kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Marco,

I've been following this thread and have a few suggestions for the plot dialog.

1) Hide the irrelevant settings depending on the current plot type selected.
In other words, hide the postscript and HPGL options when plotting gerbers.

2) Use a wxChoice to select the plot type instead of radio buttons.  This
follows the GNOME (and OSX) guidelines for saving space over a larger number of
radio buttons.  Also makes it easy to add new plot types.

3) Do not wrap the check box text in the Gerber options.  This also violates
the GNOME UI guidelines and just plain looks bad.

4) Making the message area collapsible would save you a lot of space as well.

5) Move the optional settings under the layers and options settings to get the
aspect ratio of the dialog closer to 1.6/1 (height/width).  This ratio is the
golden rule to making things aesthetically pleasing.  There has been a lot of
research done this area and a lot of famous art adheres to it.  If you are
doubtful, Google the "golder ratio".

6) Bonus points for using a wxCheckListBox for selecting the layers.  This way
when PCBNew supports unlimited layers, the dialog box will not need to be
updated again.

Of course, you are free to ignore all of these suggestions.  They are merely
things to consider.

Wayne

On 2/1/2011 1:20 PM, Jerry Jacobs wrote:
> Hello Marco,
> 
> I like it but it has still some issues with wxWidgets on Mac with version 2.9.2
> from svn (rev 66766).
> 
> I put a screenshot on my server over here:
> http://kicad.xor-gate.org/screenshots/new-plot-screen-issues.png
> 
> The issues are the format frame, and the gerber options entries labels overlap.
> 
> Also I can't close the window with the exit button on the window border, and
> the same goes for the close button. So I have to kill pcbnew to "quit the
> application".
> 
> A suggestion would also be to display the cwd in the Output directory line if
> the user opens the dialog, and maybe this output directory can be saved/loaded
> from the pcbfile/project.
> 
> On 2/1/11 7:10 AM, jean-pierre charras wrote:
>> Le 31/01/2011 21:55, Marco Mattila a écrit :
>>> Jean-Pierre,
>>>
>>> I have yet another suggestion for the layout of the plot dialog (see
>>> attachment). The width would be the same as in your recent patch, but
>>> the height would be smaller. What do you think?
>>>
>>> marco
>>>
>>
>> I like it!
>>
> 
> 
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