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[SixOfSpades]

   Currently (I'm still on 47.05), the only use of color in the Trading screen is just white, for "items made offsite & unaltered since then", purple for "items that are illegal to sell", and brown, for "everything else". That's a lot of wasted potential--especially considering just how much other information, that's highly relevant to trading, is inaccessible to the player without exiting the Trading screen (and therefore needing to select all the items all over again). I think something like the following would be a significant improvement, and save the player a lot of time. Some (most?) of these suggestions have been made in some form previously, I just felt the urge to combine & add to them, to form a cohesive plan.

   MODE 1: The main Trading screen, functionally identical to its current setup: You can select (and deselect) which of the fort's & caravan's goods you wish to exchange, choose which of your items (if any) you'd like to offer as a gift, and of course perform the actual trade itself. It shows the current bargaining prices, what both the fort and the visiting trader consider various items to be worth. The main change is that the items are color-coded to reflect their current trading premiums--the prices at which this merchant is willing to buy & sell each particular item--as a percentage of each item's base value. Just as it always has, the screen shows the caravan's goods on the left, and the fort's items on the right.

Bright purple: The trader is charging at least double the item's value								Cyan: Your item is currently trading at 200% its base price or higher
Bright red: Merchant wants 175-199% of the item's regular price								Bright blue: The caravan will give 175-199% for this
Yellow: The caravan values this item at 150-174%								Bright green: Trading this item will give 150-174% its regular value
Bright green: The merchant has set a premium of 125-149% on this								Yellow: This merchant will pay 125-149% for your item
Bright blue: The caravan wants 101-124% of the item's regular value								Bright red: Currently worth 101-124% of its base value
White: This item is trading at 100%, its default price								White: You will be trading this item at cost
Cyan: The trader is currently undervaluing this item								Bright purple: Item will be traded at a loss to this merchant

   Now, those are the colors on the items themselves. Once a fort-owned item has been selected for trade, the [T] selection flag to its right will also be given a color, depending on any potential negative effects of offering or trading it:
   Bright red: Offering this item for trade will offend or anger the merchants
   Perhaps flashing red if the traders are already angry, and therefore offering the item is likely to trigger immediate hostilities and/or outright war?
   Dark red: This item is currently under an active export ban
   Yellow: This item could be placed under an export ban in the immediate future (a noble, who has a Mandate unused at the moment, likes this item)
   White: All other items (no warnings). This is also the color of every [T] on the left-hand column of goods brought by the caravan.

Use the [TAB] key to toggle between Modes 1 and 2. This will not change which items you have currently flagged
for trading, or even move your view up or down the lists of goods available for trade. The items visible on the
screen will stay exactly in place--it's their colors, and the colors of their [T] selection flags, that will change.

   MODE 2: Future bargaining prices set by existing trade agreements, what costs are expected to be over the year to come. This mode is for reference only--it has nothing to do with making any transactions with the merchants currently visiting your Depot. You cannot select/deselect an item for trading, offer goods in tribute, etc, in Mode 2. What you can do is freely scroll up & down both lists of items, and [TAB] back & forth, to compare their premiums now with what their premiums will be later. The exact numerical price of each item in Mode 2 is also adjusted, to show what it would be under the expected exchange rate.

Dark purple: No one in the next year will charge less than 200% for this								Cyan: Item will trade at 200% or more at some point next year
Dark red: The lowest price next year will be 175-199% of its base value								Dark blue: This item will trade at 175-199% in the next 12 months
Brown: This item can be bought for 150-174% at some point next year								Dark green: At least 1 trader will offer a 150-174% margin
Dark green: At least 1 merchant next year will bring this at 125-149%								Brown: The premium on this item is expected to be 125-149%
Dark blue: The lowest scheduled prices for this are between 100-124%								Dark red: 1 of next year's merchants will offer 100-124% for this
Grey: The best price in the coming year will be exactly 100%								Grey: No trade agreements next year will affect the price on this
Cyan: At least one expected trader will sell this at less than its value								Dark purple: All traders in the coming year will undervalue this item

