[crossfire] 'Identified' tab in the inventory display (was: Auto ID on examine)

[Brendan Lally]

On Sat, 17 Apr 2010 13:00:24 +0300
"Otto J. Makela" <om at iki.fi> wrote:
> 
> What I would like to also see is having a class "identified" (similar
> in function to "cursed" and "magic") in the inventory, so that you
> could more easily manipulate items which you have identified.
 
NB: In order to do this, a new flag would need to be defined for the
item2 command, there is space for it, and clients should handle new
flags gracefully, but I'd still want a bit of testing to take place.


I can see how this might be useful, and I think there are four
possible ways to approach it:

1) with another 'style' in the inventory display in the way that
cursed and magic items are currently highlighted in red and
blue respectively (possibly including (2) as well).

2) with a change to the item name in the inventory (maybe adding
a ? after the name of unIDed items?)

3) Using a new notebook tab. (possibly in combination with (2) and/or
(1))

4) Rethinking the way that inventory filtering is done.

Option 1) Creates an interesting question of precedence, since the same
items that are unidentified are also often the ones that are known to
be cursed or magical, it isn't clear which bit of information is the
most important there.

Option 2) Should pretty much work cleanly, but it may not be obvious
enough on its own.

Option 3) Is the one that is most consistent with the way other classes
of objects are defined. 
The following is a screenshot I have taken of how the inventory pane
on my client appears like with an additional tab added (the question
mark)

http://imagebin.ca/view/R6ofXm.html

This illustrates a potential issue with adding additional tabs, I
don't normally tend to have my inventory display any wider than this,
and tend to lose the icon display (which I never use) anyway. Losing the
'unlocked items' tab would matter a bit more, since that's often my 'I
have loot I need to dump' tab.

This is using a 'full-size' layout, so I would imagine the situation
would be worse for someone using one of the small-scale layouts (such
as sixforty)

Maybe Kevin can weigh in here, since he will be able to judge the
impact on layouts more accurately than I can.

For Option 4) I'd love to hear suggestions, I was half thinking of push
buttons for toggling the display of different groups of items (ie, a
button which is clicked once to show magic items only, again to show
mundane items only and a third time to show all items again) - but I
don't think tri-state buttons are a good move interface-wise

Brendan.