[Kde-games-devel] Statusbar messages in KPatience

[Parker Coates]

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 1:09 PM, Matthew Woehlke wrote:
> Dmitry Suzdalev wrote:
>> On Wednesday 22 April 2009 19:15:57 Frederik Schwarzer wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> in KPatience there are status bar messages to tell the user that
>>> - This game can still be won! Good luck to you.
>>> - Nope, this game cannot be won anymore.
>>> - Timeout while playing - unknown if it can be won
>>> - This game is lost.
>>>
>>> Isn't that a bit too much?
>>
>> I agree :) Only game is lost makes sense.
>>
>> If this pops up at every card movement this should be removed indeed.
>> This is like poking a person every second saying "hey, you're winning, keep it up!".
>> Or the opposite. Not everyone will like it.

I think part of the problem is the conversational tone it uses. It
talks "to" me, which I find annoying. I'd much rather it take a
neutral tone and just told be the current status, I think I'd find it
less invasive.

> So turn off solver :-). (Isn't the default "off", anyway?)
>
> Personally I don't see the problem. It's a /status bar/. It really isn't
> that distracting.

I think perhaps, the more relevant question is "Should the status bar
be shown by default?" The only other bit of info shown there is the
move count, which certainly isn't very exciting. Maybe it makes sense
to disable the status bar by default. Those who want more info can
enable it.

>> I think it felt certainly cool when one who coded this (coolo?) was experimenting and
>> excited about new feature. But having it in a shipped application is not very nice
>> IMHO.
>
> I for one will miss it if it is removed.

I, honestly, use this feature daily. I generally only bother to start
a game if it's winnable, and if I ever notice that it's become
unwinnable, I often undo until it is winnable to see where I went
wrong.

Parker