   If 2 or more traders scheduled to visit in the coming year will offer different profit margins on the same type of item, this function only reflects the one that is more favorable to the fort; the broker remembers when to buy each good for the cheapest, and sell it for the dearest. This rule will be ignored, however, in the case of items considered offensive by the merchants: Suppose that you have a trade agreement with the elves, granting you a premium of 186% on bracelets, while the humans will offer you only 154% for those same bracelets. So looking over your Finished Goods sitting in the Trade Depot (this is in the autumn, while you're haggling with the dwarven merchants), you should see all of your bone & metal bracelets shown in dark blue, reflecting the 186% that the elves are willing to pay . . . but the bracelets made with wood, or clear/crystal glass, are displayed in brown--because the elves won't actually buy those goods, so trading them to the humans is clearly the better deal, despite the lower price.

   Now, those are the colors on the items themselves. A lesser version of the color-coded [T] warnings from Mode 1 is also present here: If a fortress-owned item is of a type liked by any of your nobles, it will get a brown [T] next to it, reminding you that by the time the caravan that's offering the lucrative deal arrives at your fort, trading that item could be illegal, so you might be better off selling it now.
   Unlike Mode 1, Mode 2 will also show you colored [T] flags on the merchant's side of the screen--this is to take advantage of the profit to be gained by buying from one caravan to sell to another. The trader's goods will be [T]-flagged as follows, but only if you will be able to capitalize on it over the coming year. Let's get the flag colors out of the way first.
   Cyan: Item will trade at 200% or more at some point next year
   Dark blue: Will trade at 175-199% in the next 12 months
   Dark green: Trade offers will peak in the 150-174% range
   Brown: The premium on this item is expected to be 125-149%
   Dark red: Next year's merchants will offer 100-124% of this item's value
   Grey: No trade agreements next year will affect the price on this
   Dark purple: All traders in the coming year will undervalue this item

I explained above that in Mode 2, each item among the caravan's goods is colored by the lowest trading rate that you're likely to see during the coming year. Those items' [T] flags, in contrast, are colored according to the highest premiums that you're scheduled to see over that same period. But those flags will only be displayed if the trading rate(s) to come is higher than the rate at which you can currently buy it. So the presence of a [T] in Mode 2 means you can flip that item from one caravan to another, without doing a damn thing to it, and still make a profit--comparing the color of the [T] flag in Mode 2, with the color of the item itself in Mode 1, tells you roughly how large that expected profit will be. (And, comparing the numerical prices will tell you exactly how much profit there should be, but of course the color-coding is easier to look for.)

The game will treat Mode 2 as Inactive, and refuse to leave Mode 1, if any of the following are true:
   a) The fort doesn't have any active trading agreements (yet), making Mode 2 irrelevant.
   b) The broker is less than a Professional Appraiser: They're simply not yet good enough at the job to juggle all those figures in their head.
   c) The broker isn't the actual broker, just a substitute acting under "Anyone may trade". (Possibly redundant because of b? Would random citizens be familiar with upcoming trade agreements?)

*      *      *

I had plans for an additional 2 or 3 Modes, but decided they most likely wouldn't be of enough use to be worth the effort.
   Mode 3 was going to be about how "home-grown" each item was, an expansion of the game's existing record that reflects the extent to which an item was produced on-site. For example, compare a +pig tail sock+ that started out as a seed produced as a by-product of your Brewing industry, & was dyed with dimple cups similarly native-grown, with some («-alder wood crutch-») that you turned into an *«-alder wood crutch-»* by having your Jeweler throw some gravel at it. The sock is FAR more indigenous to the fort, and should be treated as such, at least by those players who care about such things. But then I figured, is the game even capable of tracking that kind of item history? Would it even matter? How useful is identifying native items anyway? The only thing I currently use that functionality for is easily picking out those items that I purchased solely in order to flip right back, and of course that's only of very limited utility.
   Mode 4 was about how much of an impact the transaction would have on your fort's existing stock of goods. If your fort had, say, 283 gabbro boulders lying around, but only 2 iron bars, then buying 2 more iron bars would have a much larger effect than selling 2 of your gabbro. I thought some players might care about that, but then decided, no they wouldn't.
   And the point of Mode 5 was its distinct lack of color-coding: Instead of a confusing wall of text slamming you with a discordant riot of multi-hued information, everything would just be a calming, easy-to-read palette of whites & greys. You know, for all of those people who play Dwarf Fortress because it's so simple, and low-key, and doesn't ask much of you.

