Talk:Keymapping Improvements

Some random thoughts:

• I suppose the list of available actions would have to be ordered somehow. If there are 20 actions and 7 buttons, you need to know which choice of 7 that makes the most sense. Possibly just picking the 7 first would be enough if the list is ordered that way.

• The gradual conversion scheme has a problem: It means that buttons would have to be assigned _both_ to hardcoded keys (such as F5), and to the new actions. On the DC, all buttons are already taken by hardcoded keys, so unless these can be removed there is no space to map the new actions.

• The precense of a text description of the actions allow for the creation of a popup menu to select actions from if not enough buttons are available. This is good for the DC backend, as I have reserved a trigger for the purpose of summoning such an action menu.

• Maybe there should be a way for the backend to report what buttons (if any) it binds to the actions so that the help screens can contain accurate information? (After all, the help screens are generated by the engine, not the backend.)

--Marcus 17:28, 1 July 2007 (CEST)

Hi Marcus, to reply to your above remarks:

• Fully agreed. The updated plan (see also my email on scummvm-devel) includes a 'priority' field in the list of actions. Alternatively, we could just "sort" that list by priority. But I prefer the priority field (nothing stops us from doing both, anyway, it's a simple as coding a 'sort' for the list -- I guess I am lossing myself in technical details here ;-)
• Gradual conversion scheme: Aye, that is indeed a problem. But the update plan suggest that the backend just generates key events anyway, instead of introducing a new event type, so I think that problem is dealt with. Please correct me if I am wrong.
• A popup menu with unmapped actions sounds like a sweet plan. It could also use the priority for sorting.
• The "help dialog" AFAIK only exists in the SCUMM engine, and isn't so great. I think it would be "better" to leave such a thing to the backend (but of course the code for that dialog could be shared). Or just display the generic "key remapping" dialog which I suggested in my last email to scummvm-devel.

--Fingolfin 17:45, 1 July 2007 (CEST)