Re: Xconq 7.2.1 Preview Available

[Massimo Campostrini <campo@mailbox.difi.unipi.it>]

Stan Shebs <shebs@cygnus.com> writes:

> xshowimf is fixed now.

I see that now xshowimf shows magnified images along with "original"
images, and I am not sure if this is the "right" behavior.

>    There is another problem: several images don't have proper masks.
>    Often the mask is identical to the b/w image, e.g. siege engine; this
>    means that the black background + white mask + black image we are
>    using to show utypes is all black.  (BTW, I think white or gray
>    background + white mask + black image looks better.)
> 
> Hasn't this been broken for awhile?  I remember noticing this some time
> ago.
>
> xshowimf's Mac counterpart IMFApp defaults to medium gray, with menus
> to change the background to white, black, green, a selected terrain
> pattern, etc.  (Once again the Mac rules! :-) )

xshowimf uses a light slate blue background, selected after a thorough
investigation in human-computer interfaces (i.e., I liked it), and it
can be changed through resources. ;-)

My problem is that xconq proper uses black background for utype
images, so e.g. siege engine are shown as a black box on the utype
list.  Combine this with the fact that several games don't define a
unique character for each utype, and it becomes hard to select
construction (I know, you fixed "empire" some, but there are still
several non-unique chars).

Maybe you could plan a minor bug-fix to 7.2 for the summer, to clean
up glitches in images and games?  I know, it's tedious to bugfix the
old version when you are hacking on the new and all-improved
version...

> Incidentally, I'm considering doing a tcl/tk version of IMFApp, as a
> test of the tcl approach.  I would add in xshowimf features as well as
> carry over the Mac tool's goodies.

Sounds interesting.  I was thinking to port xshowimf to the gtk
toolkit (hopefully as a warm-up exercise for a port of xconq proper),
but maybe I'll wait and see it I like the tcl/tk version.

Ciao
		Massimo