[Freeciv-Dev] Re: [PATCH] Global citydialog

[Markus Schmaus <schmaus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Why:
At the moment 't' and shift-left clicking allows to adjust the workers on
the global map. But refreshing (p.e. by a unit with focus) ereases the
information on the map and leads to really uggly effects. Also, stimpling
the area doesn't look so fine and "hides" the underneath terrain, making
it hard to distinct between plains and grasland.
The "refreshing bug", if I may call it this, isn't fixed easyly. for
refreshing is done in a totally different function, than stimpling and
drawing the output. Also the game has to know if, when refreshing, it
shall still display the output and highlight the area. IMHO this should be
done by adding fields to map and tile, telling that and which tiles should
be drawn in a special mode.

What should be done:
- Shift-right clicking the area should put map and tiles surrounding
the city into dialog mode. Now on those tiles the output of the city
should be displayed. Aditionally a window opens at the topmost of the map
displaying aditional informations, like overall output, production,
happyness, ... .
- Now clicking in the highlighted area moves the workers.
- A key (p.e. space) or clicking somewhere else moves the map back to the
normal mode.

What is done (by the patch I submitted):
- Shif-right clicking puts map and tiles surrounding into dialog mode. And
the output is displayed. In grid mode the outmost border of 
"usable" (withing range not used by other cities) tiles is marked by a
yellow line (see also "Suggestion for fog of war").
- Now clicking in the highlighted area moves the workers, but does not,
yet, refresh the area (rightclick on the city will center and therefore
refresh).
- On fryday I had no time to implement closing the "dialog" therefore I
submitted it without to get first response. While in dialog mode you can't
do anything else in that area (for example open the standart city dialog).

I'd like to ask, if this idea is worth persuing (has it ever a chance to
get into freeciv).

It should be no problem for me to implement closing, and find out why it
doesn't refresh the tiles. But I'm not deep enough in freeciv and
c-programming to make the additional window work exactly as I would like
it to (being at the top of the client window excatly the way the
"chatline" is at the bottom).

Markus.