Current GUI Situation

The view breaks my heart.

The accessibility of this project aka the GUI was not that important until now. Mainly, because there were not enough features present to justify the effort and because there are no potential users for the software right now. There is already a web server in order to render the documentation and some simple reports, but until now it was not a main concern, as interactive features are lacking.

After reading Major Linux Problems on the Desktop, 2022 edition I changed my mind. The course correction was not caused by the realization, that users or a GUI are important. No, the main driver for this decision was the fact, that storing log files and reports during the optimizer’s execution worked, but was very cumbersome.

It basically worked and once one gets the grip of it, it can be used, but the struggle to get it working is too big. The files' location was hard to guess and the website is supposed to easily lead you to these reports. In practice, it is way too fiddly. In other words, the optimize, run and analyze loop is too noob unfriendly, which eats away my time. Of course there are many other issues as well, like the fact, that it is not possible to render a website without a private repo, which is only located at my computer 😳. Keep in mind, that this is an open source project 🥲.

During the implementation of a test for the Crisis Network Game, I noticed it would be nice, to view and interact with the live data structure of the optimizer. When I read the Linux Desktop article, it reminded my of this wish, and so I decided to make a plan.

Future GUI Plan

Going for the moon.

So, in order to tackle this mess, I started the Accessibility subproject. The main goal is to release the program on FlatHub, so that at least something can be used. As long as the school course scheduling and the sport lesson assignment are not done, this is a secondary project and therefore work will be done a tiny bit, probably only once a week.

The main goal would be to create a basic GUI, that can be used for the Crisis Network Game.

We’ll see, what will happen… 🍀

Wish me luck… 🤞