[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#7127) [FS] Screen design

["Morgan Jones" <morgan.jones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=7127 >

>>>>     * chat output area ALTERNATIVE: fading output at top-left
>>>> corner like in Diablo2
>> 
>> Diablo 2 IIRC relied on the top left corner of the screen being
>> pretty dark or black. I don't think we can guarantee suitable
>> conditions over the mapview.
> 
> There is no explicit dark area in this corner. It is more that
> Diablo but itself is pretty dark and that the action is in the
> center of the screen.

Looking at that GalCiv shot you used, the city name/production text is
contained in a transparent greyish black box.  This looks very nice
and would solve the problem of messages being hard to read over the
map view.

So we could use the fading text idea but there would still need to be
a messages dialog that you can call up to check back over previous
messages.

> Excellent. You just got the title "Chief Freeciv Screen Layouter" ;)

Thanks.  I'll see what else I can come up.  Are you wanting assistance
designing the various dialogs/reports as well?

>> Theoretically it would be nice if the layout automatically adjusted
>> to the size of the images and fonts...
> 
> You have to specify a new config file containing the layout for
> different screen resolutions. I think this is acceptable.

This is good.  But what happens if someone defines an image/font that
is too big for the layout?  I think maybe that the font style could be
changable (not everyone has/likes the same fonts) but not the
fontsize.  This would, I imagine, remove a lot of headaches for both
layout and coding.

City name and production font sizes could still be changable though.
 
> Two points:
> 
> I want to remove the message dialog. I want it part of the main
> screen layout. For this chatline output area will used for this. It
> will be made clickable. However for this the area must get
> scrollable. What do you think?

I'm not quite sure what you mean.  At least on the MUI client all
messages and chat output appear in the same scrollable text region
below the main map.  There's a message dialog that's available from the
menu, but I never use it as everything appears on the mainscreen
anyway.  Important stuff I have as popup requestors.  Is this
different from other clients?

The area I've defined in layout.png in the bottom right hand corner of
the screen was where I intended all messages and chat to appear.  It's
pretty small in 640x480 but on larger screensizes there would be heaps
of room.  I forgot to draw a scroll bar on this, it should have one.

The transparent black textbox could provide an alternative solution. 
Maybe it could be used just for popups, or it could be permanently in
place displaying a user defined number of recent messages.  In which
case it should be scrollable.    

> I would rather remove the tax icons and use the place for some quick
> buttons which bring you into the city list screen, player list
> screen and your nation screen.

A good idea.

> A minor point: is it really necessary to have the global warming and
> cooling icon on the main screen?

No, but they're pretty :-)

     -Morgan