Map selection with keyboard?

[Philippe D.]

Hi all,

I am not a frequent user of this part of the forum, so I might be asking this in the wrong (new) thread, sorry for that.

A feature that, to me, seems to be sorely missing from VASL is, when selecting a mapboard for a game setup, I have to scroll down a pretty long list (and will often scroll past whichever mapboard I'm looking for). It seems like it would be nice if keys typed could be used to scroll up/down the list to whatever maps start with the keys used (this is an interface thing that I've seen used by a lot of UIs).

Is there a good reason not to use this in VASL? I can't believe I'm the only one with the idea!

 

[DougRim]

Hi all,

I am not a frequent user of this part of the forum, so I might be asking this in the wrong (new) thread, sorry for that.

A feature that, to me, seems to be sorely missing from VASL is, when selecting a mapboard for a game setup, I have to scroll down a pretty long list (and will often scroll past whichever mapboard I'm looking for). It seems like it would be nice if keys typed could be used to scroll up/down the list to whatever maps start with the keys used (this is an interface thing that I've seen used by a lot of UIs).

Is there a good reason not to use this in VASL? I can't believe I'm the only one with the idea!

Have you tried it? Once you click on the drop down button and expose the list, typing the keys works. At least it does on my machine.

 

[Philippe D.]

Duh! Is this a new feature? I've only installed 6.6.1 recently... I tried it previously, and should have noticed (it's a bit slow; this might be why I thought the feature didn't exist).

Still, it only uses the first character (search starts over if you type another), and in the list the maps are not sorted alphabetically (1a, 1b, 2a, etc come before 10, so typing "8" will find 8a, which is looong before 80), so in the end it doesn't solve the problem.

But I guess now the question is why the list is not sorted alphabetically; could this be linked with the "fetch missing maps" feature? (I just tried loading some of the maps that were missing from my "boards" directory, and relaunching VASSAL, but it doesn't seem to change the list order)

 

[DougRim]

You are correct that keyboard entry only seems to work on the first character so its use is limited.

Autosyncing the boards has no bearing on the order in which the boards appear in the dropdown.

We can change that order and maybe improve the ability to type in a board name but would it make a difference?

I am not hearing complaints about the current approach.

 

[GeorgeBates]

Have you tried it? Once you click on the drop down button and expose the list, typing the keys works. At least it does on my machine.

Works. V e r y v e r y s l o w l y. But it works.

 

[Michael R]

I use the scroll bar to quickly move through the list.

 

[Philippe D.]

Yes, scrolling up/down with the mouse works, but my mouse settings must not be optimal - I tend to scroll too fast.

When using the keyboard, it would make the functionality much more useful if the boards were sorted alphabetically - at least one could directly narrow the search down to maps starting with a given digit/letter. (Of course if this changes, some people who got used to the current order will complain that it's now less intuitive - can't please us all)

 

[BigAl737]

I usually just scroll but I do recall that a quick input of the first two characters of the board name zoomed in closer to the target.

 

[zgrose]

The boards are sorted alphabetically, but 1a, 2a, etc weren't named 01a, 02a which is why the order got messed up a bit. Same problem will re-occur when we get to board 100.

I don't know about your OS, but if I pop the dropdown open and type 80, it takes me to board 80. Same if I type RB. You just need to wait a bit for board 8 to get downloaded, before it downloads board 80. Same for downloading board r before it loads RB. The next time through it will fly.

 

[Philippe D.]

OK, so I tried a bit more possibilities. If I type several keys fast enough, it does scroll to the correct name; but if I wait a little, it scrolls to the first map that starts with the first typed key(s), and won't refine the search if I type in more - it will start over.

So indeed, quickly typing 8 and 1 will search for map 81; but typing first 8, then, maybe a second later, 1, will scroll to 8a, and then to 1 (or whatever is the first one starting with 1 in the list).

Thanks for the tip - at least now I know I just need to type quickly. Not very intuitive, but it works!

(As for my OS, it's Ubuntu 18.04)