On 11/12/2007 05:52 AM, Stuart Buchanan wrote: > That's a really interesting idea, and I like your proposed language.
:-) > 1) I'm pretty sure that implementing this will require quite a change > to the input code, as we'll need a proper input parser rather than > the simple keyboard mapping we currently use (unless we want to write > reams of Nasal code). I don't know how easy this would be, I've written eleventeen such parsers. They're really quite simple. I know one guy whose first program was "Hello, world" and his second program was a parser. Since the language is instantaneously decodable, it is Markovian, and all you need is a single variable to represent the current state. In c++ you can make it a pointer-to-object, namely the object that describes the next-level sub-menu. The code is tiny and tidy. It grows organically as new items are added. > 3) This is a purely selfish PoV, merely because I'll have to do the > work, but documenting this in The Manual is going to be very hard, I must disagree. Things like this need to be self-documenting. My goal (not always achieved) for any user interface is that if anybody needs to look at the manual, it's wrong. There are some tried-and-true UI designs. Menus and sub-menus is one. Navigating the sub-menus with a succession of hotkeys is another. To say it the other way, if it needs difficult documentation, it was wrong to begin with, and should be redesigned or scrapped. > Of course, we could have both a one-to-one mapping and a > language-based mapping available, with a toggle on the menu system. The instantaneously decodable language *is* for all practical purposes a menu system. All the toggle needs to do is turn on/off the _showing_ of the next-level sub-menu. ========================================================== Several people have suggested just mousing over to cockpit hot-spots. That works great provided a) You're parked on the ground during preflight, OR b) You have a hardware joystick separate from your mouse. This leads to an advertising problem and/or an initial acceptance problem for FGFS, namely that it is hard to fly FGFS unless you already own a hardware joystick. And it's hard for the would-be user to justify buying a joystick until he's convinced that the sim is flyable. This problem is compounded by the lousy handling of the default aircraft. Naive users can't take the mouse out of yoke mode even for a moment. They can't even use the autopilot, because by the time they mouse over to the autopilot controls, they've lost control of the aircraft. Presumably the developers on this list have long since bought hardware joysticks. I suggest that before opining on the uselessness of keyboard bindings, folks should try flying without a joystick for a while. Or, better, watch naive users trying to do it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
