gEDA-user: Bugs, warts and feature requests (4)

[kai-martin knaak <kmk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This edition of "Bugs, warts and feature requests" focuses on gschem:

â gschem non-feature: Currently, gschem dialogs are always in front of
the main window. That is, they cannot be put behind the main window.
They have to be closed to get them out of the way. This is ok for small
dialogs like the translate dialog. But complex dialogs like Select_Component
forget their state. Others like the text_entry dialog might benefit from 
placement halfway behind the main window.

â gschem non-feature: Currently, the single_attribute_editor is modal. 
IMHO, modal dialogs are generally a PITA to usability. Please use this
property only, as a last resort. The multi_attribute_editor works
fine without being modal. 

â gschem room for improvement: Currently, there is a help text at the top
of the text entry dialog. While it is fine to have help available, it should
not clutter often used dialogs. 
Suggestion: Add a help button.

â gschem/pcb feature request: Automatically add a note the version string
that says which branch/fork/development/patch it was compiled from. This 
would help to avoid confusion for testers like me.

â gschem feature request: An option to renumber subsheets with the usual 
offsets. That is, numbers on the first page start at 100, second page starts
at 200, etc. 
Alternative idea: Evaluate a dedicated attribute "refdes_number_offset"
in the subsheet symbol. 

â gschem misbehavior: Currently, renumber does not honor multi symbol 
components. The script renders all symbols with disjunct refdeses, even 
if they were slots of the same component. I'd call this almost a bug.
It makes renumber barely usable with components that are spread among
more than one symbol.

â gschem usability: Currently, you'd have to manually call update component
after a symbol was modified with down-symbol->edit->up. 
Suggestion: Please execute update component automatically as part of the 
"up"-action. 

â gschem room for improvement: Currently, nets attached to dragged symbols
will go any angle. This is rarely desired in schematics. Instead pure 
orthogonal style is almost universally used. 
Suggestion: Add a mode to automatically make nets Manhattan style. 
Make this mode the default.

â gschem usability: Currently, there is no visible hint in the Options
menu whether or not a boolean option is active. 
Suggestion: Add a check mark in front of the menu item like pcb does.

Please comment.
Unless there are reasons to drop the issues, I will inject them to the 
source forge trackers.

---<)kaimartin(>---
-- 
Kai-Martin Knaak
Ãffentlicher PGP-SchlÃssel:
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x6C0B9F53



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