[0.15.11][Twinsen] circuit related item info inconsistencies

[malventano]

I wasn't sure if these were bugs or not since I seem to remember some of these might have been more consistent in previous releases. Either way, I doubt the current status is intended by the devs and is at a minimum a group of UI inconsistencies. I'll start with what might be bugs and extend into what I imagine the complete solution should be:

BLUF: Not all circuit connected items show their inputs/outputs in the info pane, and not all circuit connected items highlight their connected circuit wires.

Related to info pane display when mousing over items:
- Electric poles show all circuit connection signals and associated (wire) colors.
- Combinators show inputs and internal outputs prior to adding to the destination (signals are not wire colored).
- Belts, inserters, and gates do not show their connected signals (understood these both input and output - should only show signals).
- Programmable speakers do not show their inputs.
- Chests do not show outputs (yes I know they show inventory in info, but if connected to circuit network, they should show all signals present on their connected network(s).

Related to red/green wire highlight when mousing over items:
- Belts, inserters, chests, gates, programmable speakers, train signals, etc. all highlight their connected wires.
- Electric poles do not highlight their connected wires, despite being the only item to show all signals and wire colors.

This greatly complicates troubleshooting circuit related designs and is inconsistent from item to item (and in different ways when you consider the electric poles). Some circuit networks do not have any signals at all viewable (example: belt sensor feeding into an inserter). Whether these are bugs or just overlooked implementation, all circuit connected items' displayed info should behave uniformly, ideally as the electric poles currently do, and electric poles should highlight their associated circuit wires as the other circuit items do. This way the player can easily trace a given signal from a chest/tank/belt, through combinators (color coding would help incredibly there), to their destination inserters/train signals/etc. It's nearly impossible to tell why an inserter/train signal is not enabled when the signals at that item are not shown.

Added bonus: Having combinators show their input, internal output (currently shown as output), and finally their output bus contents (currently not shown) would help troubleshooting those even further. Same can be applied to other items that have an input and an output (inserters/belts) - they can show the signals present on their network and separately can show their own internal output' that they are contributing to the network themselves. This might make initial understanding of the 'internal output' thing difficult, but I submit that the current display method (where 'output' does not actually show all signals present on the output circuit) is actually more confusing as is.

[Twinsen]

The main reason I kept postponing this is because the tooltip on the right is a bad place to show any significant information mainly due to it's size. Whenever you have a large amount of signals the tooltip goes out of the screen. Now imagine you have the 3 categories of signals(input, output and output network state). That won't fit at all.
I'm still pondering on possible solutions and if I don't find one I'll eventually add the info in the tooltips.

As for poles, they are often hovered and manipulated when used with the electric network so I thought highlighting the wires might be too much.

I'll move this to not a bug, but I moved this task much higher on my todo list.

[malventano]

Understood and thanks so much for considering the input.

The main reason I kept postponing this is because the tooltip on the right is a bad place to show any significant information mainly due to it's size.

I hear you there. The logistic network when hovering over roboports always overflows for me, but the typical circuit network that I end up seeing rarely has enough signals to overflow it, even if there were three categories and two color code groups. If those features were there and it did overflow the pane, I'd probably just cut it off from the rest of the network to make troubleshooting easier in that moment.

As for poles, they are often hovered and manipulated when used with the electric network so I thought highlighting the wires might be too much.

Yeah, I understand. The reason I brought that one up was I had a bunch of combinators in a cluster of electric poles and figuring out which pole was handling the wires was nearly impossible .

[malventano]

I'll move this to not a bug, but I moved this task much higher on my todo list.

...so it's been a while, and it appears none of this has changed since 0.15. Any chance these might eventually happen? They would greatly assist those working on / troubleshooting circuit-connected items, especially if the color coding was implemented.