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[eerr]

Toady, I must know. Will you make some User interface before I become an old man?
(before everyone in this form is, say, 20 years older?)

I know how you've dedicated your life to this game, but I sure wish you would hurry up a little bit, as you may never produce a UI in the frame of time I use the game. For which I consider 10 years large, but not an unreasonable prospect.

Any general thoughts about time?

[Smew]

The interface takes all of an hour to learn, I have no problem with it.

[inaluct]

Whatchu mean by "user interface," boy?

[G-Flex]

I know you're working on this full-time and with no obligation on our part whatsoever, but hurry up!

My own personal desires are to be your top priority.

[Albedo]

(Probably better posted in the "suggestions" thread, since there is no game-play question/topic here.)

[Derakon]

On the flipside, if he posted this in the suggestions forum, he'd quickly get dogpiled into oblivion.

For what it's worth, I sympathize. The UI, while learnable, is not intuitive and is clunky in places. This is what happens when there's only one person working on a project and he's most interested in making a "complete" world, only working on the stuff his players interact with when it suits him.

[Neruz]

What's this 'User Interface' nonsense?

[zwei]

I don't mind user interface, it very fast once you get hang of it and certainly beats menu/buttons, keyboard shortcuts ftw. It is actually too easy to get used to it; am attempting to scroll by shift+k quite often.

What I do mind are inconsistencies, and lack of certain overviews.

Inconsistencies means:

I define stockpile in different menu than garbage dump.

'd'esignating large are is done by moving cursor from corner to opposite corner.
'b'uilding large area is done by uhjk keys by controlling width/heigh.

u/j, arrow up/arrow down, page up/page down, +/- is inconsistent too.

Oh well, guess that is dwarfish interface for you.

Some things are constructed in 'b' menu, some in 'd' some in 'i', some in 'p', yes they are different types, but

[Albedo]

On the flipside, if he posted this in the suggestions forum, he'd quickly get dogpiled into oblivion.

Whereas here he'll get some token of sympathy before that happens. 

Oh, I agree - I loathe the fact that there are (at least) 4 different keys to use to examine objects - <q>, <t>, <v> & <k> - and each gives different only partial info for no benefit. 

But I've long since given up trying to argue against the "logic" of a programmer who is not in my employ.

[Mipe]

Dogpile? Nay, catpile, I say. We love him so much we'll show him the catsplosion... up close!

[Kidiri]

Dogpile? Nay, catpile, I say. We love him so much we'll show him the catsplosion... up close!

Which one? The thermonuclear or the traditional?

[johnnybeltz]

Both. Theoretically, if cats breed and grow fast enough, a thermonuclear catsplosion would last indefinitely and eventually engulf the world. 

[Volfram]

There are a few people working on 3rd-party external UI programs.

Also, I was promised calculus.  There's no math in this thread!

[Christes]

Seriously.

[Muz]

Lol, I think you mean derivative

Heh, I understand why UI would be the last thing, though. Everything in DF changes, and you'll need a different thing. I'd rather that Toady work on one final UI than waste time making 3-8 different UIs each time he adds some new feature. And once there is a final UI, it makes things a little slow to add new features, just like how he was reluctant to add certain features for fear of breaking save compatibility.

So, yeah, the current UI is a placeholder, but since the game is still in alpha, get used to it