[Freeciv-Dev] Re: idea: a more portable and more beautiful client interface

[Mathias Broxvall <matbr@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I would certainly love a userinterface such as you describe, however I am aware
of many people who would definitly loath it. Freeciv would definitly need more
than one GUI client for people to choose among so the question isn't wheter
it's a good/bad thing to have such a client since probably many people have
quite different oppinions about it, but rather how we should minimize
duplicated effort by maintaining more than one user-interface. Is this
infeasible with the current design of the client?

If we start a project for an alternative freeciv GUI I'd definitly like to
help and would suggest a library such as SDL/ClanLib/etc... for the GUI
interface aspect. SDL is ported to serveral platforms and implements
efficient blits, opening of fullscreen/windows display areas, loading images,
handling events, sound etc.. So the question of portability becomes even easier
and efficiency of handling large bitmaps wouldn't be problem. We'd probably
get much smoother scrolls than the GTK'ed version - not to mention animations 
of unit events (nuclear explosion etc.) and perhaps even video clips!
So, let's make freeciv a "real" game. 

/ Mathias Broxvall