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Re: User Interface Poll



   From: bob@fla.fujitsu.com (Bob Carragher)
   Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1999 14:11:48 -0700

   Well, I have 2 questions in response:

	(1)  Is there any way to change preferences for individual
	     maps, rather than all at once?

There could be, although there would be have to be some way to choose
between maps, and it's really unclear what should happen when the
next game is started up (that being the point of preferences - set
once, never think about again).

	(2)  If the answer to (1) is "no," then is there any way
	     to warn the user in the dialog box that this will
	     affect all maps if accepted?

Sure, that would be easy to add.

   I also believe in the principle of "immediate effect" in xconq.  If
   there is a "warning" message that the user sees before "accepting"
   the new preferences, then at least he'll know that this could have
   serious consequences for the map views.

   Is it possible to have a "preview" function, so that the user can
   see what might occur, before "permanently" accepting the change?

This is certainly possible, although the changes to view options are
not exactly hard to undo manually - this is not at the seriousness of
reformatting a file, which is what previews are usually best for.

   Can preferences for different maps be set "relative" to the global
   preferences, so that when the global preferences are changed, the
   effects in separate maps are not necessarily identical?

I had to read this a couple times to figure it out.  I think this is
too tricky for users to figure out - there is also the principle of
least surprise to consider.

One could make the argument that tweaking global preferences should
blast all the maps (telling the user that this will happen), because
you tweak the preferences once, save them away, then you never look at
the prefs and just tweak the maps individually during games if
necessary.

								Stan

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