Bruno Rizzuti wrote:
Hi!
> The icons
> - I don't have a better set for the icons within the main windows,
> neither I am particularly good with the graphic. Still, I feel
> anything would be better than those. You can send me the old icons,
> and i can try to improve them. You will be free to accept my
> modifications, and apply them unless/until someone comes up with
> better ones.
I would suggest to go the other way round. Simply cause the
current icons are GIF you'd have limited colours no alpha
and so on it seems better to design them in a more suitable
format. svg would be ideal as one could zoom them to any
size, but PNG in proper sizes will do. If you find a nice
set or nice icons you could collect them together we can
include them in the project. But make sure that we'd be
allowed to reuse them (licensing is an ugly thing...) Isn't
this a better approach than dumping them out?
I would suggest to have closer look through gnome stock
(they're pretty industrial safe IMHO quite professional from
their style) and build upon them or select from them.
> - The icon in the main window and the one "with the two
> pieces of hairs" should be one and the same, or at least
> very close. You should choose one and stick with it. They
> have been there since ages?
Yes, I think the very first version of Scid that I installed
back hten already used this one. One should just keep this
in mind if one intends to change it.
> Then what is needed is a restyle.
Israel already provided us with at least an SVG version. But
feel free to come up with a better alternative.
> Splash screen I stand by my point. Just to make an
> example, when i launch OpenOffice it doesn't tell me that
> it has found a custom dictionary or that the spellchecker
> is activated on the Italian language.
Right. But if it just closes down with no window appearing
you're lost.
> At least, it should not pop up per default.
I could live with that easily.
> Junk stuff
> There are three separate points.
> - Everything should always be formatted, like shown below the
> chessboard. Showing a line such as [WhiteElo "2600"] looks like a
> development version.
Do you refer here to the PGN window? You can format this by
"Display / Short (3-line) header". What you mention is the
pure PGN header. And here I must say: it's IMHO a feature to
see what's there! I use (and I'm not the only one here) a
set of extra lines for headers they all show up neatly in
Scid in that way. Other programs give no access to them.
> - You are showing twice the same information. Name, Elo, everything...
> is all duplicated. This is useless.
As I mentioned you can switch off the game info area. But:
not everyone has PGN window open all the time.
> - When information is lacking, the "?" look like program errors. At
> startup I see the following three lines...
> Game 0: ? -- ?
> * (0) ????
> ?: ? (?)
> ...This is really disappointing.
What should it show instead? Nothing?
> Default chessboard
> When i installed Scid on Windows Vista, default were Merida + wooden
> chessboard.
Ok, this is new then in recent versions. I agree with you
that a default set in simple colours is maybe better.
> Eboard would be even worse... pieces look totally cheesy.
> :( I can help also with chess graphics, as you asked, but
> this is not the point. The point is that you can make Scid
> look much better already with what you have, just changing
> the default.
Agree here. I don't care about windows installer, however or
the default sets. IMHO something failsafe would be Merida 1
or 2 plus a simple coloured background.
> Scid and other (non-chess) program
[...]
> This means that most of their choices are the most
> appropriate (and that "no matter if good or bad" means
> "most likely good"). Most of those programs (such Excel)
> are databases,
Excel is everything but not a database. Sorry. Absolutely
not.
If it were you'd have to save each cell. If you want to stay
in the picture, I mean.
> even if not *chess* databases. This means that they share
> some common things in the user interface. Now think about
> this: - When i open Excel, it creates a new file named
> Cartel1. Why giving not just a name, but also a number?
> And why not "[Cartel1]", with "[]" to remark that it is
> new?
Scid opens with the clipbase by default. This _is not_ a
file. It behaves like a base but it resides in memory,
therefore it is very sensible to distinguish it in the
naming to make this clear. Thats the reason for the [].
This is a concept you do not have in Excel as it makes no
sense in Excel.
> - Cartel1 is composed by 3 tabs (or "pages"). Why at the
> beginning you are within tab1, and not tab0 to remark that
> it is unsaved?
The 0 does not remarkt it's state as unsaved. This was a
simplification. It's a side effect. More complete:
If you open an empty base you are at game 0. Ie. you're not
in a game of the base, yet. It consists of no games. In your
picture cell A1 on tab1 does not exist, yet. You add your
moves you choose "Add new game". See something here? It's
not named "Save", for a very good reason. In your picure
this is the same as adding a new cell to your spreadsheet.
(Scid does not have the concept of tabs.) You start out with
an empty one and add A1. Then you add B1 and so on. If you
choose "Add new" you append a dataset. Thats also the reason
for "Save/Replace": you replace A1 by the content of the
current display. This concept is not mappable to Excel.
Scid _has to_ behave differently here.
It gets quite technical to explain this, but just imagine
you replace game 25 of a 3.700.000 games database. And then
you write the whole 350MB to disk... Excel would do that,
but a usual Excel sheet has not this size and not inicees
and no cache and no... Therefore, Scid marks the current
game 25 as deleted and just appends a new block at the end
and writes mere 10kb or something the like to disk. If you
want to you can try to fill 3.7 Mio cells of an Excel sheet
with PGN notation of games and then hit save to see that a
database approach is a bit more efficient here (and actually
required).
> I could go on with analogies, but i really hope you don't
> stick with my (almost) rethorical questions, and get the
> point.
Sorry, you have to get a point here. Scid does not compare to
Excel. Excel is not a database.
--
Kind regards, / War is Peace.
| Freedom is Slavery.
Alexander Wagner | Ignorance is Strength.
|
| Theory : G. Orwell, "1984"
/ In practice: USA, since 2001
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