Re: gEDA-user: PCB drill file question

[Rick Collins <gnuarm.2007@xxxxxxxxx>]

At 09:02 PM 5/8/2008, you wrote:
>Rick Collins wrote:
> >
> > I only wish I could, but gerbv crashes on my machine.  Don't know if
> > this will be getting fixed any time soon.
> >
> > Rick
>
>so just for kicks, I tried to debug this again on a vista pc.
>Downloaded sources from cvs and there was no crash.  So I downloaded
>2.0.1 sources and it does crash.   Ok, so then I went back to the win2k
>computer where I was able to reproduce the crash.  I updated my source
>tree there and now it doesn't crash.  I stuck an installer at
>http://gerbv.sf.net/tmp/ that you can try out if you want.
>
>I'd feel better if I knew what changed to make this bug not show up so
>we knew it was actually fixed for real.  Still, there have been a number
>of changes recently so maybe there was a lurking bug which was fixed.
>
>-Dan


Hi Dan,

Thanks for the FTP link, that worked.  I am on a slow connection and 
the HTTP download seemed to end at about the same spot.  So I am 
guessing that there was a time out somewhere.  Here are my observations.

The 2.1 version seems to not crash, but I can't say it "works".  I am 
able to load all of my Gerber files in and I can view them.  But the 
drawing speed seems to be very slow, almost painful.  The other 
gerber viewer programs are much faster.  There is also an issue with 
extra windows of some sort.  When the program is not minimized I see 
a window as I should, but it has areas on top of it that are just 
plain gray.  These gray rectangles cover *all* windows that are not 
minimized.  When I minimize Gerbv, they show up at the bottom of the 
screen (not the system toolbar) with titles all reading gerbv.exe.  I 
have about 10 Gerber files in my design, so there is not a 1 to 1 
correspondence.  If I click the icon on the system toolbar, it should 
normally swap modes between minimized and the last displayed 
mode.  Clicking the icon always results in the window being 
displayed, even if it is already displayed.  If so, it minimizes the 
window and brings it back up again.  I still can't save and restore a 
project.

Closing and reopening the program got rid of the gray 
rectangles.  Normal rendering seems about the same speed as "fast".

The main reason that I wanted to use this program was because it can 
read in the XYRS placement file.  But it won't read mine.  It doesn't 
give any sort of error message, it just doesn't open the new layer 
when I open the XYRS file.

Right now, I would say the speed is the biggest problem with gerbv 
under Windows.  The screen update takes about 3 seconds on a zoom in 
or out.  An observation on UIs is that when a screen change takes 0.3 
s or less, it is perceived as immediate with no delay.  Between 0.3 s 
and 3 sec the delay is perceived, but the mind does not wander 
(unless you are tired like me right now).  If the delay is longer 
than 3 seconds it results in a loss of attention to the activity.  As 
the mind wanders, work productivity is greatly reduced and fatigue 
sets in much more quickly.  The perceived delay on my machine is 
about 2.5 to 3 seconds, right on the cusp of loss of the operator's 
attention.  As I try to pan around or use the zoom, I find the speed 
makes it nearly unusable.

Rick



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