Bingo, I think most people would find a simple Idle flag that we can sort with very useful. A current job flag would be more sophisticated so long as it sorts with Idle at the top then it would be equally usable.
Here's what I've got so far...
The red dot means idle, I posted another thread here asking for someone to help me with the icons (
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=43059.0)
An alternative though might be to somehow Highlight (perhaps in Red) the box of the profession currently being used, but it may not be possible to determine that from game data, also their are things like eating and sleeping which don't have a profession (can you imagine a level 9 Sleeper? and you thought the Social skills were useless).
It would be possible to maybe put a little asterisk in the cell for the skill being used, but it might be visual overload, there is already the skill drawing inside the cell, the background color, the active/inactive color, the dirty cell border, the main border, and the selection guide borders!
Not sure what else we can do to a cell.
Another idea, allow an Icon to substitute for the vertical on-its-side profession title on columns. Their are a great number of graphics sets which people make and use and become habituated with and this would provide a quicker more visual 'read' on the profession columns. Allowing people to load these icons perhaps in a large paged block format would be a handy bit of customization. I have a full set of Dystopia Rhetoric derived Dwarf Icons which include every single profession that you could use as a default set if your interested.
Can you open a ticket for this one? This is a great idea.
Dwarf Therapist just won't open for me.
@Dr.Melon & @AbuDhabi
I have seen the bugs filed for this. I am working on getting an XP machine to play with. Sorry it's not working for you!
And a minor request: is there a way to make DT show the dwarf's current task?
While this has been requested before, I don't understand why. It updates too often to be of any real use. I guess the novelty of seeing the jobs in another tool is good, but what's wrong with pressing "u" in game?
Well, say I know I need a stack or ten of booze. I want to sort my dorfs in DT by brewer skill, and assign the one with the highest skill to do nothing but brew.
Ok, I commit changes, hop back into DF... and wouldn't you know it, he's on break, and will be for the rest of the season. Then my dorfs get mad 'cause they don't have any booze, and before you know it, tantrums.
So... yeah, I want to know what all my dorfs are doing without having to switch back and forth between game and DT.
You win! I have tried to implement a best of both worlds. For those of us who just want to sort by idlers and make them do stuff, the new job column is a regular sized (16px) column with icons for the job type. And since it uses icons for job groups, those of you who want to see what they're doing can see a general icon in the column, and hover over it for a full description. I have also included the full description in the dwarf details dock window.