Well Nick, I am more enthusiastic about the side one, If for no other reason than that its might be useful for displaying static stuff, not chat, or other things that need to be the same "width" as the mud text. The only real limitation I can see with the resulting mini window in the corner is... There isn't much you could do with it, and some of the things one might use it for (like spell icons, etc.) won't work, since there is no support for icons/images in said windows at this point. But, even the top split is interesting. Now the obvious solution to allowing "either", without the mini box would be to change the nesting level of the windows. I.e., make the split a subwindow of the existing world window, so your not splitting the input window, just the MDI that is hosted above it.
That however would mean more code changes, since notes, etc. would be now directed to something like 'main->world->output_frame->output', 'main->world->input' and 'main->world->output_frame->split', instead of 'main->world->output' and 'main->world->input'. If you get what I mean. Still, any way you plan to do with it, it would provide an interesting feature. It might even help the idea of a tutorial, since the script could do something like:
Top = 1
SetSplit 50, Top 'Obviously, if you allow a choice as to where the split happens,
'it might also be nice to specify if it is above or "below" the
' 'world, or on the right/left. And even if it only splits one way,
'this would still be useful.
SendToSplit "Hi! And welcome to the tutorial!"
...
and so on, then open/close it as needed when the "helper" wants to say something, without messing with the simulated game much. |