[Kde-games-devel] KPatience, select deck dialog idea and mockup.

[Luciano Montanaro]

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On martedì 21 aprile 2009, Parker Coates wrote:

> This has been discussed on the list in the past. [1] At the time, most
> developers seemed convinced that unified fronts and backs were a good
> idea, while Matthew Woehlke argued the against. Eugene decided to ask
> "the people" and got a firestorm of responses claiming that this is
> the single greatest feature in KPat.

The problem is "the people" were not given enough information to give an 
informed vote; so obviously people voted to keep the feature just in case.

I know Eugene had the best intentions, but the problem should have been framed 
better. 

> [2] So there will be 
> unpleasantness whether we keep this feature or get rid of it.


>
> Personally, my vote is to remove it. It would simplify a lot of things
> and also ease the introduction of GHNS. In fact if we added GHNS
> support at the same time we remove separate backsides, then that might
> mitigate some of the user outrage. Unfortunately, we're already past
> the soft feature freeze, so I'm not sure if that can happen for 4.3.
>

I'd say let's get rid of it for next version; we can put it back in some other 
form if it's really needed.

There is a way the back could be inserted in the right context within the deck 
I have been pondering since my experiment with the huncard deck [1].

That is, we could reference a "pattern" paint server in the deck (which can be 
a color, a repating pattern but also an image) when defining the color of the 
card back.

The back would thus need to be defined as a square image, with the important 
bits in the center, so decks of various shapes would most likely cut out not 
too important details.

The deck would have a "back" element, with a sub-element containing the shape 
of the card, filled with a conventionally named pattern.

it would look something like this:

<g id="back">
<rect width="116" height="189" x="6" y="6" rx="3"
      style="fill:url(#back-pattern)"/>
<use xlink:href="#back-shadow"/>
</g>

Here the <rect> element draws a rectangle with rounded corners, filled with 
the back pattern.

The <use> element in this case draws a semitransparent overlay that ought to 
give some depth to the card graphics. 

The deck author could have some extra elements drawn when drawing the back, 
and some control on how to use the back graphics. For example, an extra 
border could be added.

The drawback is that when loading the deck, the pattern would need to be read 
and inserted in the dom of the deck svg. There is a class in kdegames that 
should help with that, if I remember correctly. And probably the card cache 
would need to be changed to make this work.



Luciano


[1] http://www.cirulla.net/listing/kde_stuff/card-decks/huncards.svg

- -- 
Luciano Montanaro //
                \X/ mikelima at cirulla.net
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