I thought that with Qt's Graphics View framework, this should be easy to implement. A friend of mine, Felix Lemke, offered to help me on this project. In the last months, we made Palapeli:
Currently, Palapeli offers a puzzle table where the pieces can be freely moved around. Pieces will snap together when brought together closely. For better overview, there is a minimap and an image preview available.
In the last weeks (as mentioned in one of the last Digests), I have been working on game management in Palapeli. This includes internal reference structures and (more interesting for the users) loading and saving of games. This is normally done in an internal storage, the interface is thus very simple. In the savegame management view, you can import and export games from the local storage into some kind of archive file which you can send over to your friends.
With Palapeli, your need to send a holiday card as a jigsaw puzzle is finally fulfilled.
That sounds wonderful, so what needs to be done?
Currently, all puzzle pieces are rectangular. Infrastructure for multiple pattern types is in place, so it should be easy to add traditional pieces (with such holes and plugs at the sides) or hexagonal pieces, or whatever. Also, to make Palapeli feel yet more natural, we are planning to implement rotatable pieces (Felix has confirmed to do this over the next few months). "Get Hot New Stuff" support would also be nice to have.
I'm looking forward to your suggestions and feature requests to make Palapeli the best jigsaw puzzle game!