Improve fax menu

[SpyDev14]

Subdivision of: #33632 pr

About the PR

Improved the fax menu. Now it doesn't look so scary in Russian localization.

Why / Balance

It was the essence of pure terror

Media

Before

on RU locale

After

Requirements

• I have read and am following the Pull Request and Changelog Guidelines.
• I have added media to this PR or it does not require an ingame showcase.

Changelog

🆑

• tweak: Fax UI Menu little reworked
• fix: Fix fax UI menu resizable

[slarticodefast]

Small request: Could you reorganize the buttons a little so they are better grouped by their purpose?

• Move "Print File" to "Copy" and "Send"
• Move "Refresh" to the receiver of the fax
• Standardize their size

Small Photoshop mockup:

[IProduceWidgets]

Does this effect the admin fax ui?

[slarticodefast]

I looked at it again and this does not seem to implement the requested changes yet.
Currently it looks like this:

But a better layout would be this in my opinion:

Could you make it look like that?

[slarticodefast]

Of course they are not implemented, they look bad. They are illogical and look crooked.

What about them is illogical in your opinion?
My reasoning for moving them is:

• The "Refresh" button should be next to the list of fax receivers because it refreshes that list. Otherwise you would not know what it will refresh.
• The "Print File" button is next to "Copy" and "Send" because those are the three functions the fax machine has. The "Print File" button has nothing to do with the "Refresh" button, so they should not be grouped together.

[eoineoineoin]

Slarticodefast is correct here. The UI elements which have related functions should be beside each other. You know what every button does because you made the UI, but consider a player who might be looking at this UI for the first time - for example that player will see a "Refresh" button which is somehow connected to "Print File," so they will wonder what relationship those functions have with each other, when in reality, those two functions are unconnected to each other.. In Slarticodefast's mockup, the "Refresh" button is beside the list of destinations because it refreshes that list. I think it could be improved even further, but it's a great suggestion. Here's a short article about this design concept with links you can use to learn more: https://lawsofux.com/law-of-proximity/

On a non-tehcnical level, your comments feel a little aggressive. Please bear in mind that everyone on this repository is a volunteer and is working in their free time to make the game better. I appreciate that English may not be your first language, but please consider toning down the language - if you're going to insult volunteers who are trying to help, I think you'll find that people will not want to work with you, no matter how good your contributions are.

Finally, your original PR description contains "Now it doesn't look so scary in Russian localization" - it would be good to know what the problem is so that we could learn to avoid making mistakes which cause problems for translations in the future.

[slarticodefast]

Personally I still think the Refresh button should be best placed next to the receiver. But we can wait for someone else to chime in for that.

Thanks to eoin for putting what I was trying to explain into technical terms.

[slarticodefast]

Like Ed suggested the Refresh button might not be needed at all if you just refresh it when opening the UI instead. That would be a good solution in my opinion.

[eoineoineoin]

Yes, ideally, the refresh button wouldn't be necessary at all, would certainly be an improvement if it could be removed. However, the paper type and print file button are still separated. I think this is closer to what a user would find more intuitive, but maybe needs headers to distinguish the "fax" controls from the "print" controls:

And of course, if we wanted to avoid bikeshedding over this, we could just fix the issue when the window is resized - that's a one-line diff.

[eoineoineoin]

I made a quick edit to your branch to demonstrate how the UI could be laid out grouping the controls by function.

[Everturning]

why are all the PR author's comments marked as abuse tf?

[slarticodefast]

why are all the PR author's comments marked as abuse tf?

They were blocked from the org for behavior in various PRs, even after already being warned by a moderator.
I'm not sure what this means for their PRs because those have been good changes. In this case the suggestion for the UI @eoineoineoin made is a good solution in my opinion. Eoin, could you maybe make a PR for that? While crediting the changes VlaDOS made of course.

[eoineoineoin]

That's unfortunate; their behaviour may not have been very good, but it does seem they were genuinely trying to make some improvements. I'd be happy to put the work in to polish and finish their PRs, since they fix issues in non-English builds.

In terms of this one, what would your preference be for how to get it in? Make a new PR, or push to this branch (not sure I have the permissions to do this, so you might have to do the push). I've pushed that change to eoineoineoin@8899af2 I still think it could be improved, maybe some headers on each section or something, but it's definitely an improvement on the current UI.

[slarticodefast]

Easiest would be to make a new PR, but make sure to keep the previous commits so that VlaDOS gets contributed for their work.

[TheShuEd]

Due to the author being banned from the repository, we will be closing this PR. Other contributors may continue the work by opening up a new PR. Should the author successfully appeal the ban, the PR may be re-opened.