Re: [XBoard-devel] XBoard dialogs

[Arun Persaud]

Hi

On 02/24/2011 03:35 AM, h.g. muller wrote:
>[...]
> 1) Does it make sense to have  separate "General Options" dialog,
> as WB has, or can we leave the Boolean options simply in the main
> Option menu where they are now?

I like the "General Options" better.... in the end I think I would like
to have a preference dialog, which pops up a window with tabs in it for
the different categories, and perhaps get rid of the "Options" menu

> 2) I encountered an item "Auto-Raise Board". For WinBoard this is
> in the General Options, rather than the ICS Options dialog. But it
> seems to me this is an ICS option; it was only referenced when a
> board from a new game from the ICS comes in. Why was it left
> in the General Options in WB? Were there plans to also use it in
> other modes (e.g. when an engine moves)? Or is this just an oversight?

I think it would make sense to also have this for engine moves in case
that's not the case at the moment

> 3) Together with all the color settings for colorization of ICS text,
> there are a lot of ICS options in the latest XBoard, and the generic
> popup routine does not pack them very efficiently. (I already start
> to regret I took the multi-column formatting out of the Engine Settings
> dialog when I cloned it to make GenericPopUp.) Should we split
> it into two dialogs (e.g. add a new item "ICS Colorization" in the main
> option menu), should I go back to multi-column format, or is it
> still bearable as it is?

I tried the "popup" branch and that looks ok to me.

> 4) Would it make sense to try to reduce the amount of code in
> xoptions.c by re-implementing already existing dialogs through the
> generic popup (Time Control, Adjudications, Common Engine Options,
> New-Variant dialog)? For some this would be quite easy, although
> they probably will not be going to look any more pretty because of it.
> Time Control is the trickiest, as it now involves altering functions
> of existing text edits (and thus accompanying text)  depending on
> which TC mode (classical, incremental) you choose (as an alternative
> for greying out the unneeded ones). This might not be worth it.
> But Adjudications, Common Engine and New Variant could be
> quite ease (perhaps with a minor enhancement of the GenericPopUp).
> The idea is that porting to other platforms (Mac) or widget sets (GTK)
> might become easier if there is less code to port.

I think if gets us closer to merging Winboard and Xboard, we should do
it...

cheers
        ARUN