who broke letters in stores?

[PowerDiver]

There is a longstanding tradition of being able to say 'a', or any letter, for all in stores. Or maybe it is a recent tradition. In either case, can we have it back?

[Nick]

There is a longstanding tradition of being able to say 'a', or any letter, for all in stores. Or maybe it is a recent tradition. In either case, can we have it back?

I never knew that existed - I use '*'.

[Matthias]

It also no longer works when destroying an entire stack of objects.

[Marble Dice]

Signed. I frequently use 'y' to select all items in a stack when squelching, destroying, and buying.

[Magnate]

Signed. I frequently use 'y' to select all items in a stack when squelching, destroying, and buying.

This is a result of r1692 - a deliberate fix to prevent newbies accidentally buying/selling entire stacks. If you want to select all, use an asterisk, like it tells you.

[PowerDiver]

This is a result of r1692 - a deliberate fix to prevent newbies accidentally buying/selling entire stacks. If you want to select all, use an asterisk, like it tells you.

Shift + number is horribly non-ergonomic. If you want to help the newbies, let them sell stuff back for list price.

The '*' isn't even listed in the stores any more, so don't say "like it tells you".

Using letters for an entire stack is old and good.

[Magnate]

Shift + number is horribly non-ergonomic. If you want to help the newbies, let them sell stuff back for list price.

The '*' isn't even listed in the stores any more, so don't say "like it tells you".

Using letters for an entire stack is old and good.

This wasn't my fix, but I'm happy to defend it: undocumented is bad. Especially since the noun-verb reversal - being careful what happens in stores is important. Yeah I know we should just have no selling, and an undo command to sell stuff back you bought by accident.

It is listed, honest. In a store it says "how many scrolls of whatever? [* for all]". Oh weird - I just checked: it tells you about the asterisk for selling, but not for buying. That's nice and consistent. Ho hum.

Non-ergonomic is your strongest point - but it's not exactly an RSI risk, is it? It doesn't happen that often.

[Marble Dice]

If you want to select all, use an asterisk, like it tells you.

Pah, no thank you! I just mash three numbers at once, it's easier than hitting shift 8.

[fizzix]

This wasn't my fix, but I'm happy to defend it: undocumented is bad. Especially since the noun-verb reversal - being careful what happens in stores is important. Yeah I know we should just have no selling, and an undo command to sell stuff back you bought by accident.

It is listed, honest. In a store it says "how many scrolls of whatever? [* for all]". Oh weird - I just checked: it tells you about the asterisk for selling, but not for buying. That's nice and consistent. Ho hum.

Non-ergonomic is your strongest point - but it's not exactly an RSI risk, is it? It doesn't happen that often.

It happens plenty if you're trying to buy out a store so it can restock whatever item you need. Since there seems to be a refusal to allow streamlining of that process, can we at least not make buying/selling/destroying of a stack of objects not unduly cumbersome.

And yes, shift-8 is cumbersome.

[Tatami]

I like in hellband where if you select a stack of something for buying, selling etc it just gives the number in the stack and if you want to move less of the stack you just type in the number you want. Very intuitive.

[Marble Dice]

In my experience the only time I frequently want to operate on less than a full stack is re-stocking from the stores. In that specific case, sure it's good to have a little safeguard from accidentally buying more than you want. But when I'm dropping, getting, destroying, squelching, and selling I almost always want the whole stack. That's a lot of annoyance for one safeguard.

Maybe one or both of these compromises would work:

1. Default all stack quantities to the size of the stack, except for buying anything from stores, which defaults to 1.
2. Change the all keyword from '*' to 'a'. Still pretty hard to accidentally get, but much easier to intentionally input than *.

[buzzkill]

I've got an * on my keypad (no shift required), don't you?

[fizzix]

I've got an * on my keypad (no shift required), don't you?

I mostly play on a laptop with no numpad. And since I learned with the standard keyset, I have interesting movements, i.e. I use the numbers above the keys to move diagonally. There's probably a better way, but I'm used to this by now.

[Marble Dice]

I've got an * on my keypad (no shift required), don't you?

Yes, and I remove my right hand from the numpad to press the 'p' key in order to make purchases. If there was a compelling reason to keep a hand on the right side of the keyboard, then I could use the numpad *. As is, it's still faster to keep both hands on the left and use 357 or whatever for the quantity instead of pressing shift-8 or numpad *.

I use the numpad * for targeting in the dungeon, but that makes sense because I've got a hand over there for movement. There's no store functions that far on the right except for the asterisk.

[d_m]

I mostly play on a laptop with no numpad. And since I learned with the standard keyset, I have interesting movements, i.e. I use the numbers above the keys to move diagonally. There's probably a better way, but I'm used to this by now.

I have learned the same weird motions... although I've gotten pretty good at it at this point. For awhile I actually had a USB number pad just for playing Angband, but I'm not using it anymore.