kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Dick Hollenbeck <dick@...>]

> Agreed! Too many drawing object manipulations (fonts included) happen
> outside of the device context. I'm guessing that before we can
> effectively use wxFont, we are probably going to have to fix the the
> drawing code to allow the device context to handle things like
> coordinate scaling, offsetting, and clipping internally. If we need any
> coordinate manipulation or specific drawing code that wxDC does not
> provide, than we should derive our own DC from wxDC to provide any
> missing or unique functionality rather than manipulate this outside of
> the DC. I know this is off topic but piling more drawing code on top of
> the current drawing code will just make Kicad harder to maintain.
>
> Wayne


This is not off topic. We have had to do these manipulations because 
wxWidgets wxDC was not adequate to the task. Yet as it has evolved, we 
have not kept up. wxGraphicsContext is a whole new ball game. We 
continue to carry baggage to work around a weak graphics API, yet we 
have not really explored the more powerful graphics API found in 
wxGraphicsContext.


Another thing that concerns me: less than a month ago we introduced a 
new font architecture. Now we hear that it is not adequate. I don't 
think that the folks who brought us that solution should now control the 
font solution path forever. In fact, I would say that they have 
demonstrated that they need additional ideas from others, by virtue of 
the fact that the original solution is now being thought of as 
inadequate or not comprehensive enough. We got a better looking 
screen, but some folks who had put in the international characters in 
the original font support lost that, no?

Just being candid, and trying to get a more comprehensive discussion of 
all the options available to us. I encourage exploratory coding........


Dick