[Tamren]

I think having so wide a spectrum of colours is overcomplicating things. All you really need to know are simple things like:

1. This item is more expensive
2. This item sells for more
3. This item is banned for export
4. This item was imported instead of produced locally
5. This item will anger the elves

And so on. Actually knowing the exact price multiplier in 25% steps isn't all that useful because all of that info is already shown in your trade agreement. Anything you sign a contract to import will be roughly 200% price and anything your trade partner needs will sell for about 200% as well.

[SixOfSpades]

Actually knowing the exact price multiplier in 25% steps isn't all that useful because all of that info is already shown in your trade agreement.

Which you currently can't access without completely leaving the Trading screen (and going through a fairly arcane series of keypresses) to dig it out. So you have to either lose all the progress you've made so far in Trading, or maintain a copy of your trade agreements, stored somewhere outside of DF.

Solving that problem, i.e., a Suggestion for an improvement, would involve either
   a) Making your currently-applicable (and possibly future) trade agreement(s) visible directly from the Trading screen, or
   b) Embedding the most pertinent information from the trade agreement(s) directly into the Trading screen itself, or even
   c) Do both, for good measure.
I'm clearly advocating for b, are you saying that you think the Trading interface is already near-perfect as is?

I think having so wide a spectrum of colours is overcomplicating things.

Eh, not really. All you have to remember is "Cyan means it's really good, avoid the purple unless it's something you need, and don't sell anything with a red or yellow [T]". That's it. It's actually quite simple, especially considering that all of Mode 2 is totally optional. The vast majority of goods in the caravan (and presumably most of the fort's items, depending on what stuff you've chosen to move to the Depot) are still going to be colored white, so the colors simply draw your attention to those items that either you or the merchants want the most.

All you really need to know are simple things like . . . This item was imported instead of produced locally

Do you genuinely consider that something you need to know? As I said in the OP, I've never found that distinction to really be meaningful, is there some use for it that I'm not aware of?

[Bumber]

Do you genuinely consider that something you need to know? As I said in the OP, I've never found that distinction to really be meaningful, is there some use for it that I'm not aware of?

Selecting imported items makes it so you can't gift your current selection to the civ. It's also represented by parentheses, however.

[SixOfSpades]

Selecting imported items makes it so you can't gift your current selection to the civ.

Oh, yeah. It's been quite a while since I tried to donate something that wasn't a masterwork.


I should mention that I'm definitely not married to the specific colors I used in the OP. For one thing, I really don't like that the color of white/grey means "nearly the same thing as blue/cyan" on one side of the screen, and "the opposite of blue/cyan" on the other side. Happily, the graphics of the Steam update means we're no longer artificially limited to 16 colors of text. Ideally, I'd say that the caravan's side would be the warm colors (red-orange-yellow) and the fort's side the cool (green-blue-violet), with white being "neutral", and the intensity of the color increasing gradually, directly in proportion with the premium on the item. For example, if waterskins are trading at a rate of 152%, and quivers at 158%, then there should be a barely-perceptible difference in the two items' shade of orange. Meanwhile, Mode 2 would continue to use the same basic colors as Mode 1, just at a noticeably lower brightness.

[se5a]

I like this idea, though I think better search and filtering would go a lot further. Preferably colors and better search/filtering

[Tamren]

I'm clearly advocating for b, are you saying that you think the Trading interface is already near-perfect as is?

No I'm not against the broad UI improvements I'm just saying six different colours is excessive. The only reason things cost more or sell for more is because of trade agreements, and the multiplier is always close to 200%. So one colour for "more expensive to buy" and another colour for "more valuable to sell" would suffice. There's no point making price colours so granular when the game doesn't even bother to do that.

