id summary reporter owner description type status priority milestone component version resolution keywords cc blockedby blocking branch_state votes 1510 Use more pseudographics in user interface sergey-feo "(Excuse me for my bad English) Current user interface of mc avoid use pseudographics (except single lines) and so IMHO have clumsy look. The main reasons avoiding pseudographics IMHO was: 1. Simpler programming. 2. No problems with different locales. 3. No problems with black-and-white terminals. The reasons why single-line pseudographics exists in mc is IMHO: 1. ncurses have special features (ACS_) variables for this. 2. Too bad look without it. Ncurses have ACS_ variables only for single pseudographic lines, not for double (as VT100?). IMHO it is main reason why double-line pseudographics are not used in mc and many other programs under GNU/Linux. Now is epoch of Unicode. The VT-100, black-and-white terminals is deep history. Most 8-bit encodings is also history, but not so deep :-) Most of encodings have rich set of pseudographic symbols and iconv can do conversions between encodings. I suggest review mc interface and look at old DOS applications that did not afraid to use pseudographics. The best example of good looking console interface is IMHO Borland Turbo Vision library. You can see it in DOS Naigator (""DN"", http://www.dnosp.com). Also old well-known Norton Commander (""NC"") 5 and Norton Utilities (""NU"") 8 have good interfaces. Microsoft Visual Basic for DOS have interesting, but IMHO not so good looking interface. Let's press F7 and see to directory create dialog. Inactive buttons looks like [ OK ] in mc now. It can be remade as rectangles with shadows. Active buttons looks like [< OK >] now. This [<>] IMHO looks very inaccurate. DOS Navigator's ▶ OK ◀ with colored background is better. Let see to the [CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT] button. Why it use ""CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT"" symbol that pointing to the top when list opens at bottom of this button? More logical will be [v]. And much more beautiful will be using ""▼"" or ""↓"" with colour background (see DN's F7 dialog). Next, let see on F7 dialog boundaries. It consists of single-line boundary and empty boundary around it. IMHO empty boundary should be deleted. Let press [CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT] button. We will see created directories history. It has no empty boundary around single-line boundary. Let see to the scroll bar. It made with symbols ""CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT"", ""*"", ""v"", ""│"" and IMHO has inaccurate primitive look. We can use: — ""▲"" or ""↑"" in place of ""CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT""; — ""◼"" in place of ""*""; — ""▲"" or ""↑"" in place of ""v""; — ""▒"" in place of ""│"". All this changes can be done with using symbols from old 8-bit charsets like DOS CP866. Also in other ticket I suggest make several ""themes"" for mc user interface: without pseudographics, with pseudographics from 8-bit encodings and theme with Unicode pseudographics. --------------------- Regards, Sergey" enhancement closed minor mc-core 4.7.0-pre1 duplicate no branch