Develop
Ticket #1811 (new enhancement)
Make Info pages and Info Box information more meaningful to the user and to enhance readability.
| Reported by: | Andy Gough | Owned by: | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priority: | normal | Milestone: | XCSoar Wishlist |
| Component: | Other | Version: | unspecified |
| Keywords: | Cc: |
Description (last modified by Turbo) (diff)
Background:
One of the most powerful features of XCSoar is the information available to the pilot and the ease of customizing the display of this information to be useful to the needs of individual pilots. As useful as these features are they are not equally easy for everyone to read and comprehend in flight. Basically there is too much information in some boxes and the name labels are not intuitive to all pilots and must be learned by rote to deliver their effectiveness.
Please consider the following additional attributes and parameters to make Info Pages and Info Box information more meaningful to the user and to enhance readability.
AUX INFO PAGE
Allow edit of AUX INFO PAGE names to assign a name that describes the function similar to the default Circling, Cruise and Final Glide.
e.g. AUX INFO PAGE 1 might be configured to provide info prior to the start and might be named START WINDOW or PRE-START or whatever the user finds easier to understand.
INFO BOXES
Minimum changes required to enhance readability
- Allow individual box names to be edited and renamed or left blank.
e.g. I might like to rename AA dT to FINISHOK someone else may be happier with GOFINISH.
- Add a blank info box with no characters to provide white space. There are plenty of AUX INFO pages. This allows for less information on more pages which reduces clutter and enhances readability.
- Add INFO BOX parameter no borders. Works in conjunction with blank boxes to provides white space.
4.Allow INFO BOX borders to be dragged to increase or decrease width.
- The cruise display below could be configured with the addition of a few new info boxes.
IDEAL SOLUTION
Majority of Info Boxes seem to be three elements, title, main Info and secondary info. If each one of these elements can be selected, i.e mix and match labels and information that can be individually formatted, combined with the 1 to 4 above almost any type of display could be configured.
However 1 to 4 would be a big step forward.
Change History
comment:2 follow-up: ↓ 3 Changed 15 months ago by apf
Editing of "AUX INFO PAGE names": This is available since some time (6.1.0 if I remember correctly)
comment:3 in reply to: ↑ 2 Changed 15 months ago by Andy Gough
Replying to apf:
Editing of "AUX INFO PAGE names": This is available since some time (6.1.0 if I remember correctly)
Thanks for that one less thing to do. I clicked the name button a number of times before I got it to work but now have calibrated my finger and can get it almost every time.
comment:4 follow-up: ↓ 5 Changed 15 months ago by RobD
In the diagram above, where would the moving map be?
I am hesitant to make the infoboxes "infinitely flexible." CU Mobile allows dragging of infoboxes, and it is a mess, as many CU Mobile users have pointed out. If we add more flexibility to infoboxes, it should be with a framework in mind so that it remains good looking and is "hard to mess up." The 4 new flexibility items is a start, but I suspect we would benefit from a more comprehensive approach to enhancing this.
comment:5 in reply to: ↑ 4 Changed 15 months ago by Andy Gough
Replying to RobD:
In the diagram above, where would the moving map be?
I am hesitant to make the infoboxes "infinitely flexible." CU Mobile allows dragging of infoboxes, and it is a mess, as many CU Mobile users have pointed out. If we add more flexibility to infoboxes, it should be with a framework in mind so that it remains good looking and is "hard to mess up." The 4 new flexibility items is a start, but I suspect we would benefit from a more comprehensive approach to enhancing this.
I agree entirely with what you are saying and I have tried to structure my proposals to fit within the existing framework.
The diagram is based on a screen layout 8 Bottom (Portrait) so the map is directly above. Below is the same layout with the borders visible after the vertical borders have been moved. The third box in each row is a blank (white cell). This layout can be achieved when the four new flexibility items have been added. The framework is the same. To accommodate this architecture the landscape mode would probably also need to be formatted separately to gain optimal readability.
The layout as illustrated still cannot be formatted with only the four new elements as I have introduced some new info boxes. To achieve the same thing without making hundreds of new info boxes for everybody's idea of “what is right for me” we need to be able to select the elements within the box. My observations lead me to believe each info box has three rows top row, middle row and bottom row, graphic displays can also be accommodated e.g. vario display. If label and data elements can be selected and formatted by the user for the three rows of each box, an info box need be nothing more than a frame within a frame. One more element of flexibility would be to allow the height of info box rows to be resized to accommodate graphic elements or to change the position of elements within the info box, e.g. in the diagram below, the bottom left wind data box would consist of only two rows to display the wind arrow, the top or middle row would be set to zero height and the other would expand to take up the space left by the zero height row. Making a row invisible would also work. To recap:
The page frame outer dimensions remain rigid.
Only the width dimension is adjustable for info box
Only the height dimension is adjustable for info box rows.
The development team would probably come up with a more elegant implementation but I hope my explanations are adequate to describe the end objective, enhanced readability.
