Re: [XBoard-devel] gtk version status

[Arun Persaud]

Hi

> [edit position]
> So what is needed for the popup is an optional button to clear the board,
> plus a list of pieces to choose from, which depends on the occasion.
> I would be in favor of a pictorial representation, kind of a mini chess
> board,
> where people click the piece they want. This avoids having to print piece
> names, which simplifies things, as the same piece is often known in
> different varints under different names, or WinBoard uses the same
> representation for a different piece (e.g. the shogi Silver General uses
> the same bitmap as the Xiangqi Adviser). The back-end should set up
> size and content of popup. E.g. in normal Chess it could print a 4x1
> 'board' as promotion popup with QRBN of the appropriate color. In
> suicide it would be 5x1, with KQRBN. In gothic it would be 6x1 (or 3x2)
> with QCARBN. The Edit-Position popup for normal could be 6x2 if
> we want to display both colors, (as in WinBoard), or 3x2 if we only
> want to display one (as in XBoard), and there would be a button for
> 'Empty Square'. Of course we could include an Empty Square amongst
> the clickable pictograms too (which would actually simplify the code,
> as internally Empty Square is treated as just another piece), but
> for two-color popups that creates a nasty problem of how to lay it out,
> unless you include it in duplicate.

yes, btw since we now keep track of castling do we need a button for
that one too?

>>[preference dialog]
> I am not sure what you men by  "preference dialog". Is that something
> to replace the current Options menu tree? [...]

yes, at least part of it.

> Not sure about the Engine #N Settings, though. As the engine determines
> what is in here, it can sometimes be unweildly large (try Glaurung 2.2, or
> Toga2, for instance), and 2D scrolls would be very inconvenient.
> So perhaps it is better to keep a separate dialog for that, which already
> pops up in a size mathing its contents.

sounds good.

I'll just go ahead and try to set something like this up... I think it
should be relatively easy to rearrange things later in gtk, since I'm
using a glade (a graphical interface to design the user interface), so
it's probably best to just get something working and then perhaps
improve it later...

cheers
    ARUN