[crossfire] Improved/redone client.

[Raphaël Quinet]

On Mon, 09 Oct 2006 09:37:29 -0600, Alex Schultz <alex_sch at telus.net> wrote:
> Mark Wedel wrote:
> > ==
> > Make client fullscreen.
> >
> > Reasoning here is that most games run in fullscreen mode, so it becomes more 
> > like most games.  It can also ensure that other applications are not grabbing 
> > keystrokes/button presses (eg, window manager, etc), so if we tell the player to 
> > press a key, we can know for sure that if the player presses that key, the 
> > client gets it.  For lots of reasons, would still need to support a windowed 
> > mode of operation.
> >   
> Agreed here. Some other reasons for making it 'fullscreen-style', is
> that it allows 'popups' or 'heads up display' like interface elements
> somewhat nicer than a traditional widget system like gtk. It also frees
> up interface design, possibly allowing better inventory controls than is
> possible with traditional widgets.

Well, sorry to disagree but I actually prefer to have the crossfire
client using "traditional widgets".  Even if games can be considered
as a special kind of application, I like to have all applications on
my desktop using the same widgets and behaving in the same way.  For
me, consistency is as important or even more important than the looks
of an application.

I usually dislike the applications that try to design their own
widgets because they do not obey the global options that the user has
set for all applications.  If I have a large display and bad eyesight
and I want to use larger fonts or high contrast colors for all
applications, I don't want the crossfire client to behave differently
because it uses its own widgets or because it installs its own private
theme.

Custom widgets can also cause problems because they do not behave like
the other ones: they may not support copy & paste operations (I use
that a lot for copying interesting messages from crossfire to a text
editor) or they may have menus that pop up in a different way or text
entry fields that do not support the usual shortcuts, etc.

Another issue is cross-platform integration: there are themes for gtk2
that allow all applications (including the crossfire client) to look a
bit more like Qt applications while running in KDE, like Windows
applications while running in Windows, like Mac applications while
running in MaxOS X, etc.  Using custom widgets or private themes would
imply that the crossfire client would look "foreign" on all desktops
and would not respect the global settings such as the default colors,
etc.

In summary, I am happy with the crossfire client using "traditional
widgets" and I would not like to change that.  A separate client could
be designed for full screen mode (a bit like the one developped for
CFPlus: http://cf.schmorp.de/screenshots.shtml) but I would probably
keep on using whatever client looks and behaves more like other
applications on my desktop.

-Raphaël