Today’s Headache

January 14th

Here’s a screenshot of the current NextEncounter window:

My plan WAS to permit the player to select one item from the list on the left and one item from the list on the right, then click the arrow button, and the item on the left would be replaced by the item on the right. This, however, has two problems: first, there’s no way to delete an item on the left. Second, the user would need to see which item on the left is selected before clicking on the arrow button. But Java makes this impossible because it deselects the item in one JList when you select an item in another JList. 

There are two solutions to this problem:

+ and - buttons
This is the solution used in other places in the program. It will be familiar to the user, and I already have the code somewhere in my archives from the Prerequisites and Disqualifiers JLists. It is the obvious choice. I just realized a simple way to make this work. There’s just one capability in the left box: to delete a selected item. Then the arrow button transfers whatever is selected on the right JList to the left JList. That requires me to replace “unused” with “”. That way the user need never click on an unused slot.

Drag and drop
This is the preferred choice. The user should be able to simply drag an item from the right list to the left list and drop it there. However, I don’t want to waste the time learning how to do it. Maybe later.