.java and any other .java files your program uses.

  Do not give me a copy of the javadoc.html files.

• All Java programs will be submitted by copying (or ftping) them to a specially designated directory in AFS. Each person in the class has a subdirectory which has the same name as your login in /afs/cu/class/cs242/fa08

  Within this individual directory, create a subdirectory named p9. Copy only the source files and an executable JAR file into this directory, not class files or javadoc files. So, for example, if your login name was smithjd then the files TestChess.java, TestChess.jar, and any other .java files your program uses should be copied to /afs/cu/class/cs242/fa08/smithjd/p9. These directories have permissions set so that no one other than yourself and Prof. Lynch can read the files. You may, of course, use whatever operating system and compiler you wish to develop your code, but the version you turn in, both hardcopy and the files submitted to AFS, must compile and run under JDK installed in the Clarkson ITL (our lab room).

  I should be able to run your program by downloading TestChess.jar into any folder and entering the command line

  java -jar TestChess.jar

• Correct execution. The program must follow all the specifications above.
• Correct implementation. The program must follow all the design requirements above.
• Error checking. You have to figure out what kinds of errors your program should check for, and how it should handle them.
• Readability of the code: commented and well-structured, so that it is clear what the code is doing. Use an accepted programming style. The style of the text is fine, or you can follow the Code Conventions. Whatever you do, be consistent.
• Appearance of the graphics. This is more important than it has been with the previous programs, and it will continue to grow in importance with the next programs.
• Human factors. An inexperienced user should be able to run the program, and the program should interact with the user with clear, understandable prompts and responses. This means that the user will always be able to tell whether or not a command was successfully executed, and if it was not successful, the user is told what the problem was.
• Timely submission of your program. All hardcopy must be turned in by the deadline. Late programs will not be accepted. Printouts submitted electronically will be ignored.