upcoming gnubg features + button survey

[Isaac Keslassy]

Hi all,

Sorry for the long email. Its first goal is to let you know about a 
bunch of upcoming gnubg features that will enable you to streamline your 
use of gnubg. Its second goal is a survey about toolbar buttons.

- FEATURES: After you play a match on the internet and save it on your 
computer, you can now click on a single button, and gnubg will (1) 
automatically open your latest match, (2) automatically swap players and 
sit you at the bottom of the board, (3) automatically analyze your 
latest match in the background while you check the analysis results in 
parallel, (4) let you click on a button to jump to your own mistakes 
only, without stopping at your opponent's mistakes, (5) automatically 
add the analysis results to the database at the end of the analysis, as 
well as (6) let you see a new plot of the evolution of the match winning 
chances throughout the match (this answers a request on this list).

In addition, (7) gnubg will automatically check is there is a newer 
gnubg version online.

The new code is on https://github.com/keslassy/new-gnubg-features/
You can download and compile it. It works on Ubuntu and Windows 10. But 
I am sure it still has some bugs.

If you want to try it on Windows, first make a copy of your current 
gnubg.exe, then download the following gnubg.exe file and put it instead 
of your current one in the directory with all the .dll files. It may or 
may not work. If it works, it may crash at some point. In any case, any 
feedback is welcome, including suggestions for additional simple 
features you'd like to see.
https://github.com/keslassy/new-gnubg-features/tree/main/windows

(BTW thanks to Philippe Michel and Pierre Zakia for their help!)

- BUTTONS: It would be great to have toolbar buttons for some of the new 
features. But real estate is limited. Once every 10-20 years, it doesn't 
hurt to clean up a bit and remove some buttons that are less used. Of 
course, their functions will remain available in the menu and as 
shortcuts, so removing a button only adds a mouse click in the worst 
case. This email is about minimizing the expected number of clicks, not 
about removing any function.

We want the approval of the community before touching anything. 
Basically, we want to know on which buttons you click less often. Here 
are some options, would you mind roughly ranking your preferences in 
this tradeoff?

* There are 3 buttons that end games: Reject, Resign, and End Game. 
Maybe can we only keep Reject? or only Reject and Resign? (We could also 
make a "Drop" function that functions like Reject upon a double and 
Resign otherwise, but its changing behavior may confuse users.)

* Can we remove Undo? (Ctrl-Z is still available)

* Can we remove "Go to Previous/Next Roll"? "Go to Previous/Next 
CMarked"? Or do you use them?

* Or would you prefer to keep more/all buttons... but make them half the 
size? Or add another toolbar on the left side, or a second row at the 
top? (assuming it's possible)

* Or would you prefer to not touch anything and not add any new buttons?

* We plan to add two basic analysis buttons: "Analyze" (for the current 
match) and "Analyze File" (as described above; we may have to call it 
something like "An. File" if we cannot remove more buttons). Any 
objections? Are there other buttons you'd introduce if there is space? 
For example, the match "Statistics"? The new "MWC Plot"? "Show Records"? 
"Options"?

Thanks,
Isaac