[ggo-discussion] Re: new user experiences 0.3.6 pre3

At 15:27 19.04.2003 -0700, you wrote:


>1. First of all: you are building an excellent piece
>of internet software.

Thanks :)


>2. I can confirm Jarrko's 2nd point playing both black
>and white sometimes the newly played stone's display
>screws up.

I believe all of you, several people reported this. I don't get it myself. 
I had it only once at all and fail to reproduce it. And the logfile gives 
no clue. Argh! This really minimizes the chances I find and fix this.


>3. I like all of his ideas.

Me, too. Also I would like to win the lottery to have 12 hours a day for 
gGo available. :)


>4. I like your idea of the tree display (like on KGS).
>Can't wait.

Guess you need to wait a bit, see 3)


>5. I don't like that I cannot open "help" (likewise
>with KGS client so here you can get a - be it minor -
>competing diff) from the startwindow.

The help file is pretty useless currently anyways. You dont miss much. Who 
wants to write a manual? :)


>6. I could not figure out how to resume an adjourned
>game (got disconnected, had to resume with panda-egg)

Ok, I can finally say something positive now.
Either do the manual approach and type "load white-black" in the terminal. 
You can basically perform any IGS action via the terminal window. Or open 
your playerinfo dialog (Edit - My stats), go to the second tab, right-click 
the game you want to load in the Stored list, and select Load. I admit this 
feature is not so obvious. See (5).


>7. I have a big screen. Whenever I play GnuGo I have
>to spend several actions to get rid of the
>ridiculously large chat area and make the board look
>decent.
>It would be nice if the window location, layout and
>size could be remebered for playing GnuGo.

Did you try the "Save size" in the View menu of a board?
This saves the size of the board (not the window!) and restores the board 
when you open a new one, then automatically arranges the rest of the GUI 
elements (sidebar, toolbar, comment field etc.) around the board. So if you 
save a larger board, your total window will be larger, too. Why does it not 
save the window size? Two reasons: The GUI elements like sidebar etc. have 
no static size due to the different look and feels on different operating 
systems. So I need to allow Java to arrange that. Second (and main reason) 
because of a Java bug in the split pane. If I force this to a certain size, 
it will open maximized. I had this in the very first gGo versions, the 
board opened with a maximize comment field, a completely white editor 
window. So I need to allow Java to arrange the split pane automatically, 
too. As result, I can only force a certain board size, and then let Java 
handle the rest. But the result is good enough, your new window wont be 
_exactly_ as the old saved one, but almost.


>8. The basic layout has some flaws - I don't pretend I
>can improve it with just a few remarks. It should be
>optimized for board-space.

I think I can write "see 7)" here, if I understand you correct.


>9. When joining a teaching game my teacher could not
>see my comments in the game window, I had to have the
>chat window open all the time.

Bug with the new IGS server. Reported it to PandaNet, will be fixed next 
week. Not a client issue. IGS doesn't send the kibitz to the teach game 
owners. It did on the old server.


>This may look negative but trust me, I would not write
>this down if I did not think this is going to be a
>hell of a program.

It does not look negative. You could repeat yourself and say 10 times, what 
a great program. However, this only helps my ego, not gGo. :)


>Don't feel bad about the whiners.

What I feel bad about are the people who use the old open source gGo to 
cheat on IGS, as this damages my reputation, not their. And I am pissed 
about those people who think they have the right to demand gGo being open 
source. Why don't they write their own client? Exactly the same discussion 
appears on KGS regulary, I suppose you saw it there.


Sidenote: Most urgent next gGo work will be to implement multiple game 
support, read: toggle singlegame false. The new IGS server defaults to 
singlegame false, the old did to singlegame true. But gGo only supports 
singlegame true properly, the messages differ significantly, and my parser 
ignores most of the singlegame false messages. As result, now on the new 
server everyone gets singlegame false, gGo doesnt work properly, people 
dont know about toggle singlegame and think the client is broken. Well, it 
lacks definately, but isnt really broken. So as soon as I implemented this, 
I will make 0.3.6 available (as not many people use the previews). And the 
broken SGF loading on OS X was also quite ugly. Urgh.


  Peter

Other related posts: