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[Meph]

Long item descriptions, engravings, artefacts... all of them show a large wall of text that is hard to read.

Using a string dump replacer, (by insolor), and a discovery made by scamtank, I did sneak in a few linebreaks. This is a ingame screenshot:


Dear Toady One, the only changes are these:

Code: [Select]

|This artwork appears on | => [B]This artwork appears on |
|This work of art is a | => [B]This work of art is a |
|This artwork appears on a | => [B]This artwork appears on a |
|This artwork appears | => [B]This artwork appears |
|It concerns | => [B]It concerns |
|The writing | => [B]The writing |
|The written portion consists of | => [B]The written portion consists of |
|The artwork relates to | => [B]The artwork relates to |
|This artwork is a| => [B]This artwork is a|
|It is a| => [B]It is a|
|The item | => [B]The item |
|On the item | => [B]On the item |
|On the front of the coin | => [B]On the front of the coin |
|On the coin's back | => [B]On the coin's back |
|Engraved | => [B]Engraved |
|It is | => [B]It is |
|The image is | => [B]The image is |
Thats my suggestions. More readable descriptions.

[Orange Wizard]

Improving readability is always nice.

Take my +1.

[therahedwig]

Aye. Preferences screen would perhaps also benefit from a few well placed linebreaks.

I'm dyslexic, so little formatting changes like these(and variable width text), are very welcome to me!

[Dirst]

This is an awesome suggestion, and given in an incredibly helpful way.

Since it changes the lengths of the strings, that takes it out of the scope of DFHack, right?  I think Toady could finish this before DFHack is re-released for 0.40, but just in case.

[GavJ]

I don't really have anything against this per se, but I don't find the example any easier to read than vanilla personally. I think the main issue is font and tiles being incompatibly shaped.

[Dirst]

I don't really have anything against this per se, but I don't find the example any easier to read than vanilla personally. I think the main issue is font and tiles being incompatibly shaped.

The default tiles have a decent aspect ratio for text.  It's just that most of the players who prowl these forums aren't using the default tiles.

That said, why are some screens rendered in tiles while others take full advantage of TTF?  It looks like any screen that might have a scrollbar is rendered in tiles, though I don't understand why that would make such a huge difference for rendering text.  Once TTF text is on the screen, it can be blitted around for scrolling just like anything else.

And even if the screen was rendered in TTF, it would still be more readable with some line breaks in it.

[RenoFox]

+1, excellent suggestion! Skipping straight to the relevant points in most decorations has indeed been a small but constant nuisance, and if there's a trivial fix to it then it should definitely be made.

[GavJ]

The default tiles have a decent aspect ratio for text.  It's just that most of the players who prowl these forums aren't using the default tiles.

What I meant by incompatible is that whatever tileset you use, it's either bad looking for text or bad looking for map tiles. The default is fine to read, but makes confusing/annoying tile layouts that don't match the physical space they represent.  Should be square for map and rectangular for text at the same time.

[Meph]

The default tiles have a decent aspect ratio for text.  It's just that most of the players who prowl these forums aren't using the default tiles.

What I meant by incompatible is that whatever tileset you use, it's either bad looking for text or bad looking for map tiles. The default is fine to read, but makes confusing/annoying tile layouts that don't match the physical space they represent.  Should be square for map and rectangular for text at the same time.

That is not relevant since TwbT came out, since it uses one tileset for the map and one tileset for the text. (and unlimited more for items and buildings)

[GavJ]

The default tiles have a decent aspect ratio for text.  It's just that most of the players who prowl these forums aren't using the default tiles.

What I meant by incompatible is that whatever tileset you use, it's either bad looking for text or bad looking for map tiles. The default is fine to read, but makes confusing/annoying tile layouts that don't match the physical space they represent.  Should be square for map and rectangular for text at the same time.

That is not relevant since TwbT came out, since it uses one tileset for the map and one tileset for the text. (and unlimited more for items and buildings)

This is suggestions, not modding forum. It's something that should be available in vanilla, even if there's some hackish way to accomplish it otherwise (same applies to the OP as well!). Vanilla doesn't require relying on some dude(s) to keep something up, or going down after every update potentially. And is also much easier for newbies, and retains more newbies who haven't gotten to the point yet of having heard about some random application and how to use it properly.

[therahedwig]

please let's not get sidetracked into a discussion about the role of mods/hacks versus the core game. This topic is actually a little bit too important to me for that.

I myself really have trouble reading through df descriptions, because of the following problems:

*Monospaced text. This is because of my dyslexia, mono spaced text, or fonts that are too even looking require great strain to read. The more unique a letter is, the happier I am. Vanilla monospace is a bit better than square monospace, but all in all I prefer ttf to anything.
*No paragraphs. Well, not fully true, there is some definition of paragraphs, but it could be better, especially because there's a lot of lists in descriptions. So, just better formatting.
*Text being drawn all over the screen. This is a pretty big problem and leads to eyestrain while trying to keep up with the text. Even with vanilla ascii I keep resizing the screen to be able to read things more properly.

[Meph]

Gavj, I dont mean to disagree, but there is a flaw in your logic. I honestly tried four times to write it out in a way that makes sense, but I really dont want to argue on the internet. Toady wouldnt need to rely on anyones tools or foreign updates, he just needs to add linebreaks to his strings. Thats it. Regardless of tilesets or ascii and vanilla or mods, none of that affects my suggestions.

[GavJ]

I disagree aesthetically that line breaks help. If anything I think they make it slightly more annoying to read, but leaning more toward "equally annoying."

So I'm suggesting alternative solutions that I think might be more effective at addressing the actual base complaint. *shrug*

If you really only want to talk about line breaks then okay: I think they don't do anything or make it very slightly worse.