From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 25568 invoked by alias); 22 Aug 2004 18:56:20 -0000 Mailing-List: contact xconq7-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: xconq7-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 25558 invoked from network); 22 Aug 2004 18:56:18 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO smtp814.mail.sc5.yahoo.com) (66.163.170.84) by sourceware.org with SMTP; 22 Aug 2004 18:56:18 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ?192.168.1.101?) (sampln@sbcglobal.net@67.123.172.242 with plain) by smtp814.mail.sc5.yahoo.com with SMTP; 22 Aug 2004 18:56:17 -0000 Subject: Re: Three thoughts From: Lincoln Peters To: Hans Ronne Cc: Xconq list In-Reply-To: References: Content-Type: text/plain Message-Id: <1093201052.2792.12916.camel@localhost> Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 19:16:00 -0000 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-SW-Source: 2004/txt/msg00994.txt.bz2 On Sun, 2004-08-22 at 07:01, Hans Ronne wrote: > >I noticed the problem most in my game with the item units, because there I > >had some units with as many as 25 occupants that sometimes were occupants > >themselves. It becomes an issue even in the standard game with smaller > >numbers of occupants, though. > > I see. One thing that might solve this problem, if I may bring up the Mac > interface again, is to implement unit closeups. This is how you navigate > within the stack on the Mac: right-click on a unit to bring up a small > floating window with unit info plus one image of each occupant. Right-click > on any of these images to bring up a closeup of the occupant. And so on. > There is also a clickable image of the transport in each occupant closeup, > so you can navigate quickly up and down in the stack. The frontmost closeup > automatically becomes the current unit for commands etc. Here's a rather crazy possible solution: Would it be possible to use TclTk *and* another toolkit, such as GTK+, simultaneously? That might allow us to not only use GTK+ to implement new features, but also to "phase out" the TclTk code (since nobody seems to like TclTk anymore) and replace it with GTK+ code. If I remember correctly, a few people have complained that it is often difficult to debug TclTk code, various quirks make it difficult to create certain keybindings, and it's just plain ugly. While GTK+ would still result in a game that looks like an Office app, it should be easier to debug (no useless "Error reading tcl" errors) and more versatile. Not to mention that GTK+ contains everything you need to make an application accessible to people with disabilities (might be fun just to make Xconq able to respond appropriately if you were to bark orders at it via a speech recognition engine). And I don't think it would be a step backward from the existing TclTk interface if the interface was re-implemented in GTK+ and ended up looking like an Office app. I've put together an example of what a "close-up" dialog might look like if implemented in GTK+, and I've posted it here: http://homepage.mac.com/lmpeters/cell-closeup.png (The icons are generic icons from the GTK+/GNOME library. Just pretend that they look like unit images from the Standard game.) The situation illustrated here is the city Sausalito and a fighter flying overhead. Within the city are infantry, armor, a bomber, a battleship, and a carrier. Furthermore, within the carrier are three fighters and another bomber. This would be almost completely unmanageable without a close-up dialog like this one. I envision the closeup dialog as something you could summon with a special mouse click (perhaps Alt-click or click with the middle button), and then use any time you need to click on a unit (choosing a unit to give orders to, board, attack, fire at, etc.). > Porting this to the tcltk interface is something that I have wanted to do > for a long time, but it is easier said than done. The main problem is the > lack of support for floating windows in tcltk. I'll add this to the list of reason not to like TclTk. I guess you could implement a close-up dialog like I illustrated above in TclTk, but it sounds like it would be more work. --- Lincoln Peters It is contrary to reasoning to say that there is a vacuum or space in which there is absolutely nothing. -- Descartes