[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Submit patch again?

[Kevin Brown <kevin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Raimar Falke <hawk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 15, 2001 at 02:59:08PM +0200, Karl-Ingo Friese wrote:
> > 
> > On Wed, 15 Aug 2001, Raimar Falke wrote:
> > 
> > > Yes, we should try to get their point of view. How can they be
> > > contacted? Are they subscribed on the freeciv mailing list?
> > 
> > As a start, I would just look at those who participate on
> > the freeciv channel or appear in the top 10. Publunch comes
> > to my mind ... dont know if Dizzy, Zop, K are still playing ...
> > Even if they can not help coding, their feedback would be
> > helpful in my eyes.
> 
> So to which topic can we ask people? The watchtower thing?

Anything related to gameplay and new features.  Remember, it needs to
be something that's visible to the player.

I'll give an example from my own experience: there isn't any
indication on the GUI or in the help system of what the indicators on
the main window mean (you know, the lamp, the sun, etc.).  It occurred
to me that it would be REALLY useful in the GTK client at least to
implement tooltips for those items that otherwise aren't obvious.  So
I've been looking at doing that, and have already done so for the main
window indicators.

This isn't something that a veteran Freeciv player is going to even
think about, but you can bet that someone relatively new to the game
won't have a clue what those things are about.  And while it's
documented in the manual, the manual is incomplete (it doesn't talk
about global cooling at all, for instance, but there's an indicator
for it!).

I happen to think that tooltips should be used to describe anything
on any of these windows that isn't obvious to the untrained eye.  For
instance, some of the headings of the reports (like the city report)
use letters to describe things like Gold, Happiness, etc., but it's
easy to forget what the letters stand for.  A tooltip that pops up
when you leave the mouse pointer over the heading would be an ideal
way to give the user more of an idea of what's going on.  But I'm not
sure how to implement tooltips for the GTK column widget that's being
used for the reports...



But, anyway, I think there needs to be a good, reliable way for users
to give us feedback.  There probably should be a link on the main web
page to submit suggestions and problem descriptions through, that will
send suggestions to the bug system.

-- 
Kevin Brown                                           kevin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

    It's really hard to define what "unexpected behavior" means when you're
                       talking about Windows.