[Kde-games-devel] Statusbar messages in KPatience

[Dmitry Suzdalev]

On Wednesday 22 April 2009 22:23:43 Mauricio Piacentini wrote:
> I think your previous message nailed it: it is the tone and wording of
> the messages. At first I did not realize the game "entity" was also
> trying to solve the game, and talking to me :) This is probably
> confusing for others as well.
Yep, certainly. But I also think it's not necessary to report *that* often.

Speaking about dolphin for example, status bar changes when you move to the 
different entity. And in this case it changes to provide a different 
information - because one entity changed to another.

In kpat's case we have one entity - the current game. And constantly telling 
same things about it has a little sense imho.

Imagine for example such situation:
You are hovering some file. Dolphin displays info about it in status bar. 
Suddenly it changes status bar text to:
"Oh! Looks like this file's going to change. Checking..."
and then...
"Yep! File's changed. Good luck with new content!"
and then...
"Oh, it's changing again! Checking..."
etc etc.
What would you think? :)

So what i'm proposing is to stop telling user things that don't change.
*IF* they change, then it's good to report them. Once. Not at every turn.

For example when game starts to be unwinnable, kpat reports about it. When it 
goes back to winnable - it reports it again. Simple, clear and non-intrusive.

But issuing those "Calculating...", "Game is winnable/notwinnable" at every 
turn is too verbose imho.

Cheers,
Dmitry
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