It has been a busy two weeks of learning as I continued to develop the GNOME Crosswords project. I have been mainly engaged in improving how word lists are managed and included using configuration files.

I started by writing documentation for how to add a new word list to the project by using .conf files. The configuration files define properties like display name, language, and origin of the word list so that contributors can simply add new vocabulary datasets. Each word list can optionally pull in definitions from Wiktionary and parse them, converting them into resource files for use by the game.

As an addition to this I also scripted a program that takes config file contents and turns them into GResource XML files. This isn’t the project bulk, but a useful tool that automates part of the setup and ensures consistency between different word list entries. It takes in a .conf file and outputs a corresponding .gresource.xml.in file, mapping the necessary resources to suitable aliases. This was a good chance for me to learn more about Python’s argparse and configparser modules.

Beyond scripting, I’ve been in regular communication with my mentor, seeking feedback and guidance to improve both my technical and collaborative skills. One key takeaway has been the importance of sharing smaller, incremental commits rather than submitting a large block of work all at once, a practice that not only helps with clarity but also encourages consistent progress tracking. I was also advised to avoid relying on AI-generated code and instead focus on writing clear, simple, and understandable solutions, which I’ve consciously applied to both my code and documentation.

Next, I’ll be looking into how definitions are extracted and how importer modules work. Lots more to discover, especially about the innards of the Wiktionary extractor tool.

Looking forward to sharing more updates as I get deeper into the project