[Freeciv] Re: the 'new' city dialog": open discussion

[Christian Knoke <chrisk@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Dec 01, 2003 at 04:46:41PM -0600, Mike Kaufman wrote:
> I'm wondering if we did a disservice to freeciv by creating the new city
> dialog (the one with with multiple tabs in a notebook).

I don't think so, but I only know GTK 1.2

> I've found that I never open up multiple city dialog windows (on purpose).

I do, managing groups of cities marked in the city report.

> I've found that I've had to switch back and forth multiple times from
> overview to production when creating a worklist.

I will start using worklists when I can assign them from the city report.

> In general I've found that the old dialog was more efficient to use.

The new (GTK 1) dialog allows managing *lots* of units (that happpens), and
CMA. I don't use the other tabs (oh, well, sometimes a look on the happiness
page).

> What are other people's opinion's of this? You might want to compile 
> the XAW client and take a look if you don't remember the old dialog.

Managing lots of cities is still not easy, but better with the new dialog.
It would be easier if there a simpler ways for complex tasks (e.g. city
founding options, macros in the report).

> I've been thinking that perhaps it might be better to open new subdialog 
> windows for production or CMA or happiness from  buttons on the main dialog, 
> and these will remain open and display other city's info as you click on
> other cities... (maybe an option for either the old behavior: new child
> subdialogs for each city dialog open, or new behavior, subdialogs are
> children of the toplevel window and display info (CMA, production, etc) for
> the active city dialog window)

Presenting the information efficiently is a good target, but I don't think
you will achieve this with subwindows. These are horror.

> Did we take a step backward with the new dialog?

No, relax, I really don't think so :)

> Everyone's input, especially non-developers, is welcome.
> 
> -mike

Christian

-- 
Christian Knoke            * * *            http://cknoke.de
* * * * * * * * *  Ceterum censeo Microsoft esse dividendum.