Re: [Bug-gnubg] GNU notes

[Jim Segrave]

On Sun 15 Sep 2002 (23:35 -0300), Albert Silver wrote:

I see Joern's already replied, just adding my comments.

> 1)                   So I'll start with the bug. I set up a position and
> saved it, yet every single time I load it, it shows up with 17 (!)
> pieces with an extra one on the bar and another taken off. If I enter
> Edit and click on either piece they disappear, but it still shows when I
> load it. I can zip this, but should I send it to this mailing list or
> someone specific?

I'd say zip it and send it to the mailing list. I'd certainly like to
see it.

> 2)                   I constantly see the word "chequer" written. Is
> that British or something? I have never know it that way and usually see
> it written as "checker"

A Joern says - it's the UK English version. You write cheques on your
bank account and paly backgammon with chequers. There might be I18N
setups for American vs. UK English, but I'd guess it's not too important.

> 3)                   The statistics do not take into account changes in
> evaluation on moves made after a match analysis. On a few occasions I
> have asked GNU to roll out a move to confirm its criticism and have seen
> it change the evaluation. Soemtimes for the better, and sometimes to
> tell me I am a bigger bonehead than it had initially thought. The
> statistics window (and the Game Record where the punctuation commentary
> is) do not update to take these changes into account. They should of
> course IMHO.

Yes - I've noticed this. Of course running Analyze Game again is very
quick and does update things, but this is sub-optimal. But I see Joern
has already flagged it as a mis-feature.


> 5)                   Perhaps a letter could be added to the Game Record
> to indicate what kind of error was made, whether a cube decision or a
> checker move. I had in mind something basic such as 13/8? (D). Though
> perhaps that makes the space required for a move too big. Perhaps
> underlining it otherwise.

What about different symbols:  say -!, -, -- for one type of error and the
current ?!, ?, ?? for the other?

> 7)                   Save the different board profiles/styles. I have a
> few preferred combinations of colors, but right now have been keeping
> track of them in separate directories I created for the settings files.
> It would be nice if a user had some presets, not to mention the
> possibility to create and save their own.

> 8)                   The "skins" for GNU are nice, and my favourite by
> far so far is "mac". Unfortunately, I think this feature will be used by
> very very few users. If it were possible to change the skins from within
> the GUI, this would be appreciated as a full-fledged feature.

Joern has mentioned some things in particular porting the gtk theme
selector, but an idea does occur to me. 

I get the impression that people mostly want to change the look of the
board, which means they want to load a specific subset of the commands
which can occur in the .gnubgautorc file. (I will ignore issues like
wanting to change fonts, which is a deeper one).

You could achieve this now by creating command files which set the
various board appearance options and using the File->Open->Commands to
select one of these, but it's still probably not something which will
be too popular. From my limited experience of Windows apps, I think we
might want something more specific. Suppose we had a pair of commands
like:

Save skin <file name>  / File->Save->Skin
Load skin <file name>  / File->Open->Skin

Where file name has some default extension (.skn perhaps). 

I assume the gtk file selector can be given a pattern to select from
so that only .skn files would normally be displayed?

Save skin would only save those parts of the settings which control
board/dice/chequer appearence and Load skin would ignore any commands
which aren't ones Save skin would have saved.

Then a user could change the look and save it to a named file. Loading
the chosen set becomes easy and setting the default to your current
favourite means:

  Load skin my-current-favourite.skn
  Save settings.

This could be extended if people thought it useful to other related
settings - for example you could have pre-selected analysis, rollout 
and evaluation settings which could be activated by simply selecting
the appropriate file type. Again, the save commands for these would
simply weed out the current settings which are of interest.

The more I think about this approach, the more I think it's a good way
to go from a user convenience standpoint.

> 9)                   I would have the program create a Saved Games
> directory and automatically propose to save games and positions in it.
> Right now it saves it in the main directory which is less than idea
IMO.

Should be an easy option to add.


-- 
Jim Segrave           address@hidden