Mudlet - Forum

I had a nice discussion with Vadi2 in the IRC that got me thinking. He didn't seem to think that this idea was worth pursuing. However, it seems that it might be best to see if there's any other interest in the community for it.

Basic Idea: Add more UI Toggles
Which UI Elements?

• Search bar (includes Previous and Next arrows)
• Timestamp Button
• Replay Button
• Log Button
• Emergency Trigger On/Off Button
• Latency Bar

If you have other UI elements you feel should be toggled, feel free to suggest them.

Why?
Well, why should we be able to toggle the Menu or the Toolbar? Sometimes various elements of the UI are not useful to us and cause other inconveniences in the UI that we would like to address. For the Menu and Toolbar, disabling them gives us more vertical space for the MUD output, which some find useful

Allowing us to toggle the listed items (Search Bar -> Latency Bar) would allow us more lateral room for the Command Line.

But the Command Line already expands as you add more content!

Indeed, it does. This is a matter of convenience as opposed to necessity.

I like having my Command Line equal roughly the output length of the MUD itself so that, when I'm typing, I have a good estimation of how much room I have left. For reference, in my MUD, about 4+ lines of MUD output is considered too much for, say, an emote, and I would know I need to end it. Also, it helps me line up text for editors for notes and descriptions so that I don't have to format them.

However, since I don't like having my window full-screen, my Command Line is not the length of the MUD output and I have no way of expanding it, hence my desire to toggle and hide some of these UI elements. I can't imagine I'm the only one who had wanted to disable some of these elements before.

Bonus:
Being able to shrink or enlarge the lateral length of the Command Line itself based on space available wouldn't be a terrible feature either.

I see this as causing more issues than it solves. Already people 'lose' their menu bar and toolbar, and spend way too long bugging people about 'how do I get them *bleeping* back??'. I see adding more toggles as an needless idea, and would even suggest considering the removal the existing toggles.

Just because some people have can have difficulties with them doesn't mean they should be removed for all those of us who do enjoy that level of customisation, in order to get a prettier GUI or simply more space when playing on a small screen etc. We might just as well ask for the removal of several situationally-useful-yet-easily-misusable API functions like expandAlias. Yes, they can cause some problems in the hands of Mudlet-novices, but despite wanting Mudlet to be easily learnable, I still want it to stay powerful and versatile, and not dumbed down to the lowest denominator.

I personally welcome any additional means of customising Mudlet's default appearance. Just hide the toggles somewhere in the settings and keep them present by default, so those of us who want a way of removing them can, while everyone else doesn't have to be bothered.

I tend to agree with Iocun on this one personally. Apart from the emergency stop, none of the listed functions are particularly vital to the operation of the client. Most of the issues I saw with the toggle of the menu and button bars are to do with them both being toggled off at the same time. Looking through the settings is a fairly natural thing to do if you're wondering why something disappeared, but if you toggled both off you can no longer get to the settings to put them back. If you toggle off the search element, you can still get to the settings to turn it back on.

I do think we should perhaps make the emergency stop element permanent. It's intended for use when a script or trigger or alias or something runs amok in a way that doesn't freeze Mudlet, but causes issues in other ways (emptying your rift of all herbs and stuffing them down your gullet, or perhaps filling up your hard disk with files it downloads, something of that sort). Obviously you can just restart Mudlet, but the emergency stop allows you to end the behaviour, make the correction, and then resume normal operation.

Just my $0.02.

Sounds reasonable to keep the emergency stop permanent, yeah.

For emergencies!

A semi-necro, but I'd like to add, emergency stop doesn't appear to affect event handlers, which can often be the source of a looping or repeating problem. Is there any reason for this, or can it be fixed?

I'm leaning towards it being an oversight to be honest. I'll file the report for it.