Go over transport hotkeys
lexxie9952 "Maybe" is a soft polite way to say it. But you're right. The hotkeys should now fit the new actions and action-names.
Freeciv now has a beautiful six-part logic symmetry to all cargo-actions to replace the asymmetric actions from before. Each of the three modes of cargo-action comes in a pair of CARGO ON and CARGO OFF. 3x2 = 6 cargo-actions:
Embark/Disembark - action done over adjacent tile.
Load/Unload -- action done by transporter to same tile.
Board/Deboard ("Alight") - action done by cargo passenger to same tile.
Each pair has a positive name for cargo-on and a 'negative' name for cargo-off (same word but starts with un-, dis-, de-)
I run a 3.x server. The beautiful simplicity of the new solution is confusing players ONLY because we try to force it into the hotkeys of the old syste: "Activate cargo units" (U) seems like Unload. "Board transport" (L), seems like Transport Load. And so on...
I propose we discuss making the new hotkeys could be to nicely fit the new symmetry of new actions and their new names.
The following concrete proposal can start people to discuss it.
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new key, action, current key
shift-A, Activate cargo units, shift-U
shift-B, Board transport, L
shift-T, Deboard transport, no hotkey
shift-L, Load transport, no key
shift-U, Unload transport, T (deboard all)
NOTES for why these were proposed: 1. All cargo-actions have SHIFT, to not make asymmetric memory issues over mod-keys. 2. Scarcity of primary hotkeys is freed up, L and T become available for other things. 3. Each key is mnemonic to the first letter of its English word, except for shift-T which would conflict with shift-D for disband. But even this one is not too bad since (1) it is mnemonic to the 'T' in Deboard (T)ransport, and (2) similar to the action from the previous T hotkey.
Like I said, this is just a proposal to start discussion on the pros/cons of different ideas.
I've been doing some code refactoring and renames of internal functions and variables for making it clearer what functionalities each of them refer in the current design.
Also, I've started collecting current key bindings information: #45797
Regarding transport keys, there's the complicating factor that those actions do not map directly to keys/menu entries/whatever in clients & different clients do that mapping a bit differently.
Clients wanting to support all rulesets the 1:1 mapping should be made at least available, but that might happen like gtk-clients' current support of all road/base types; via a separate menu that doesn't have any key bindings. I think we still want to keep user interface friendly with more "typical" rulesets, so that, e.g., single key is overloaded to try both cargo and transport initiated unloading - user just wants the key to unload the unit, without need to figure out whether it will be cargo or transport initiated at a given situation.
Lexxie's proposal already uses limited number of keys. It's a good starting point, to be adjusted as feasibility gets checked.
Shift+U is Upgrade Unit - I take it Lexxie's list matches whatever changes to the key bindings FCW has done. So not so good starting point as I hoped.
3.1 has actions for entering and exiting a transportation unit. Maybe we should go over the current hotkeys to see it some better mapping to the actions can be done?