kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@...>]

Dick Hollenbeck wrote:
> Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
>> Dick Hollenbeck wrote:
>> 
>>> Jean-Pierre,
>>>
>>> I am seeing a rash of unsatisfactory dialog windows lately.
>>>
>>> There are assumptions being made about font size, and this is causing 
>>> problems with almost every other dialog that I pull up in Kicad.
>>>
>>> Please look at the attached dialog as an example from eeschema.
>>>
>>>
>>> The first instance is the default size which shows itself on initial 
>>> popup. 
>>>
>>> And thank goodness that we standardized on re-sizeable dialogs, the 
>>> second instance is what it looks like after resizing it larger. But 
>>> even the 2nd one is not satisfactory, because I do not know what a "Auto 
>>> Increment p" is.
>>> 
>> Dick,
>>
>> Take a look at the two images of the same dialog in Windows XP using
>> wxWidgets 2.8.10. This confirms my suspicions that there are some
>> differences between how sizers behave on different platforms. We will
>> just have to be more diligent when creating dialog boxes to make sure
>> they render properly on all platforms. Are any of you OSX developers
>> seeing these problem? If so, please bring it to someones attention so
>> it can be fixed.
>>
>> Wayne
>>
>> 
> 
> I don't have but the one platform for testing. More attention to 
> quality might help too, in the area of capitalization, and window expansion.
> 
> See the attached for another example. Questions I would ask about this 
> one are:
> 
> 
> 1) Why are some column titles capitalized and others not?
> 2) Why are the grid row titles not even readable?
> 3) What is the difference between Via size and Via Diameter?
> 4) Why is the grid not expanding as the dialog is expanding, (obviously 
> the window has been expanded since it was opened)?
> 5) Why is the bottom button panel not expanding as the window is expanding?

6) Why is wxStdDialogButtonSizer not being used for the cancel button?
7) Why are buttons being used instead of check boxes for the setting
states if this is a modal dialog?
8) Why is the word ALL in all caps?
9) Why is there no padding between the dialog frame and top most sizer
to prevent the controls from crowding against the dialog frame?

This is one of the biggest complaints I get from people when I recommend
using Kicad is how confusing and just plain ugly some of the dialog
boxes are. I have been using the sample dialog in the GNOME UI
Guidelines as my standard for creating dialogs. It can be found at:

http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/design-window.html.en

Conveniently the very next page is on text labels and capitalization
which also needs to be more closely followed. There is also some good
information on when and when not to use the various controls in the
"Controls" section. I highly recommend everyone creating dialogs in
Kicad put a link to the GNOME UI Standards in your browser.

> I would offer to fix this one, but I cannot be confident that I could 
> even understand well enough what it is supposed to be doing, so I might 
> "break" it.
> 
> 
> Can anybody offer me guidance, I am glad to help as long as positive 
> changes dont' get lost?

I know what that's like. It makes me reluctant to want do it again.

Wayne

> 
> 
> Dick
> 
> 
> 
>