Progress

[Stan Shebs <shebs@cygnus.com>]

The list has been quiet lately, so here's some news.

I've done a bunch of work on preferences in tcl/tk code.  After weighing
the pros and cons, I decided to make preference settings apply to current
maps when OKed.  This "feels" right unless the magnification has been
changed, that pops back to the preferred initial setting.  I might make
a special case for that one setting.

Other additions include more help that appears in the mouseover area
(wave the mouse around the whole window to see it), a picture of the
unit in the unit info area, and another pane resizing grip.  Also Hans
Ronne came up with parameters to draw hexes at the "8x8"
magnification, they do look better than the big blocks.

I'm rethinking the multi-player game setup again, looking at allowing
the players to chat while the host chooses game and variants.  I
haven't seen any existing multi-player setups that have the
flexibility that Xconq demands, but am always ready to hear
suggestions...

Performance is still an issue - I added some timeline recording and
plotting code in order to better understand the delays in moving -
it's not clearly due to tcl, but it's not clearly not due to tcl
either!  (Profiling suggests that the delays are not due to code hot
spots either.)

Finally, I've been doing much tinkering with tcl/tk vs configure, and
am beginning to think I'm going about this all wrong.  So, a question:
how many people do *not* have tcl/tk installed on their systems
already, or would have a problem installing an out-of-the-box tcl/tk
package before building Xconq?

								Stan