Pinning windows

[Zini]

And if we to do this, it would be very helpful to know

WHY people are pinning the windows
How they are using pinning.
Any pain points experienced with pinning windows. (I suspect that having to constantly re-size them, depending on what one is trying to do with them is the major pain point.)
Any suggestions on how to fix the pain point. (Perhaps A way to toggle a pinned window between small size and full screen? Or is this already possible?)

This again I disagree with (the first part anyway). There are too many variables. There is obvious the usage during gameplay, which will vary a lot between different players, play styles and activities. Then there is usage during content development (testing and stuff). Again, lots of variations. And then we may have mods or even TCs that change the game mechanics and the way the game plays so substantially that all previous assumptions become worthless.

Of course we can improve the pinning system (post 1.0). And if someone brings up specific pain points, we may compensate for them (the size toggle idea is certainly worth investigating).

But in general it would be better to look at windowed UIs in general (not MW specific) and examine how concepts from these can be used to improve the OpenMW GUI.

[Zini]

As mentioned before I haven't given the issue much thought, so this is really just a half-baked idea. But wouldn't it make more sense to address individual GUI issues specific to a particular "workflow"/usage in a mod? That would resolve the issues of too many variables, because we wouldn't have one default solution. Every user could utilise whatever UI mod suites his needs.

Of course making the GUI customizable enough for that is far down the road, but that doesn't mean that it won't eventually happen.

[dteviot]

@Cramal
@sjek

Thank you for your feedback.

Question for you:
For the spells window, would it be acceptable if the per-frame update only updated the currently selected spell/enchanted item. i.e. The item in the spell window that is the highlighed (purplish) color. With a full update occurring every 10 seconds?

Here's my current thoughts on plan of attack.

• Have a look at the map window, there may be some clues there on how it does a per frame update.
• Have another, longer look at the update logic for the spells window, to see if there is a not too complex way to optimize the update logic.
• If I can't see a way for an optimizing the general spells window update logic, I'll use the approach described above. Assuming you agree that it's acceptable.

[dteviot]

Well this is embarrassing.
Turns out that when you select an enchanted item, the "indicator bar" below the item on the GUI shows the number of charges left. (Just not with a numeric amount.)
Also, I owe Scrawl an apology. Turns out doing an incremental update of the Spells window wasn't that difficult after all. PR has been submitted.
Incidentally, the Attributes window, known as the StatsWindow in the code, DOES update when pinned.