Re: gEDA-user: git HEAD PCB now supports user-defined holes in polygons

[Peter Clifton <pcjc2@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 2010-06-08 at 12:46 +0000, Kai-Martin Knaak wrote:

> * You moved zoom to [ctrl-wheel]. I know, that this is in line with the 
> way other major gnome applications like inkscape handle zoom. However, 
> gschem and gerbv zoom with no modifier by default. I'd strongly vote for 
> a consistent behaviour across geda applications. 

I think you might be on my "local_customisation_before_pours" branch,
rather than my "before_pours" branch.

The scroll-wheel behaviour change is something I patched for my own
local consumption. (Or perhaps I screwed up my repository rebasing!)

> * The addition of the new hole tool moves the other icons downstream to 
> unfamiliar positions. It takes time to get used to this change. From a 
> user perspective, the hole tool is more like a seldom used special mode 
> of the polygon tool. A permanent button adds to the visual clutter. As 
> more tools emerge, this will get worse. Other CAD applications have 
> elaborate ways to choose between literally hundreds of tools. A simple 
> means would be to allow for modifier-click on the button. 

You idea sounds good - but I'll have to ask you to send the patch ;)
I don't have time to dive into the GUI code for rending those buttons,
adding one was very easy. If you like, I could move the button to the
end of the list, but it felt at home next to the polygon tool.


Perhaps a click on the polygon tool ought to expand with a pop-up with
sub-variants of the tool to choose from?

(E.g. some menus in XMMS / Audacious, and various drawing tools in
OpenOffice).

Perhaps a modifier key could be used to make the polygon tool work like
the hole tool...

We'd have to figure out a way around requiring the first click to select
the polygon - perhaps in the 99.9% common cases, that can just be the
polygon found when hitting the first point of the hole contour. I added
the first click requirement, as I often have boards which have multiple
polygons in them. Thinking about it now, it is probably better to skip
the requirement of the first click to identify the polygon.

> * The side pane wastes precious screen space on my box. About 8mm of 
> horizontal space are just filled with grey background. See the screenshot 
>  http://bibo.iqo.uni-hannover.de/tmp/Screenshot-PCB-before_pours.png
> This is not special with your branch. I get the same with pcb-head.

Lesstif doesn't have a tool pallete at all -> no wasted space ;)

A while back, both I - and some other developer (sorry, I forget whom)
were looking at using the "GDL" library to make these tool-palettes
dockable / tear-off-able, so they could be re-arranged / removed to save
space. I've not had a lot of time to pursue the idea though.

> Thanks for your efforts to make geda a better tool set!

Thanks for the testing! It is always nice to know people are using the
code and appreciating it.. it helpe motivate me to spend more of my
(little) free time working on it.

Best wishes,
-- 
Peter Clifton

Electrical Engineering Division,
Engineering Department,
University of Cambridge,
9, JJ Thomson Avenue,
Cambridge
CB3 0FA

Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!)
Tel: +44 (0)1223 748328 - (Shared lab phone, ask for me)



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