[Freeciv-Dev] (PR#9070) Mouse Interaction Design

["Com013" <kg.guests@xxxxxx>]

<URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=9070 >

I want to simplify the mouse interaction a bit, because in my opinion 
the current way is not very intuitive and is getting more complex as 
more features get added.

The current problems I see are the following:

* You select cities and units with the left button, but the area 
selection is done with the right button.

The area selection (currently only working for cities, but should soon 
also work with units) therefor gets in conflict with the map scrolling - 
when you scroll, the selection is lost.

* There are currently a lot of complex key/button combinations. The 
worst example is the T key for displaying the workers and the range of 
the city under the mouse and the Ctrl-Shift-Leftbutton combination for 
toggling workers.

So I tried to think of a simpler mousebutton design.
One of the changes I would like to do on the way is that there is less 
difference between having a single unit/city selected or having multiple 
units/cities selected. Both ways the units/cities should be marked with 
a rectangle instead of blinking.

When a city is selected you can see its borders and its workers - just 
like the T key does now (ok, it should maybe look nicer).
When just one city is selected you can see it's production and CMA in 
the area where usually the status of the selected unit is displayed - 
and you can change it there. So you do not need to open the dialog to 
change the production, CMA or workers. Of course there should also be a 
button to open the dialog in case you want to edit worklists or set 
specialists.

The new keymap would look like this:

S = Shift, C = Control, A = Alt,
L = Left, R = Right, M = Middle, d = drag

L = Selection
Ld = Area Selection (currently Rd)
C-L = Add to/Remove from selection (currently L while
C-Ld = Area Add to/Remove from selection
S-L = Goto, Toggle Worker (when having a city selected)
R = scroll
S-R, status (currently M, the old way should still exist)

Special modes which override the keys above:

Goto/Patrol/Connect/Paradrop order
L = select target

Copying and pasting production is missing on this list and it is a 
feature I am currently using lots. But as I want to make it so you can 
change the production faster directly on the map (see above) this 
feature shouldn't be as necessary.

But before I start implementing this (into the GTK-2 client) I would 
like to hear if anyone sees problems with this.

PS: Maybe it would also be nice to have a toolbar where you can quickly 
access all the orders for the current unit(s) or the report dialogs.

Greetings,

David Kolf