[Freeciv-Dev] (PR#4476) gui-sdl Usability Suggestions

["Guest" <rt-guest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi!    
    
I've tried the sdl-gui in CVS and I think this is quite impressing so    
far. I don't like games that are programmed in a application GUI such    
as the gui-gtk, so the sdl-gui is more than welcome. The artwork is   
also very refreshing and the SDL fullscreen feature make the game more   
immersive.   
    
I have a few suggestions to improve usability through :   
   
* In the nation wizard window   
  - The title of the window is spelled with two 'z', wizard is spelled   
with one 'z', well I think (english is not my native language).   
  - Each nations flags should be really bigger than this, 2 times the   
height of the font used to render the nation's name seems to me a good   
size.   
  - Ideally, each nation should be an option widget instead of a   
button, a dialog with so much buttons can be quite confusing.   
  - The nations name should be sorted, for example, by name or by   
continent, right now, a specific nation is really hard to find in a   
decent time.   
   
* In every menu while you configure the client (i.e. display settings   
for exemple), there is a "Quit" button. I would prefer a "Cancel"   
button at this place and the only place you can quit the game would be   
from the main menu.   
   
* Text widget   
  - In every text widget in the game, clicking on it put the cursor at   
the beginning of the text, at the end of the text would be more   
consistent with the rest of the GUI toolkit used for applications.   
  - I tried moving the cursor in a text box with the keypad,   
unfortunately it doesn't work, only the "4 arrow key block" works   
there. The keypad works well to move units on the map.   
   
* Nation Settings dialog   
  - Choosing gender with a button like this is not a good idea. Instead   
you could use 2 option widgets, one for Male and one for Female.   
  - The currently selected city graphic theme is confusing, the   
currently selected have some sort of grey rectangle over it, this grey   
rectangle looked like a "unavailable" theme instead of the currently   
selected theme. You could use a empty green box around the choosen   
theme instead of the grey filled box.   
   
* Tooltip for icons should pop up faster when a tooltip was shown not a   
long time ago. In application's GUI, you must wait a certain time   
before the first tooltip appears but after, as long as the mouse   
doesn't leave the toolbar, as soon as the mouse if over a icon, the   
tooltip appears.   
   
* Some dialog have a close button (X) at their top, some not. For   
example, the city dialog doesn't have one and all closeable window   
should have a close button on their title bar, this make more   
consistent with other GUI out there. In the case of a city dialog, you   
should keep the close button at the bottom right since it's close to   
the other icons but you should add one in the dialog title bar.   
   
* When there is no more units to move, you should add a "end turn"   
flashing button at the bottom of the screen, where each unit actions   
buttons are displayed. When I finished my first turn, I didn't know   
what to do and it took some testing to figure out that I had to hit   
enter to end my turn.  
  
Keep working on this, the gui-sdl is already my favorite one, even if  
it's still in CVS! Good luck!  
  
- Jonathan Phénix