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Author Topic: Alphabetize/Search Stockpile Lists/Trade Interface  (Read 554 times)

Niddhoger

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Alphabetize/Search Stockpile Lists/Trade Interface
« on: August 16, 2014, 02:51:57 am »

I know this is already in the Eternal Suggestions Thread, but the alphabetize suggestions was buried at the very bottom with 0 votes next to it.  This would be a HUGE help.  Instead of hunting through the tiny text of a trade interface to see if they have any "Rose Gold XXX" that your baron demands for his new dining room table, you would be able to simply hit "n" and start typing "rose gold" in the trade window to find bars, trinkets, flutes, etc to smelt down/use.  This could also be used when dealing with the liaison.  So you didn't find flux stone yet/none on your map? Instead of meticulously hunting through the 4+ pages of the stones submenu, you could simply type in "Marble" like at embark.  Or, when you go the stone submenu, it will be neatly listed in alphabetical order.  Sometimes, I have to scroll through the whole thing 4-5 times to see if I missed "calcite" or if the liaison simply can't bring it to me.  I could just scroll down and see that there is nothing between "Brimstone" and "Chromite" before scrolling down to check of "marble" is between "Kimberlite" and "Microline."

Or perhaps I want to make a stockpile only for items I want to mill.  Say I'd prefer to only mill the dimple cups and save the whip vines for booze.  Instead of hunting through the (insanely bloated with DF2014's garden vegetables) food menu, I could either type in "whip vine" Or scroll to the bottom of the list and find it.  As it is, the items aren't even sorted by type... some of the berries are clumped together, some are not.  If there is any rhyme or reason to the lists.... I'm simply not seeing it.  The "flour" plants seem to be clumped (all the wheast, oats, barely, etc), but then the other ones (the millets) are further down the list...  It seems like they are sorted by the last word -plant, -wheat, -millet, but then the -amaranths have "red spinach" right between "Purple Amaranth" and "Elephant-Ear Amaranth" Then longland grass and whip vine are at the very bottom (instead of near the other flour based plants).  You get the idea...

Even if the items aren't listed alphabetically, can they at least have better sub menus? Something like plants with separate "Mill->flour" "Mill->dye" "brew" "process->thread" etc (or at least arrange them in the submenus this way).  At the very least due this for the trade interface! I know the items are sorted with bars at the top, but its all one huge list.  It can be tiresome telling when one category ends and another begins.  The fact that we can't see most items entire names further exacerbates this.  Also, bags with sand are freely mixed with empty bags, etc.  Instead I'd like to AT LEAST see spacers between the categories. So when bars ends and cages begins, there could be a black space (Better yet, one with a ~CAGES~ Header).  Something like the stocks subscreen or embark/liaison menu with categories on the side.. .anything to keep it from being one huge multiple page behemoth of a list.

Without adding the "n->search" function from embark to these menus, simply alphabetizing the various stock screens and submenus would save so much time/annoyance sorting through a menu multiple times looking for that one specific item to enable/disable.  It (should) even be an easy fix! I hate to sound ungrateful, but Toady is adding worldgen designations for north/south pole while overlooking this simple, massively time saving, fix? Its at the point I wouldn't mind "sponsoring" this addition. 
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