Re: gEDA-user: xaw vs. gtk future?

[DJ Delorie <dj@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> My question is this:  Will the new HID layer support easy writing of
> callbacks which will make the GUI's actions more natural?

I'm not changing how any of the actions work in the core of pcb.  Some
of the gui-specific actions, like Zoom(), may change though.

> When I looked at the GTK-PCB source code, I was sufficiently
> confused about how it worked that I just gave up trying to
> understand it.

Ok, *this* I can say will be better.  The two biggest advantages of
the HID work are:

1. Multiple GUIs in the same source set.

2. A lot simpler sources.

I'm not sure which will be the bigger advantage, but moving the GUI
code out of the core will simplify things a lot.

One of the changes I deferred, though, was the concept of
encapsulating the "tools" pcb uses.  The mouse click interface is
still the same for drawing lines, vias, etc.  It was too much work for
the first pass.

But you may be able to, for example, have a menu entry that does:

    * save element to file

    * run a new pcb instance on that file, with command line options
      to load the element etc.

    * load the element back into the original pcb when that pcb exits.