I think the side bar could still be there because that's the easiest way to show the information, since there are usually so many options. That, or have it in a floating menu that pops up, but until something is done about window sizes and number of tiles on screen it'd probably obstruct too much.
Hmm... My expertise in this is tapped out now, but y'all can figure out some nice suggestions for the display issues. I'm a fan of keeping it visually similar to the current. I want the user interface to be better, don't care so much about it being prettier.
I am not sure about the best way to start a community interface flow chart, maybe using something like Dia to map it all out, it can export many different file types. I am not sure how practical having a flow chart would be since the data would just consist of stuff like "Designation (d) ------> Designate menu ----> List of options", etc., but it'd probably help point out areas that take too many keystrokes to access or whatever.
If it's just going to be command1 -> command2, then we can use graphviz which has a truly human-readable file format (as in, you just write
command1 -> command2 and a tiny bit of boilerplate at the top). I'm just wondering what other information would be useful. For instance, figuring out the +/- and up/down schizophrenia would please me, but wouldn't be easy to analyze with just that graph.
In the end, the goals I see for this flowchart-or-whatever project are twofold: (a) something to hand to Toady to help him improve the UI, (b) something to hand to newbies to help them figure out the UI.