Re: [XBoard-devel] gtk version status

[h.g. muller]

OK, I started a new branch "promopopup" on hgm.nubati.net.
In that brnch, I eliminated the promoton popup altogether.
Like already was the case for Great Shatranj and SuperChess,
there is no popup when you promote, but XBoard just waits
until you click a piece (displaying a message in the message
field that you should do so).

For the mmentioned variants, the choice was limited to what
you had in your holdings, which wre always displayed. In other
variants, the piece you want might not be on the board, however.
So what I had to add is that it stuffs a temporary board with all
the pieces you can promote to. (It gets those from the pieceToChar
table.) It then displays that board, waiting for you to click it.

So the whole thing is now completely handled in the back-end,
so merging it with the gtk branch will make it work there without
any changes! If we rather have a true popup, the board that
is now displayed in the main window would need to appear
as a mini-board in a popup, with a cancel button added.
(If people want to cancel now, they can click an empty square.)
But this is merely a cosmetic refinement now.

I cannot do the same thing for the Edit Position menu entirely
in the back-end, because that popup is called from the front-end
to start with. I could only do it here because the mouse driver for
left clicks was moved to the back-end. So my next step will
be to similarly move the mouse driver for right clicks to the
back-end, and then address the Edit-Position menu. (Which
is then just a matter of cloning what I have done for the
promotion popup, except that you decide a little differently
which pieces you put in the menu.)

Migrating the right-click mouse driver to the back-end will
also make the PV display feature work in the gtk branch,
(once the gtk front-end hooks into this).

Having a real popup for this opens the interesting possibility
to re-instate the drop menu, (controlled by an option), in
stead of the holdings. In stead of permanently displayed
holdings, the holdings could be made to apper as a popup.
This would save space, which might be good in bughouse
where you want to see two boards.