[crossfire] GTK-V2 "Critical Messages" Pane content improvement

[Mark Wedel]

Kevin Bulgrien wrote:
> The GTK-V2 Critical Messages pane presently seems rather useless.  Not a lot of
> stuff goes there, and I would not call what does go there critical.  Many times
> I find myself not seeing chats, tells, etc, because battle messages, praying,
> etc. are flooding the messages pane.
> 
> Does anyone have an objection to the following message types being routed to
> the Critical Messages pane of the GTK-V2 client?
> 
> #define MSG_TYPE_ATTRIBUTE          11  /* Changes to attributes (stats, */
>                                         /* resistances, etc) */
> #define MSG_TYPE_COMMUNICATION      15  /* Communication between players */
> #define MSG_TYPE_VICTIM             19  /* Something bad is happening to the player */

  In my pie in the sky wishlist, what goes to what message pane (and how many 
message panes) would be setable in config options by the user (Simpler would be 
to have a fixed number of message panes, you with checkboxes you select where 
messages go - if a pane doesn't have anything selected for it, it wouldn't be 
drawn).

(The wishlist beyond that would be able to specify the color/font/whatever for 
the different messages)

  I don't have any problems with those above changes, as a simpler solution to 
what I discuss.  But I sometimes do wonder if a message pane devoted purely for 
player chat would make sense - if folks are busily chatting away, I don't want 
to necessarily lose important messages in the critical pane.  Conversely, I have 
found times where I've been in combat and have to look back for past chat 
messages, and those are interspersed with the more critical battle messages.

  Probably no perfect solution.  The addition of a critical vs normal message 
pane was done back in the day when the only thing that the client could use to 
differentiate messages was the color they were drawn in, so anything not default 
color was considered special, which was fairly arbitrary.