Package: sgt-puzzles Version: 20170606.272beef-1 Severity: normal Dear Ben Hutchings,
I enjoyed playing Simon Tatham's puzzles when I still was running Windows as my daily driver but since then I transitioned to Debian/LMDE. What I noticed right away but until now never really cared for is that the Windows build features a status bar at the bottom (and ports like the Android port have this bar, too, somewhat), but the Debian package does not. This status bar shows information like (where applicable) the elapsed time or counters of some sort. For example for the game Mines it shows the elapsed time, the number of mines left to be marked, and the number of deaths. For Net it shows the number of connected cells. Now, while this information isn't necessary to solve most of the games included in the puzzle collection, they still help a lot when it comes to convenience. It's rather inconvenient to count the number of marked mines in a game with 170 mines in order to make informed decisions about cells that you haven't uncovered nor flagged yet. Futhermore, I will never know how often I died/misclicked or how long one level took unless I use external tools like a stopwatch. Other games like Flip (now that I think about it, Mines is in this category, too, just like many more) not only don't show the number of moves made but have absolutely no lasting visual feedback whether the puzzle was solved. The moment you solve a Flip puzzle, all the tiles show this "flash animation" but if you blinked in this exact moment or looked away, you will never be able to tell that the game is/was solved. The short animation is the only feedback you get. The status bar would read "SOLVED!" which would stay there even if you continued playing an already solved level. And as far as I can tell, this is a general problem with all the puzzle games in this collection. I haven't seen a single game WITH a status bar of some sorts but I also haven't checked them all. I've looked for a menu/config option to enable but there was none. Hence, I assume that there just plain isn't a status bar in the Debian build. But given that several other builds have a (identical in terms of content) status bar, the information will probably be available in some form. It just isn't shown, which is sad. Because the puzzles are a really nice waste of time (in a completely positive way). ;) Might this problem be caused by different graphical frameworks (Qt vs Gtk) and problems in their interoperability? I know that dark system-level menu themes can look really ugly if the DE and specific applications don't use the same technology (black text on dark grey background). If so, is there a package that one can install to improve/fix this situation? I would love to be able to enjoy the puzzles in all their glory. As I said, they are really nice, (almost) all feature unique and logically derivable solutions (in contrast to the Windows Minesweeper for example). But the missing status bar really is a bummer, given that I used to play them with such a status bar. Thanks in advance. Alex -- System Information: Debian Release: 10.2 APT prefers stable-updates APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Foreign Architectures: i386 Kernel: Linux 5.12.0-17.1-liquorix-amd64 (SMP w/12 CPU cores; PREEMPT) Kernel taint flags: TAINT_WARN Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) Versions of packages sgt-puzzles depends on: ii libatk1.0-0 2.30.0-2 ii libc6 2.28-10 ii libcairo-gobject2 1.16.0-4+deb10u1 ii libcairo2 1.16.0-4+deb10u1 ii libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 2.38.1+dfsg-1 ii libglib2.0-0 2.58.3-2+deb10u3 ii libgtk-3-0 3.24.5-1 ii libpango-1.0-0 1.42.4-8~deb10u1 ii libpangocairo-1.0-0 1.42.4-8~deb10u1 Versions of packages sgt-puzzles recommends: ii falkon [www-browser] 3.0.0-3 ii firefox [www-browser] 78.12.0esr~linuxmint1+debbie ii palemoon [www-browser] 28.17.0-1 ii yelp 3.31.90-1 sgt-puzzles suggests no packages. -- no debconf information
