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[Snap]

Can we get an option for how DF sorts items/stone while building things? Right now it sorts by distance to the item making the list jump around while building plus having to scroll to it each time. I propose making an option somewhere on how sorting happens:

1) Sort by distance
2) Sort by last used
     This would keep the last used item type under the cursor. If the last built thing was a Dolomite Door then the next time I build a door the Dolomite doors will be at the top of the list.
3) Sort alphabetically
4) Sort by quality (in eXtended lists only)

I don't really care too much about the last two much, but the ability to keep the stone type or item type I've building at the top of the list would be great and less carpal-tunnel-ly.

[Retro]

There's a whole subforum dedicated to suggestions. You can move your topic by clicking the button towards the bottom of the page.

[numerobis]

Alpha sort would be nice, and easier to set up than remembering the last used.

[Snap]

'Last used' is to keep the item type under the cursor when placing items. Building walls with only marble and keeping marble at the top of the list. Being able to just hit 'enter' when placing granite chests instead of having to scroll through all the leather containers to select it every time. It's just a major pain and one of the few things (other than military bugs) that really annoys me while building stuff or furnishing 100 bedrooms. :/

[cephalo]

This would be a great feature. It's very rare that I care how far away the materials are. I care about how they look and what the finished product is made out of.

[Snap]

It would be pretty easy to set up. Toady really only needs to make one variable and an IF/Then to check it against the list.

1) When you place something the 'item type' is stored in the variable.
2) The next time that the 'item type' list is opened the variable is read and the list checked.
3) If the item type is found in the list, move it to the top entry, otherwise do nothing.

So if I'm placing Oak Doors then the Oak Door will always be at the very top of the list, allowing us to just hit enter instead of scrolling. If I then build a Steel Chest the Oak Door will not be found in the list of chests and nothing happens except for the Steel Chest overwriting the Oak Door that is stored in the variable. Simple.

[j0nas]

Not to say that this isn't a legitimate problem, but until there's another way you could try going to stocks and forbidding all doors other than the right type, for that build.  It requires a bookkeeper at highest accuracy, but those are handy enough that I always try to keep one around anyway.

[NW_Kohaku]

I personally find the lack of anything in the game that keeps track of where you were in a list (forcing you to scroll down, potentially through hundreds or even thousands of individual items in a list every time you, for any reason, leave that menu, especially when it is because you need to individually select dozens of different items or characters) is one of the greatest flaws in the game, aside from the outright game-killing bugs.  I spend more of my time trying to find things in menus than I do actually running the fort.

Hopefully, sometime relatively soon, we will get a better interface that would allow menus like that to stay open in the background, the way that Dwarf Therapist lets me look over all my dwarves' status by doing nothing more than tabbing over to another process and hitting refresh.

[Snap]

Hmm... Now there is an idea, and one already implemented in a rogue-like. T-O-M-E http://www.t-o-m-e.net has a system where you can have different windows for different parts of the game. You can have the main game window, then open another window for just the menu, one for status, etc. The whole game can be played from just the main window the way dwarf Fortress is right now too, so you don't have to use them if you don't want to.

Might be a system for Toady to look at (he can even get the source code) for ideas when he does the interface revamp.