[SixOfSpades]

First, I should give the long-overdue acknowledgement that considerations such as meager amounts of profit are largely irrelevant in current versions of Dwarf Fortress. Most industries are so insanely lucrative that one's economy is largely a joke, with players frequently wishing to have smaller resources of stone, wood, plants, animals, mugs, clothing, etc., cluttering up their fortress and its storage capacities--to say nothing of its FPS. I for one make sure my broker always arranges at least a 3000☼ loss every time merchants come to town. So, yes, I fully understand that pinching pennies at the Trade Depot is currently quite useless, and even unwanted--but I hope that the version will come when it is not only desirable, but also important. (At the very least, for those forts founded under the specific Embark Scenario of becoming a profitable trading hub.) So yes, I quite agree that right now, it really doesn't matter whether that +quartzite table+ is trading at 50%, 200%, or anywhere in between . . . these considerations are a token of optimism that one day, DF will have a realistic economy, and it will be important that your broker is able to live up to the classic dwarven stereotype of being shrewd & miserly.

I like this idea, though I think better search and filtering would go a lot further. Preferably colors and better search/filtering

What do you mean? Like being able to search the list of items for text-matches like "scepter", "steel", and "☼alpaca"? I've long wanted to do this with the contents of bins when choosing items to bring to the Trade Depot, but I'd like to limit the suggestions on this thread to just the Trading screen itself.

The only reason things cost more or sell for more is because of trade agreements, and the multiplier is always close to 200%.

Technically, only goods that you place at maximum demand are always around 200%. Admittedly, I expect that's the most common setting for requested trade goods; when I'm trying to get specific raw materials that can't be found on my embark site, I almost always want lots of them. But that's far from the only trading premium that players have to deal with: If there's any industry that you regard as too bothersome to trouble yourself with (I believe clothing, instruments, glass, & books are all common ones), and take the easy route of just importing those goods, then every single premium on things like cloth or legwear is going to hurt you.

Secondly, attracting large caravans is important--that's how you get access to a greater variety of goods, like books on subjects that are actually useful, and bugged elven furniture made of illegal-but-thematic materials (my temple to my civ's god of jewels has an altar made of star ruby). The only way to make caravans larger is to make them happy, and I've found that making them happy involves not just giving them lots of your stuff, but also taking lots of their stuff. And of course, the most clutter-friendly way of taking in lots of stuff is by only accepting imports that will be profitable to sell to another caravan later on. And when flipping goods from one merchant to another, the difference in exchange rates is critical.

Lastly, it's crucial to note that for some reason, decorated items frequently do not conform to the stated premium on item types--even when there is no premium, there can still be considerable variance. Items can even be worth less than their base value, which was why I made sure the OP included a way to indicate that. For example, the trade agreement signed for the caravan that's in my Depot right now shows that all bracelets are supposed to have an exchange rate of 158%. The merchants have brought 3 bracelets for sale--both the (groundhog bone bracelet) and the (-porcupine bone bracelet-) follow the 158% rule, but the («-mica bracelet-») definitely does not: with its base value of 520 but an actual price of 1221, that's an effective premium of a whopping 235%. Meanwhile, the fort has a («-native silver masli-») with a base value of 740, and all musical instruments were set an import premium of 196%, so my masli should be worth 1440. Instead, the merchant is offering me 1666 for it. Further down, I have a *«+grown cedar wood figurine of forgotten beasts+»*, which has a base value of 70, but the trader says he'll only give me 38 for it--that's a mere 54% of the item's worth, a significant loss for me. Ideally, items which would trade at less than their base value should be made very clear to the broker/player.

[Bumber]

Technically, only goods that you place at maximum demand are always around 200%. Admittedly, I expect that's the most common setting for requested trade goods

It's the only setting in v50. They aren't even guaranteed to bring all requested items due to weight limit.

[se5a]

I like this idea, though I think better search and filtering would go a lot further. Preferably colors and better search/filtering

What do you mean? Like being able to search the list of items for text-matches like "scepter", "steel", and "☼alpaca"? I've long wanted to do this with the contents of bins when choosing items to bring to the Trade Depot, but I'd like to limit the suggestions on this thread to just the Trading screen itself.

The trade screen only sorts by bins currently, which is useless.
it should be able to search/sort individual items *within* bins, ignoring the bins themselfs.
Should also be able to search/sort/filter by (foreign made) and xwornx tags and *quality* tags.
I should be able to type "crown" or "bone crown" and get a list of crowns or bone crowns, and select them all with a single click.   
bin hauling is a bit quicker than individual item hauling so doing it outside the depot would increase the haul to depot time, but there's no reason the two screens shouldn't be similar.