forum.freeciv.org

Hello.
I am probably missing something obvious but have to admit that i never really played with the SDL client much, my preference being the GTK2 one.
Long story short, for a little while, the SDL would be the only client I could build/use, thus I run into a couple issues:

#1) Unit selection on tiles via keyboard 'V' or 'SHIFT+V' doesn't work.
According to https://freeciv.fandom.com/wiki/Keyboard_Reference, the SDL client should have key 'Y' and 'SHIFT+Y' but, alas... Those also do not work.
The Unit Selection menu is quite... Awkward? I want to select all Engineers on a tile and it takes some effort to achieve what GTK2 allows in one keystroke.

Looking for information about what controls the SDL client provided, I went to check the Help browser and that brings to->

#2a) Help browser? One can get access to information about units, but it is painful having to select on one unit to get information about another type of unit.
The information in the Research panel seems just limited to research pats stemming from the current tech or the current goal. The whole tech tree is ... Unavailable? This might seem trivial, however planning requires the whole picture and not just a limited set of information.

#2b) I wanted to see the available keyboard controls one can use, but Help browser does not have the relevant section (see #1).

What Am I missing?

Just to confirm: The actual sdl-client, not sdl2-client? Even before it was completely obsoleted, sdl-client had been neglected for over a decade, so expect it to lack A LOT of functionality (even in comparison to sdl2-client that at least is now catching up)

Yep, the SDL-client, not the SDL2-client (which i never tried to build).
Your answer more or less explains why has been somewhat neglected for so long...
It has nice graphic and a modern look&feel but those simple issues turned me off and made me desperate to get back the old trusty GTK2-client (for which I again thank you immensely for the help you provided getting it to build on my ancient system).
I also understand that the main focus is to have v3.x at the state of the art and all efforts are concentrated there.
Maybe the other clients will get the useability of the GTK counterparts but right now, for me at least, that remains the unsurpassed client to play with

Even in freeciv-2.6 I would recommend anyone who can (has gtk+-3.22 or gtk+-3.24 available) to use gtk3.22-client. That the plain gtk3-client was still the default was only because the ancient msys1 environment for Windows didn't have new enough gtk+.

You triggered the thought to try to get a set of GTK3 libs and attempt a build of the GTK3 client... Will have to do some _serious_ reading tho. Skimming around, seems I'll likely fall into some pitfalls due to versions of the supporting libs being slightly out of sync and having each quirks/bugs... In other words, I first have to understand which is the least version of the gtk+3 to start off with (and then the related supporting libs)... You know the old chinese saying: if you fasten the first button of your coat wrong, all the following buttons will also be wrong.

FYI: There are some fixes to sdl-client since 2.6.8; most of those sdl2-client fixes that have applied trivially also to sdl-client.

https://files.freeciv.org/packages/wind ... 98f657.log