[Kde-games-devel] Statusbar messages in KPatience

[Stefan Majewsky]

On Mittwoch 22 April 2009 22:16:26 Parker Coates wrote:
> I don't really think it's the job of a status bar to report things to
> the user. The status bar is by design something that the user checks
> to learn the application status. It is not a
> notification area; we already have KGamePopupItem for that. (You
> should know, Dmitry. You wrote it. ;) ) Dragon Player's status bar
> doesn't "report" to me every time a second passes, it just politely
> holds that information for me, so that I can check it if I'm
> interested.

Like I already said, I would also support KGamePopupItem to be used (though 
there is the problem that KPat does not really have a free corner where the 
popup item could not possibly cover cards).

> > 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.
>
> What about when going from unknown to winnable or unknown to
> unwinnable or winnable to unknown or unwinnable to unknown?

"Unknown" is an implementation detail. I would just let the application stay 
silent if I do not know anything, even more if it's an active popup such as 
KGamePopupItem. Like I said earlier, I would rather display only the 
unwinnable message, which stays there until the user starts a new game, or 
undoes enough steps to make everything solvable again (everything of course 
with the option to disable these popups, as they might annoy many users).

> Personally, I think we should do two things:
> - Hide the status bar by default. The information there isn't
> particularly useful to your beginning player and hiding it frees up
> more room for our beautiful card decks, especially on wide screen
> monitors.

Ah, again the old discussion about whether to use statusbars or not. Let's not 
go through this again, we saw the last time that we cannot reach a single 
opinion on that, so every developer should do what he considers best for his 
game.

Greetings
Stefan
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