The other major annoyance is there are 3 or 4 sets of cursor control keys.
This keeps being repeated.
There
are several different cursoring methods, but there are several different cursoring
requirements.
When you have the map visible and cursorable, general square-by-square map navigation is
always the cursors. It's your choice of the dedicated 'inverted-T' set or the cursors (and diagonals, and Z-scroll in the centre) on the Numpad,
with or without NumLock active, although NumLock's toggling does in my experience change whether shift-cursor jumps by ten units, or not.
Construction area adjustment is always the alphabetic axis increaser/decreaser keys.
Most (if not all..? can't think of an exception, right now) menus that sit
alongside the map use +:- for up/down and /:* for page-up/down. (They can't at all use the Number Pad Paging keys, because that would clash with up/down-right movements on the map itself, which is something you're allowed to do at the same time, whether or not that changes the focus and resets the side-menu's context to the new focus.)
The units/jobs/job manager screen are pretty simple. Being full-screen and no-map, they can use the cursors. Would you prefer they be controlled by the perhaps less handy +-*/ symbols?
The most complex cursor-usages, and the ones with the most hint of discrepancy are the full-screen (no map shown!) menus which have more than two dimensions of movement (not counting page-ups/downs). From memory, these are the trade-goods management screen, (the actual trading screen has two separate up/down axes, but for now I'll ignore this), the trade-request screen, the stockpile permit/forbid screen and the embark screen (ignoring the tab-to-goods/animals management, and for now just looking at the pre-embark skills-assignment one).
All of these are cursor controlled in the first degree, but with slightly different way of both
representing the sub-level data, so of course this rather conveys itself into the control method.
On the pre-embark preparation screen, giving skills to each of the seven means (if I emember it correctly, and I may not!) cursoring up and down on the LHS list of dwarves, then right-cursoring into the skills list and now cursoring up and down the list of skills (and doing something... can't remember what, to page-up/down), then (maybe..? darn my memory, I'm not actually sure, but it's obvious when you're there) using +/- to increment and decrement the number of skill levels.
The stockpile screen is multi-level and (I'm pretty sure) also uses cursor in/out of levels. The complexity that arises being the different levels for which the Block/Allow and Forbid/Permit pairings (or whichever way round they are... again it's obvious when you're there), and the toggle on/off by the Enter key on the end-leaves. Oh, and the toggle on/off of the 'special case' items like empty cages/animals-traps, and prepared food. Which I can see why the former are separate, but the latter might well be integrated into the (already multitudinous) foodstuffs penultimate layer of menus, perhaps.
The trade-request menu uses a
slightly different method. Two up/down controls are used, the one to move up and down the categories, and the one to move up and down the sub-category lists. Then left-right (IIRC) is used to nudge the priorities from left (zero priority) to right (max priority) in stages. It
does have similarities to pre-embark skill-assignments, so would a re-write (of this, and or the other) be able to make both consistent with each other? Maybe.
The trade-movement menu has a primary-up/down for categories (sounds familiar) and then a secondary up/down for goods within that category (where any exist so that the category itself exists, after any filters are applied). I forget now how it works, but I recall that it's
also totally obvious and foolproof (YMMV?). Even if I can't remember which of the prior methods (if any) it exactly matches.
So, out of the countless cursoring opportunities that you have, I can come up with just four (or five, including the actual trading screen) examples where the
most complex movements around the most individualistic hierarchies of control also manage, surprise surprise, to have their own takes upon
how to convey control to the user.
But the last time I argued this point I had DF in front of me and I could go through the whole gamut of the various interface and be definite about the amount of consistency that you actually
do get. This time, I'm just rather riled up by the continual "cursors are different" comments and relying upon memory (and muscle-memory) to catalogue both the exceptions and the rules... But I still know I have a case against this steady hum of (IMO) erroneous nay-saying, because things haven't changed since the last time I did the full research about it. And that's without even considering the frequency of use: embark menus are used... once per embark; trading request screens are used three times a game-year at the maximum; actual trading and trading management screens are used maybe slightly more; admitedly stockpile management menus are either something that you don't use at all or use
a lot; but all the other menus that are likely the vast majority of your major and continual usage are... standardised...
Darnit, I've rambled. BYGTI.